As students filed out of the Marshall Street bars in the early hours of Easter Sunday, they saw Syracuse police officers arresting a student, Eugene Brown, using force and putting a mesh bag over his head to keep him from spitting on them.

Blood from the 6-foot-3-inch, 290-pound Syracuse University football player’s head mixed with the red bricks of M-Street, and the sounds of fighting were disrupted by the shouts of students questioning if the officers were going too far.

There are times when officers need to use physical force, sometimes deadly force, to ensure that their lives and the lives of those around them are protected. With cases of police misconduct, there are always at least two sides to the story. The Brown case brings a question to the Hill that has faced many parts of the city for years: when do officers go to far?

‘Overall, what I saw was pretty sickening,’ SU student Matthew Unger told The Daily Orange after witnessing Brown’s forceful arrest.

The Brown case may underscore a larger problem within the police department – the same small group of officers consistently bullies and disrespects citizens, and internal discipline issues minimal punishments, according to officers within the department. Officers, local politicians and everyday citizens have all seen the symptoms: officers bullying, disrespecting and verbally abusing citizens.

A two-month investigation by a team of SU journalists has revealed that small pockets of the Syracuse Police Department are plagued by claims of racism, sexism and a lack of respect for citizens. Citizens have accused officers of racial profiling and excessive use of force in recent years, and the investigations have been marked by a lack of public accountability from Internal Affairs, the office charged with investigating the complaints against officers.

The problems of lack of punishment and the ineffectiveness of Internal Affairs have led to a negative attitude that has pervaded parts of the Syracuse Police Department, said Police Inspector Michael Kerwin. Kerwin calls this bunch his ‘Top 10 Hall of Famers.’ They are continually the subject of citizen complaints, and yet they keep their jobs. Kerwin refused to go into detail about the identity of any of the ‘Hall of Famers.’

‘I have almost 500 officers,’ said Chief of Police Gary Miguel. ‘The reality is a majority of them handle themselves really well. Are there instances where officers act inappropriately? Yes.’

Requests for the disciplinary records of the Syracuse Police Department were denied citing the officers’ privacy and New York State Civil Rights code, which bars departments from disclosing the records. A veil of secrecy is allowed to remain in place, with disciplinary records only coming to light via the officer allowing them to be publicized or through a court order.

Jeff Piedmonte, head of the Police Benevolent Association, attributes the idea that the same officers get in trouble again and again to reputations often gained early in careers.

Piedmonte estimated that, of the approximately 25 discipline cases either pending, in arbitration or in the settlement stage, two officers have more than one case in this process. He said other officers have been written up in the past but that the number was ‘not substantial.’

Miguel said some officers are disciplined more than others but that part of the discipline is training and making sure the same mistakes are not repeated. He added that, with discipline, the complaint frequency and past training are important factors in deciding punishments. The punishments can range from a letter of reprimand to the officer being fired.

Miguel added that the department will soon be implementing the use of Taser guns, which he thinks will help eliminate some of the more violent arrests by replacing the use of a baton with a shock lasting a few seconds.

Kerwin estimates that, in his more than 20 years in the police department, there have been about a dozen cases in which officers crossed the line in using force. Part of the problem with accusations about use of force is that many times they come from suspects that are under the influence of alcohol at the time of their arrest, Kerwin said.

‘A focus on brutality would be missing the forest for the trees,’ Kerwin said.

Instead, Kerwin and Detective Virgil Hutchinson see an attitude of superiority and constant belittling of citizens, particularly in the poor neighborhoods in Syracuse, as a bigger problem.

‘You can use physical force with someone, but when you start belittling people, that hurts them more than anything else,’ Hutchinson said.

Eugene Brown apologized for his actions on Marshall Street that night. As in many of the cases that lead to questions of brutality, Brown was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the arrest. But 13-year-old Brianna George was not drunk when she claims she was beaten and arrested by police at Carousel Center in 2000. She was buying gummy bears.

