STAMFORD - Stamford police have placed a rookie officer on paid leave after he was arrested in Bridgeport on Thursday with heroin in his car, officials and police sources said yesterday.
Stamford and Bridgeport police refused to disclose the allegations against Quinn Fillippino, 28, who has been serving in Stamford since August after graduating from the state police academy in March.
Several Stamford police sources with knowledge of Thursday's arrest said Fillippino was found in Bridgeport with about 30 bags of heroin.
Fillippino, of 128 Swendsen Drive, Monroe, had two prior arrests on his record when the department hired him, police officials said. The charges were dropped in both cases.
Police Chief Brent Larrabee did not respond to phone calls or e-mail messages seeking comment on Fillippino's arrest or prior run-ins with the law. He referred all questions to a department spokesman.
Fillippino is being held on $50,000 bond and will remain on paid leave as the department learns more about the case, said spokesman Lt. Sean Cooney.
He has turned over his gun and badge, Cooney said.
The department could suspend or dismiss Fillippino before his court case is resolved if it decides the allegations are serious enough, Cooney said.
Messages left at Fillippino's listed address in Monroe were not returned.
Bridgeport police released few details of the arrest because the warrant was sealed yesterday, said Lt. James Viadero, a Bridgeport police spokesman.
They would say only that Fillippino was arrested on charges of possession of narcotics with intent to sell outside an apartment complex on Fairfield Avenue.
Police arrested Jeffrey Perachio, 28, of 15 Benedict Road, Monroe, on drug charges in the same incident, Viadero said.
A woman who answered the phone at Perachio's listed address hung up when told a reporter was on the line.
The department knew about Fillippino's arrests when they hired him, Cooney said.
He was arrested on breach of peace charges in Monroe in 2000; those charges were later dropped, Cooney said.
In 2005, Norwalk police charged Fillippino with assault for getting into a fistfight with a professional boxer 'Marvelous' Tarvis Simms.
The two were friends and had a disagreement, Cooney said.
Prosecutors in Norwalk dismissed the charges with the condition that they could reinstate them if either man was arrested again in the following 13 months.
'If someone has an arrest in their background, that's certainly something we'd be concerned about,' Cooney said. 'In days gone by, it would have been an automatic disqualifier.'
But police departments nationwide are finding it more difficult to draw recruits.
The number of qualified recruits in Stamford has dropped nearly 70 percent in the last decade, according to city statistics.
Only 363 qualified recruits took the police exam last year; more than 1,100 took the test in 1996.
Police brass and the city's Police Commission, which makes the final decision on hiring, may have given Fillippino credit for his military service, officials said.
He served two tours in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2005, Cooney said.
Mark Denham, the chairman of the Police Commission, said he did not remember any debate about Fillippino's background during the hiring process.
Candidates who score well on the test submit to two lie detector tests and a background check, Denham said.
Fillippino is scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Bridgeport next month.
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