Police chief meets with union over disciplinary issue

07/04/2006

Mark Zaretsky , Register Staff

EAST HAVEN — Police Chief Leonard Gallo met with union President Troy Raccuia recently because Raccuia refused to identify a police officer who allegedly was "counseled" by a superior for falling asleep more than once on the job. The episode came up during the course of the recent disciplinary action in which former Police Officer Bob Nappe was fired from his part-time supernumerary job for allegedly napping during an extra-duty road job.

Gallo said he took no disciplinary action against Raccuia for his refusal to name the second officer.

The chief promised, however, to "take a strong look at these matters" and said officers can expect closer supervision and scrutiny of extra-duty assignments.

"You can expect additional checks by ranking supervisors on these jobs as a direct result of this," he said.

He also said that, one way or another, he would find out who’s been sleeping on the job.

"It’s not their job" to dig up that information, he said of the union, "but it is mine, and I’m going to find out if someone" is falling asleep when they’re supposed to be working.

The officer whose name Raccuia refused to give up allegedly fell asleep during regular shifts, not on extra-duty jobs.

"We just flatly refused to give him any information. It’s up to him what he’s going to do about it," said Raccuia, a police detective who was joined in the meeting by a union lawyer. Gallo also had a lawyer present, he said.

"If they want to" take disciplinary action, "let them," Raccuia said.

But "in my opinion, it’s not going to happen because it was part of a disciplinary hearing," which is over, he said. "As far as I’m concerned, the meeting ... pretty much ended the issue."

Gallo did not say that he absolutely won’t discipline Raccuia.

But when asked if he believes he ought to take action against an officer who disobeys an order from the chief, he said, "I did not give him a direct order" and Raccuia "certainly wasn’t impertinent. He certainly wasn’t disrespectful. I personally like Troy very much," Gallo said.

But Gallo and Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. both took issue with Raccuia’s contention during the June 13 hearing that the union, which is in charge of extra-duty assignments, disciplined Nappe by taking him off the overtime list for two weeks.

"The union does not discipline. They’ve never disciplined. They don’t have anything to do with discipline," said Gallo. The union "is strictly for representing its members," he said.

Maturo said Gallo "is trying to investigate that there’s been disciplinary problems in the past and they haven’t taken it upon themselves to tell the chief. It sounds like we’ve got a rogue part of the union over there."

It would be a violation of the town charter for the union to discipline officers because that’s the chief’s function, Maturo said.

Raccuia said "it’s more like corrective action — because we do distribute overtime. We wrote the (standard procedure) for overtime distribution," he said.

"I think what they do is ‘overtime sanctions,’" said Gallo. "I maintained all along that what they’re doing is just fair and equitable distribution of overtime.

While Nappe was fired from his supernumerary job, he has a lawsuit pending that seeks reinstatement to his full-time job.

Nappe retired after the Board of Police Commissioners denied his request for a one-year leave of absence to train Iraqi police officers.

Mark Zaretsky can be reached at mzaretsky@nhregister.com or 789-5722.