Jury deliberating on motive for cop’s suspension

By William Kaempffer
Published: Friday, December 9, 2005 3:00 AM EST

NEW HAVEN — Why Arpad Tolnay was suspended depends on whose lawyer you believe.

According to his attorney, the city police officer was put through hell after his chief threw him to the wolves to appease a political constituency and then suspended him for daring to speak out about it.

But ask the attorney for former Police Chief Melvin Wearing, whom Tolnay sued, and he’ll say that’s bunk.

Tolnay was suspended for one reason: He mouthed off to the police chief and stormed out of an August 2002 meeting.

"The case is about the facts, and the facts indicate this officer was suspended for an unprecedented act of insubordination," attorney Robert A. Rhodes told a federal jury hearing the case.

The jury deliberated for about an hour Thursday without reaching a verdict in a lawsuit that claims that Wearing violated Tolnay’s First Amendment right when he suspended the officer for 10 days for speaking out against what he perceived as improper political interference in the arrest of two ministers.

Jurors will resume deliberations today, weather permitting.

In closing arguments, both lawyers made impassioned pleas. Rhodes told the jury that Tolnay has no one to blame but himself for his suspension and asked the jury to not buy into the "rumors of political intrigue and connections."

"If you don’t want to be disciplined, don’t walk out on a meeting with the boss," Rhodes said.

Karen Torre, Tolnay’s lawyer, in contrast, described the ordeal in 2002 as a "disgraceful political episode" in which a good cop was sacrificed so Mayor John DeStefano Jr. could pander to two vote-generating ministers who thought they were above the law.

According to Torre, Wearing was bent on suspending Tolnay at the August meeting, because Tolnay had expressed his belief that politics had infiltrated the case.

After serving a 10-day suspension, Tolnay sued Wearing for violating his civil rights.

Tolnay was one of the officers who arrested the Revs. Armando Hernandez and Daniel Rodriguez July 26, 2002, after a noise complaint about a loud revival service at the Second Star of Jacob Church.

The situation escalated when Hernandez refused to lower the music, and he incited a large hostile crowd of parishioners who surrounded Tolnay and a second officer, according to testimony.

Hernandez was given a summons for breach of peace. Rodriguez was arrested for interfering with police when he showed up after the fact and demanded to go to jail also.

The arrests created a political firestorm. The ministers planned a mass march on police headquarters, and days after the arrests, DeStefano went to the church and apologized for the incident.

Wearing went to court to meet with a prosecutor to express concerns about the case. After the meeting, the prosecutor dropped the charges.