Thursday, October 9, 2008 6:09 AM EDT
By Mark Zaretsky, Register Staff
EAST HAVEN — A new hearing on charges of alleged wrongdoing by Chief of Police Leonard Gallo will be held, but Gallo won’t be served a notice of charges and nothing will happen until after Oct. 31, Mayor April Capone Almon said.
A previous “pre-termination hearing” that opened Sept. 24, with Gallo refusing to attend, did not resume as scheduled Friday after Gallo’s lawyer informed Capone Almon that Gallo would be out of state.
Instead, the town “agreed that notice of charges will be reserved following Oct. 31, with a statutory hearing date to be set thereafter for a date in compliance with state statutes,” according to a statement sent out by the mayor’s office.
“It’s going to be another hearing” but “nothing public will be happening” until Oct. 31 “and it won’t be served before then,” Capone Almon said later.
Gallo’s lawyer, Frank Kolb, said Monday nothing is happening before Oct. 31 due to “scheduling issues,” and that parties involved, including himself, are unavailable at certain times.
In addition, “there are notice provisions” under state law “which they are trying to comply with – which is a good thing,” he said.
“They have to serve the notice before anything can happen from our end,” Kolb said.
The charges in the previous hearing, which Capone Almon read when it began on Sept. 24, included that Gallo violated both town policy and a state law concerning the retention of public records and that violating the state law represented “commission of a Class A misdemeanor.”
All are related to Gallo’s admission at an Aug. 22 Board of Police Commissioners grievance hearing that he “couldn’t be 100 percent sure” that he didn’t violate the state’s records retention law when he removed disciplinary documents from the files of several officers.
Gallo has termed the administration’s actions “total overreaction,” “a political witch hunt” and “a political vendetta with public funds.” He has said that anything he did “was what I felt was proper and in agreement” with the union. Kolb has said that “if any records were removed, that was a pre-determined, pre-negotiated union deal.”
Chief Gallo, a onetime New Haven police captain, marked his 10th anniversary as East Haven’s chief in June. The job pays about $87,000 a year.
Capone Almon and Director of Administration and Management Paul Hongo Jr., who acts as the town’s labor relations director, on Sept. 2 removed the Police Department’s personnel records from Gallo’s office and impounded them in Town Hall.
That followed a grievance hearing the previous week in which Sgt. Paul Liquori and a union lawyer charged that Gallo removed items of discipline from some officers’ files, but not Liquori’s. The Board of Police Commissioners upheld the grievance and ordered a letter of reprimand in Liquori’s file removed, and that it be done in accordance with state law.
Hongo and Capone Almon have said the state’s records retention law, which requires that most town records be kept for five years and others longer, is separate from anything that might be negotiated with the union.
Mark Zaretsky can be reached at mzaretsky@nhregister.com or 789-5722.
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