City insists 2 cops are fired, not retired

04/14/2007

William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — Police Lt. William White is still fired. That was the city administration’s position Friday after a vote by the Police and Fireman’s Pension Board making his pension retroactive raised a question about whether his firing still stood.

"The position of the city is that the Board of Police Commissioners is the hiring and the firing authority, that on April 4 Billy White was an employee of New Haven and was properly brought up on charges and properly terminated," said Emmet P. Hibson Jr., the city’s director or labor relations.

That the pension board made his benefits retroactive to March 15, three weeks prior, doesn’t change the city’s belief, he said.

The city’s handling of the whole situation has the police union fuming, however, with Sgt. Louis G. Cavaliere, the union president, charging that the administration manipulated the system — in violation of past practice and the union contract — to get a pound of flesh from two cops who were arrested on federal corruption charges.

White, 63, and Detective Justen Kasperzyk, 34, were arrested March 13 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after an eight-month corruption investigation.

By firing the officers, the city says it won’t have to pay the two tens of thousands of dollars each in lump-sum payouts. Equally important, the administration has said, is the two won’t have the right to call themselves retired city cops.

By contract, White remains eligible for a $91,000-a-year pension.

The pension board granted "age annuity" and disability pensions to White Thursday, making them retroactive to March 15. The pension board tabled Kasperzyk’s petition for a disability pension. A 12-year veteran, Kasperzyk had too few years on the job for an age annuity pension.

The vote prompted the city to criticize the pension board for trying to "usurp" its authority to fire White, an assertion refuted by Fire Department Lt. James Kottage, a union representative who serves as chairman of the pension board of trustees. The board’s only goal, he said, was to impartially uphold its duties based on past practice and its rules and regulations.

Historically, when an officer retires, he chooses the effective date and payroll stops paychecks. Later, when the pension board meets, it votes to make pension benefits retroactive.

It unfolded differently this time and that’s what has Cavaliere up in arms.

Though both White and Kasperzyk listed immediate effective dates on their pension paperwork, which they submitted within days of their arrests, the city kept them on paid administrative leave until their April 4 termination — hearing even after Hibson professed initial outrage that the two were on paid leave, Cavaliere said.

Kasperzyk and White, on union advice, refused their paychecks.

Cavaliere characterized that as a back-door maneuver by the city to show the public it is taking a strong stand against police corruption.

He condemned Hibson for what Cavaliere characterized as an "unethical, dirty pool, low-lying position that he took to try to purposely screw Billy (White)."

While the union certainly doesn’t condone corruption, Cavaliere said there’s a presumption of innocence, and a history in the city of allowing employees facing criminal prosecution to retire and collect their contractual benefits.

Mayor John DeStefano Jr., who always has been a supporter of labor rights and received union support as a result, chose to abandon that stance to achieve a political goal, Cavaliere said.

DeStefano said he’s always been supportive of the contract and the police department but the city also has to support the role of the Board of Police Commissioners as the department’s hiring and firing body.

While other arrested employees have been permitted to retire, a glimpse of alleged theft and bribe taking detailed in the FBI affidavit made this different, he said.

"As far as who took a pound of flesh from whom, Justen Kasperzyk and Billy White took a pound of flesh from the credibility of this department and quite frankly I think that this is pound of flesh we should all be worried about," he said.