Big Tone, Beware: Crown Crackdown Continues

As the mayor announced that ​“Operation Nightlife” will continue to bring aggressive law and order to the club district, Mark ​“Big Tone” Maloney decided he will no longer take his skull mask and dragon bike to Crown Street — lest cops assault him again.

Maloney (pictured on his bike) got caught up in the first night of Operation Nightlife, the stepped-up police enforcement that last week flooded Crown Street with cops on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

Maloney, a 47-year-old Amtrak engineer, said a member of the beefed-up police contingent pulled him off his motorcycle, cursed at him, threatened him, ripped off his skull face mask, broke his glasses, and handcuffed him without explanation.

He said he was simply parking his bike with a couple other members of his motorcycle club, the Presidents.

The incident has left him wanting to avoid downtown altogether, he said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, city officials gathered in the club district Tuesday afternoon to tout the success of Operation Nightlife and to announce it will go on for at least another weekend. They made more than two dozen arrested on minor violations during the first weekend of the crackdown and issued 84 tickets, like one Maloney ended up receiving; the operation cost taxpayers $15,000.

The crackdown comes in response to a Sept. 19 shootout involving clubgoers and cops. Two men were wounded in the gun battle.

In his most forceful language on the subject to date, Mayor John DeStefano said the clubs on Crown Street are no longer of use to New Haven. The problems they create vastly outweigh the benefits they bring to the city, he said. He vowed to ​“diminish” their ​“presence.”

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Before that afternoon announcement, Maloney spoke in his West Haven home about his experience of Operation Nightlife.

Maloney is the vice-president and co-founder of the Presidents, an area motorcycle club that boasts 50 members. He rides a souped-up Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R with an extra-wide rear wheel and a custom dragon-themed paint job. When he’s riding, he usually dons a wind mask with a skull on it, or his custom-painted helmet that looks like a dragon head.

Maloney said he has no arrest record and hasn’t even had a speeding ticket in Connecticut. In his spare time, he helps coach a West Haven peewee football team, the Seahawks. He has four kids, one of whom, his teenage daughter, he’s raised as a single parent.

Here’s what he said happened last Thursday night:

He’d gone with some Presidents to a football game at Southern Connecticut State University. Afterward, a couple of Presidents who are around 25 years old said they wanted to head downtown to Crown Street to check out the clubs. Maloney said at 47 his club-going days are behind him, but he agreed to ride down with them, after which he planned to head home.

The three bikers came down Temple Street and turned right on Crown at around 10:45 p.m. Maloney was going less than 10 miles per hour, wearing his skull mask. ​“I’m literally slow rolling,” he recalled.

The Presidents found a spot in front of the club Static (a prime target of the club crackdown) and backed into it. As Maloney was backing in, he and his comrades were all of a sudden surrounded by cops.

“Get the fuck off the bike!” Maloney said one cop shouted.

He turned toward the cop and said ​“What?” Then he felt himself struck in the back of the head. He turned back and saw another cop (whose badge number he got) wearing a lighter blue shirt than the other cops.

Maloney said that cop screamed at him, ​“Get the fuck off the bike!” As he dismounted, the cop yelled, ​“You’re not moving fucking fast enough!” Maloney recalled.

The cop then grabbed Maloney’s face. ​“Take this shit off,” Maloney said the cop told him. The cop ripped off his face mask, pulling off Maloney’s prescription glasses in the process, according to Maloney’s account. The $600 glasses were folded in half and the lenses popped out. Another cop later spotted them on the ground and put them on the seat of Maloney’s bike for him.

The cop in the lighter blue shirt pulled Maloney off his bike. Maloney said the cop shouted, ​“Get the fuck against the wall and if you move your fucking hands, I will crack your fucking skull!”

The officer then put his hands in Maloney’s pockets, front and back. ​“I think I’m being illegally searched,” Maloney recalled thinking. ​“I’m feeling really violated. Why is he in my pockets?”

