Chief: McNeil
violated order and kept relationship with criminal
By Dave Rogers Staff
Writer
SALISBURY — A
recently completed internal investigation concluded that Salisbury police
officer Daniel McNeil, on paid administrative leave since April, violated two
department rules including maintaining a relationship with a local drug dealer.
The investigation,
conducted by police Chief Thomas Fowler and released yesterday upon the request
of The Daily News, also stated that McNeil blatantly disregarded Fowler’s
direct order to terminate all contact with the known criminal.
Yesterday, Fowler
announced McNeil would be suspended for five days without pay (July, 1, 2, 3, 6
and 7) and would take some accrued time off. Fowler did not say when or if
McNeil would return for duty.
“I would like to
think this is an example of me holding officers accountable for their actions,”
Fowler said yesterday, adding that he would not allow the conduct of one
officer to “tarnish the good work officers do here every day.”
Suspending McNeil
for five days and his subsequent decision to take advantage of accrued time off
saves the town, for now, from having to make the potentially litigious decision
to fire him outright. Such a decision to fire officer Mark Thomas in February
2012 resulted in Thomas suing the town and Fowler earlier this year and seeking
nearly $1 million compensation.
Thomas, 47, was
fired on Feb. 3, 2012, after allegations against him arose in January 2011
during an investigation into now-retired Salisbury police Chief David
L’Esperance. Thomas successfully appealed Town Manager Neil Harrington’s
decision to fire him and was reinstated before the end of 2012.
Harrington could
not be reached for comment in time for this report.
The drug dealer,
Rachel DiGenova, was arrested in April after selling $90 worth of heroin to an
undercover police officer at the Mobil on the Run parking lot. At the same
time, police raided her Lena Mae Way home where she had been dealing drugs and
arrested her boyfriend, Peter Moughan. Last month, DiGenova pleaded guilty to
numerous drug charges and was sentenced to two years in jail with all but six
months suspended for two years while on probation. Moughan also pleaded guilty
to drug charges and was sentenced to a year in jail with all jail time
suspended for 18 months while on probation.
The arrests of DiGenova and Moughan was the culmination
of a lengthy investigation. Making matters more complicated was the
relationship between DiGenova and McNeil, who had maintained contact during the
investigation. A search of DiGenova’s cellphone after her arrest showed that
the two were exchanging text messages.
“It was noticed during this research that there were over
100 text messages between her phone and the phone number Officer McNeil had
listed as his phone number when the department needed to contact him,” Fowler’s
report read.
This contact flew in the face of Fowler’s direct order,
issued during an August 2013 meeting with McNeil, that he sever all ties to
DiGenova. According to the report, McNeil had been reprimanded in December 2011
by then-police Chief Richard Merrill Jr., after he found out McNeil had been
associating with DiGenova.
As a result of that incident and other questionable
conduct, Fowler decided to bypass McNeil for promotion to sergeant and instead
appointed officer Timothy Hunter. McNeil had at one point been named an acting
sergeant.
Feeling Fowler’s decision was unfair, McNeil appealed the
decision to the Civil Service bureau and was given a bypass hearing date of
June 2013. It was at that June 2013 meeting that Fowler became suspicious that
McNeil was continuing a relationship with DiGenova after McNeil brought her to
the meeting as a character witness.
At the conclusion of his August 2013 meeting, “Officer
McNeil acknowledged in writing, that I gave him a direct order not to associate
with Rachael DiGenova or anyone else fitting the description of rule 4.05 of
the Salisbury Police Department’s Rules and Regulations,” Fowler wrote in his
report.
By March 2014, rumors began circulating within the
department that McNeil and DiGenova were maintaining contact, a clear violation
of Fowler’s order. It was around that time that DiGenova became the subject of
an intense narcotics investigation. Upon the discovery of text messages from
McNeil on DiGenova’s phone, Fowler placed McNeil on paid administrative leave,
pending the completion of an internal investigation.
Just prior to Fowler’s decision, McNeil admitted he still
texted DiGenova. At the conclusion of the meeting, Fowler ordered McNeil to
provide him with his cellphone records from Jan. 1 to April 7, 2014.
“From the time period requested, there were no less than
594 documented text messages between Officer McNeil’s cellphone number and
Rachael DiGenova’s cellphone number. Many of these conversations took place
while Officer McNeil was on duty and some conversations spanned several