Brianna George had no criminal record. She claims she was thrown against a vending machine and to the ground after officers at the movie theater inside Carousel Center came up from behind her, accusing her of stealing candy, according to her testimony in depositions.

She was handcuffed and carried by four officers to an elevator, hanging from the handcuffs, leaving bruising on her wrists, her mother said.

Brianna George accuses officers of kicking and dropping her during this time, leading to an injured shoulder, bruises and a swollen eye. She accuses officers of holding her face to the ground while in the elevator. The charges of stealing were dismissed, according to court documents. Brianna George claims in her deposition that she never left the movie theater area and never concealed the $8 worth of gummy bears.

Brianna George also accuses officers of using racial slurs. After she was held in mall security near the Post Office, she was transported to Hillbrook Detention Center, where officials required her to go to the emergency room because of her injuries.

Brianna George was not made available for an interview at the advice of the family’s attorney, Frederick Brewington.

The officer facing the strongest accusations in the George lawsuit is Detective James Quatrone. He is accused of throwing her against the machine, which started the melee, and holding George down in the elevator.

The incident occurred as Brianna George was trying to buy candy before shopping for an outfit to wear for her birthday party the next day, her mother said. The birthday cake was cancelled, her mother said, and the party never happened.

In a deposition, Quatrone accuses Brianna George of resisting, kicking him in the groin and shouting curses at the officers during the arrest. Quatrone says he was informed by movie theater staff that Brianna George was stealing candy. He then approached her, informing her that he was an officer before the fight began, he said.

‘This case is going trial,’ Quatrone told The Daily Orange. ‘Go to court and see how ridiculous the lawsuit is.’

Three independent witnesses side with the officers that Brianna George was struggling, according to depositions and the Internal Affairs investigation. But several witnesses, friends of Brianna George, side with her. Her mother, Millicent, says the independent witnesses did not see the beginning of the fracas. The Internal Affairs investigation cleared the officers but did so without contacting Millicent or Brianna.

Millicent George does not deny that at first her daughter was trying to get away, but she claims officers did not identify themselves before they approached her.

‘To me you have a case where a 46-year-old man is bullying a 13-year-old girl,’ she said.

The Citizen Review Board, the institution within the city responsible for independently investigating complaints against the department, sided with Brianna George.

‘That was a situation where the youngster was somewhat manhandled,’ said Sam Grillo, a CRB member that heard the case and ruled in the Georges’ favor. ‘The fact that she was so young and that her family was not contacted upset me.’

The CRB testimony was taken into account during the Internal Affairs investigation, according to the Internal Affairs report.

Brianna George’s eye showed the effects of the struggle for about a month after the incident, her mother said. It still tears when she reads for long periods of time.

‘When I got (to Carousel Center), I went up and asked the officers where my daughter was, and they said that she had left,’ Millicent George said. ‘When I asked where she went, they said Hillbrook. When I asked what that was, Quatrone told me to look it up in the phone book.’

Millicent George has filed a lawsuit against the department herself. What led to the suit, she says, is that the conversation in which she was told her daughter was at Hillbrook Detention Center took place at about 7 p.m., though her daughter was not transported until 9 p.m.

Quatrone is a well-known figure in the department, and depending on who you talk to, he is either a villain or a hero. To his detractors, he is a cop who will do anything, even cross the line into misconduct to make an arrest. To his supporters, he is one of the best cops on the force and is unafraid to fight crime in Syracuse.

‘He is the type of tough street cop who will walk right up to a gang member and say, ‘I heard you said you were going to kick my ass. Let’s go right now,” Kerwin said.

Kerwin and former Chief of Police Leigh Hunt describe Quatrone as a good cop who gets results.

‘I have the reputation to be a very, very good cop,’ Quatrone said. ‘I would love to give you a dose of reality and talk to you, but you can talk to the public information officer.’