The officer walked away. Another cop asked Maloney for his license and registration. Maloney handed them over and told the cop he had a pistol and a permit in the rear storage compartment of his bike. The officer with the lighter blue shirt returned and put Maloney in handcuffs. At no point did any officer explain why he was being detained or searched.

“Everybody’s looking at me like, ​‘Here’s a thug in the middle of the street,’” Maloney recalled.

The officer uncuffed Maloney and gave him a ticket for a noisy muffler. On Tuesday, Maloney acknowledged that his bike can get loud. But that doesn’t excuse the cop’s treatment of him, he said.

“It wouldn’t matter if I was doing a wheelie up the street,” Maloney said. A police officer shouldn’t be able to grab your face, smash your glasses, pull you off your bike, and go through your pockets, he said.

“My Fourth Amendment rights were violated, without a shadow of a doubt,” Maloney said. The Fourth Amendment guards against unlawful search and seizure.

Asked why he was wearing the skull mask, Maloney said he uses it to protect his face from pebbles and debris while he’s riding. Plus, it’s stylish. ​“Bottom line, it looks cool on a bike.”

As for the pistol, Maloney said he carries a Smith and Wesson Chiefs Special .45 for protection ever since he was shot at in Middletown in 1991. He said he’s never used it except at firing ranges, and he’s never had any problems or violations, he said.

As Maloney was about to leave Crown Street on Thursday night, Chief Frank Limon walked by. Maloney said he told the chief what happened, and the chief promised to look into it. Since then, Maloney said, he’s called and emailed the chief, but gotten no response.

His experience with the police during Operation Nightlife has left him ​“disillusioned,” Maloney said. ​“I think it was uncalled for and way too aggressive.” If anyone else grabbed his face and broke his glasses, he could have them arrested for assault, but a cop can apparently do it with impunity, he said.

Maloney said he couldn’t believe a cop would behave that way in front of hundreds of people. He said he thinks the cops were trying to provoke him and worried about what would happen in a similar situation except out of the public eye and with someone who couldn’t keep their cool like he was able to.

He said he plans to file a formal complaint against the officer who he said assaulted him.

Asked about the incident Tuesday afternoon, Chief Limon said he hasn’t had a chance to go through all his emails from the weekend, but that he will forward Maloney’s email to the proper department for investigation.

Maloney’s was the only negative experience with police he’s heard of from Operation Nightlife, Limon said. ​“There were no complaints made this whole weekend.”

Operation Nightlife To Continue

Limon (at left in photo) began Tuesday afternoon’s press conference with statistics on Operation Nightlife. The weekend’s enforcement included 28 arrests for minor violations, six cases of minors with alcohol, eight fake IDs, 84 motor vehicle stops, and 208 parking tickets. Authorities inspected a total of 14 bars, he later added.

Mayor DeStefano (at center in photo) shared three observations. First, the crackdown costs the city far more than its taking in from bars in the club district. Second, given the first observation, the value of a the club district should be questioned. Third, universities that bus thousands of kids to Crown Street on the weekends need to step up and take some responsibility.

The weekend’s enforcement cost the city a total of $15,000, DeStefano said. That would be about $800,000 if the city were to do it all year long, he said. Meanwhile, a typical Crown Street club pays about $900 a year in property taxes, he said. That amounts to a ​“dramatic disconnect” between the club districts benefit and its cost to the city.

The jobs the clubs provide are not significant or valuable, the mayor later added.

“Increasingly, these clubs add little value,” to the city, DeStefano said. He said the city will look at statutes and zoning requirements to ​“construct a framework” that ​“diminishes the presence” of the clubs.

“They’ve stepped away from any responsibility for policing the behavior,” he said. In fact, he said, the clubs are actively promoting drunkenness and misbehavior through ​“foam nights” and dollar drink specials, he said. ​“I don’t see how this adds value.”

DeStefano said he will be ​“engaging” with local universities that bus students downtown. When those buses are combined with a ​“culture of big alcohol consumption,” they begin to ​“enable the behavior,” he said.

Chief Limon said the city will evaluate Operation Nightlife again after this weekend to determine if it needs to continue.