Brother’s Quest Preserves Cop’s Memory

On Wednesday, Michael Fumiatti and his family will travel to Hartford to see his brother’s name added to the Connecticut police memorial officially recognizing New Haven cop Robert Fumiatti as an officer who died in the line of duty. With that, Michael will have conquered the forces of forgetting.

That moment will mark the culmination of a process that brought Michael to Washington, D.C., last weekend. He stood with an honor guard there and saw his brother’s name etched on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Michael leaned over to his mom and said, ​“No one’s ever going to forget now.”

Fumiatti, city government’s purchasing agent, has been fighting a battle against forgetting ever since his younger brother passed away in 2007. Through letters and attorneys and expert witnesses and pleas to elected officials, Fumiatti worked tirelessly to see his brother’s name carved into the D.C. memorial reserved for cops killed in action.

It’s been an uphill climb, given the fact that Robert died more than four years after he was shot in the face during a police operation in the Hill neighborhood, and the medical examiner decided he had died of natural causes. With the help of an expert witness, however, Michael convinced the U.S. Department of Justice that there was a link between the bullet stuck in his brother’s neck and the heart failure that ended his life.

As a result, Michael and more than 20 members of his family spent Friday in Washington, where Robert’s name was officially added to the memorial wall. The moment allowed Michael to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that his brother was finally in his rightful place, resting in peace.

On Monday, Michael took a break from his work in his third floor office in the Hall of Records — where the walls were decorated with sunset Cape Cod photos taken by his wife — to sketch out the path from a fateful day in the Hill to Friday in Washington D.C.

The journey began on June 13, 2002. Robert, then 31 years old, was working with cops in the Hill executing a search warrant. Robert was first out of the van and was met immediately by a man with a gun, who shot him from close range.

The bullet struck him in the face, Michael said, touching a spot to the left of his nose. It ricocheted off a tooth and came to rest in his neck. Robert then ​“died on the street,” Michael said. ​“He literally flatlined.”

Emergency medical responders were able to get his heart started again and he was rushed to the hospital.

Michael was at home that night, a Friday, watching TV at about 10:20 p.m. ​“The phone rang. It was my mother saying my brother had been shot,” Michael recalled.

He raced with his wife and son to the hospital, where ​“it was a sea of blue,” full of cops. The mayor and chief of staff were there, too. He saw his brother covered in bandages. ​“He looked like a little kid,” Michael recalled.

It was ​“touch and go as to whether he would make it,” Michael said. But after surgery to repair his throat, Robert was stable. The bullet remained in his neck, and surgeons decided it was too dangerous to go in after it.

Robert was in the hospital for a month and wore a neck-stabilizing ​“halo” for six, but weathered it with good humor. The family Christmas card that year had the whole family wearing halos, with the family dog in a cone, Michael recalled, chuckling.

After a year and a half of therapy, Robert went back to work. But he wasn’t at 100 percent, Michael said. One arm was a little weak, for instance. The department decided he’d be good for a K‑9 unit, and put him together with a narcotics dog.

Meanwhile, Robert was still suffering psychological effects of the trauma. ​“It was a very difficult road,” Michael said.

One day, Robert was talking on the phone when suddenly he woke up on the floor. His heart wasn’t working right, earning him a pacemaker.

Robert was tired and drained, Michael said. He couldn’t work overtime. The family realized that he would never go back to how he was before he was shot.

Then on Jan. 10, 2007, Michael got another late-night phone call. This one came at 12:30 a.m., waking him up. ​“They’re rushing your brother to the hospital. They don’t know what’s wrong with him,” the voice on the other end said.

As he had more than four years earlier, Michael rushed to the hospital. In the waiting room, he got the news: ​“Your brother’s dead.” Robert’s heart had stopped. Michael collapsed to the floor.

After an autopsy, the official word came back: death from natural causes. The death was the result of cardiac sarcoidosis, a rare auto-immune disorder.

In January 2008, Michael filed paperwork with the Department of Justice to have his brother recognized as a fallen officer. Citing the autopsy, the DOJ denied the application.

Michael knew it wasn’t that simple. His brother had never been the same after he was shot. Michael suspected that the traumatic injury and bullet left in his Robert’s neck had somehow led to the heart failure that ended his life.

In his office on Monday, Michael pulled out ​“the Rob file,” a fat folder filled with documentation of Michael’s subsequent battle to have his brother recognized. On the cover was a picture of Robert with his K‑9 companion.

After the DOJ rejection, Michael hired an attorney and filed an appeal. He managed to find an expert witness, a cardiologist, who said it’s possible there was a connection between the gunshot wound and the sarcoidosis.

Along the way Michael also secured letters of support from Mayor John DeStefano, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and then-State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal.

Finally, on Oct. 26, 2010, Michael received the letter from DOJ: Robert was officially a ​“fallen officer.” In March of this year, Michael got word from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial: Robert would have a spot on the wall in D.C.

Michael has waged other battles along the way, like helping to get the town of West Haven, where Robert lived, to enact legislation waiving taxes for the families of fallen officers.

“There’s no reason on earth I was going to let this go,” Michael said.

He offered a simple explanation for why he worked so persistently to preserve Robert’s memory: ​“I’m the older brother.”

Michael and Robert grew up in West Haven, with a sister between them in age. Robert always wanted to be a New Haven cop like his dad. When he was sworn in as an officer, he took his dad’s badge number: 24. The department has since retired that number.

Robert ​“bled blue,” Michael said. He was ​“a cop’s cop” and would have wanted to be remembered as one, to share the wall with his brothers and sisters in law enforcement, Michael said. Until that happened, Michael couldn’t rest, he said.

“This has been like leaving the cemetery for four and a half years,” he said. But now, Michael said, he feels he’s reached the other side. ​“At the memorial, I literally breathed a sigh of relief because I knew finally Robert would rest in peace. I find solace in that.”