Quatrone’s personnel record backs this up. In 1994, he earned the police department’s Meritorious Service Medal. In 1996, he received the Chief’s Achievement Award. He was also considered an instrumental figure in the Syracuse Police Department taking down the Boot Camp gang in the city’s South Side in 2004. A look at his name appearing in Post-Standard archives also reveals he won the Meritorious Service Medal again in 2004 and the Chief’s Achievement Award again in 2003. These awards were not in the personnel file that was part of the Brianna George lawsuit.

‘He’s a worker,’ Detective Hutchinson said of Quatrone. ‘But his way of going about the work isn’t right.’

Hutchinson said Quatrone gets results and that victims’ families love him, but he wonders if Quatrone crosses the line of misconduct.

Miguel could not comment on any case currently in litigation or any particular Internal Affairs investigation. He also refused to discuss any officers individually.

The lack of transparency in Internal Affairs records makes the task of distinguishing between a hero and a villain a difficult one.

Piedmonte, however, feels this privacy is necessary.

‘I understand the public wanting to know the department got its pound of flesh,’ Piedmonte said. ‘For an officer, it is bad enough to know the department did get its pound of flesh, but then to read about it in the newspaper? That isn’t right.’

Miguel said Internal Affairs investigations are thorough and noted that in cases where a possible crime is committed, such as the use of deadly force, the district attorney has the power to investigate the incident.

In fact, it is a crime for a member of the department to disclose the discipline records. These records are not even given to the city council.

Councilor Bill Ryan, the man in charge of monitoring the department for the Common Council, does not have access to the reports.

D.P. Van Blaricom is a former chief of police who has testified over 1,000 times as an expert witness on police department procedures. Van Blaricom said Internal Affairs and discipline records are available in some states but that even those departments resist at every turn. He said the reason could be that publicity could open the investigations to close scrutiny.

In cities where unions are strong, as it has been suggested is the case in Syracuse, politicians who are supposed to be policing the police can be afraid of them, Van Blaricom said.

Quatrone is not the only officer whose conduct has recently been called into question.

A lawsuit pending in federal court paints a clear picture of more than 10 officers in the past decade going against department standards and being allowed to keep their badges. The names of the accused in the Internal Affairs reports contained in that lawsuit are blacked out.

The accusations are part of a lawsuit filed by Curtis Brown, who was fired from the department after pleading guilty to a charge of endangering the welfare of a child. Brown was charged with the misdemeanor for renting a hotel for a 15-year-old girl who had run away from home. Brown did not have sexual contact with the girl. His lawsuit accuses other officers of behavior that is as bad or worse. He claims he was fired based on the fact that he is black.

The accusations detailed in Internal Affairs reports and discipline findings that make up part of this lawsuit include: in 1998 an officer was arrested on a charge of driving while intoxicated; he was suspended for 10 days and had to undergo counseling. In 2001 another officer was charged with driving while intoxicated and received the same punishment. In 2001 an officer was cited for using department systems to get information about a citizen for personal reasons; he was suspended for 10 days and received a written reprimand. In 1998 an officer was suspended for four months without pay, received diversity training, was retrained in use of force procedures and was ordered to write a letter of apology for hitting a 12-year-old-girl with a nightstick.

One of the most damning of all is the accusation brought to Internal Affairs by Petina Gibson. She does not remember the name of the officer, whose name is blacked out in the report, but remembers his actions that night clearly.

In 1998, Gibson called the Syracuse police after having a fight with the father of her child, she said. After the fight and before police arrived, Gibson went to her bedroom to change. While she was changing, the officer in question arrived and immediately opened the door to Gibson’s bedroom after being told by her sister that Gibson was changing and would be out soon, Gibson said. In the Internal Affairs report, the officer claims he went to the room because he thought the fight was still going on.

Gibson’s allegations do not stop there. She accuses the officer of repeatedly asking her on dates during the subsequent car ride to the hospital and telling her she was ‘sexy’ and needed to find a good man like himself. Once the two arrived at the hospital, Gibson says the officer came up from behind her, pulled her buttocks into his groin and began ‘tickling’ her between the buttons of her shirt and trying to touch between her legs. Gibson says the officer told her not to tell anyone.

In the Internal Affairs report, the officer claims that he complimented her to boost her self-esteem and to try to persuade her to leave an abusive relationship, and he claims he put his arms around her to comfort her and tickled her ribs to ‘break the tension.’

‘I called him for help,’ Gibson said. ‘And I didn’t get help. I got touchy-feely. Just then I didn’t want to call the police again.’

Gibson claims the officer came to her apartment several times until she was reassured the officer could not patrol her building again. The Internal Affairs investigation says that Gibson’s claims have merit but does not go further.

The officer lost five vacation days, according to Internal Affairs documents obtained in a federal lawsuit.

The common thread through all of these cases is attitude.

Millicent George said one of the most upsetting things about her daughter’s case is the ‘righteous indignation’ with which officers handled the case.

Kerwin sees attitude problems as the No. 1 complaint-causers within the department.

‘A bigger category (than brutality) is cops unable to keep their mouths shut,’ Kerwin said. ‘They are either arrogant, stupid or tired, but that is no excuse.’

It is seen by many as a reality of police work that the Syracuse Police Department is home to a small group of troublesome officers.

‘In any department, you have a minimum of two and a maximum of 10 percent of guys that disobey the rules, act independently and do things they shouldn’t,’ said Hunt, the former Syracuse chief of police. ‘Definitely a percentage of the problem is the (Police Benevolent Association) constantly going to battle for these guys.’

‘The fact of life that is hard to understand,’ Van Blaricom said, ‘is that in any department in the United States, why 98 percent are good guys doing a tough job, but why they let the 2 percent get away with it.’

One of Kerwin’s ‘Hall of Famers’ is an officer who was recently suspended for 30 days for living with a woman with convictions for prostitution and who has been working while off-duty as a bouncer outside of a Syracuse bar while wearing a police sweatshirt. Both are against police regulations. This is the third time the officer has received a 30 day suspension, Kerwin said.

Perhaps the most well-known local case of police impropriety involves another young girl in 1999. The girl, then 12 years old, removed the hands of a relative who was struggling with police from an officer’s throat. Later, a commanding officer ordered that she and other family members be removed from the home while the arrest was being made. The officer, who removed her, James Mullen, struck her several times with his baton, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court. The girl ran away, but the officer chased her and hit her with the baton several more times, the lawsuit claims.

The case attracted wide media attention. Mullen was suspended for four months without pay, received retraining in use of force procedures and diversity training and was ordered to write a letter of apology.

In Hutchinson’s opinion, the girl was simply helping out officers. He said he thinks Mullen should have lost his badge over the case.

Mullen has been implicated in another lawsuit, filed by Edward Griffin-Nolan, that accuses Mullen of unlawfully arresting Griffin-Nolan after he asked for officers’ badge numbers following a forceful arrest in Carousel Mall. Griffin-Nolan was arrested and charged with obstructing government action, a charge that was later dropped.

‘Out of fairness to the (the girl’s family) and Griffin-Nolan, I can’t talk about the cases at this time,’ Mullen said.

Syracuse Common Councilor Stephanie Miner’s dealings with citizen reactions to the police department underscore the hero-villain dynamic. She receives both complaints about aggressive or non-responsive officers as well as praise from citizens throughout the city.

To some, members of the department represent good and justice, but to others they represent fear, the very thing they are supposed to erase.

Curtis Brown said part of the reason he filed the lawsuit was to bring some of the other cases of misconduct to the forefront. He thinks a compromise to help inform the public of misconduct is to have the reports released with officers’ names blacked out.

Van Blaricom, an expert on police procedure, sees two easy solutions to problems of misconduct: an early warning system that tracks citizen complaints and finds patterns, and then a thorough internal investigation.

‘If there is no accountability,’ Van Blaricom said, ‘all policing procedures are for nothing.’

Published on April 27, 2005 at 12:00 pm