3 Cops Arrested; Witnesses Recall Gunshots
Witnesses who heard gunshots at 2:37 a.m. at Christopher Martin’s pub had no idea that the ruckus allegedly came from off-duty cops—cops who surrendered for arrest Friday.
Witnesses told their stories Friday afternoon after three officers turned themselves for their roles in an alleged fusillade five days earlier outside the Upper State Street restaurant and pub—and the city sent an “unprecedented” message about police behavior, in the view of one police critic.
Two of the three officers—Charles Kim and Lawrence Burns II—were charged with interfering with a police officer, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and reckless endangerment in the first degree. They allegedly shot their department weapons into the air outside the nightspot at Clark and State while off-duty early Sunday morning.
A third officer, Krzystof Ruszczyk, who was with them at the time but didn’t fire his gun, was charged with interfering with a police officer.
The charges are all misdemeanors.
The interfering charge stems from an allegation that all three left the scene after being ordered to stay there by an officer.
All three officers are members of the police academy’s 2008 graduating class. Kim was the class leader.
Police don’t believe Kim and Burns were shooting at anyone. Rather, according to one person familiar with the case, the two were “just drunk and let loose behind the building.” Department brass placed the officers on administrative leave following the incident last Sunday; they had to turn in their weapons.
“These arrests are unprecedented and extraordinary given the swiftness of the action taken against these officers,” said defense lawyer Michael Jefferson, a longtime critic of the department. “I’m sure additional facts will come to light that strongly support the action taken. As a taxpayer, I think it’s critical to hold public servants accountable, particularly those that can take your life and liberty and more often than not get away with it.”
Pow, Pow, Pow, Pow, Pow, Pow
Two witnesses said they had no idea that the rowdy behavior they observed allegedly came from sworn police officers.
Tarese Scruggs said he left his girlfriend’s Lawrence Street house at 2:18 a.m. Sunday when the pair ran out of smokes. He was looking to buy a loose cigarette from someone who might be leaving a bar. He started walking on State Street toward downtown.
When he walked past Modern Apizza, past the parking lot shared with Christopher Martin’s at 860 State St., he stopped in his tracks.
“I hear pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow,” Scruggs, 38, said in an interview Friday. There were six to eight shots, he reckoned.
I ran in the first doorway that I seen,” he said—the front entrance to the closed pizza store.
“I dove back there,” he said. On the way in, he scraped his left shoulder on the brick.
The gunshots “was so close. I was so scared,” Scruggs recalled.
He said he peeked out, looking for a drive-by shooter. Seeing none, he emerged. His girlfriend, Delorise MacFadden, who’s also 38, showed up to the scene shortly after. He had her check his body for bullet wounds. All she found was a scrape on his shoulder (pictured in photo at the top of this story) from the brick.
Scruggs said when he and MacFadden walked past Christopher Martin’s and stepped into Clark Street, they saw three men hanging out the pub’s Clark Street patio (pictured). One of the men fired another gunshot, just 50 feet away from them, Scruggs said. He said he plainly saw the shooter.
Scruggs and MacFadden claimed the man pointed his gun right at them before shooting. (That last part, unlike much of the rest of the story, has not been independently corroborated.)
Soon after, Scruggs flagged down a cop and pointed out the alleged shooter.
“That’s him right now! They shot at us and they’re right there!” Scruggs said he told the cop.
“I wanted to press charges right there. I was so scared.”
“Relax—we know who they are. We’ll get them,” the cop replied to him, according to Scruggs. Scruggs said he saw the shooter take off in a yellow Chevy Camaro, while his two friends left later in a black truck.
He said he was outraged the cops didn’t do more: “If it was us, we would’ve been on the ground until he checked us out,” Scruggs said.
Police officials had no comment on most specifics of the incident. But they said the three off-duty officers did receive an order to stay at the scene, and ignored it.
Scruggs and MacFadden stuck around and talked to the cops. Then they went home without any cigarettes.
“We decided not to press charges because we thought they were regular college kids” acting stupid, Scruggs said.
He also subsequently gave a statement at the police station to Detective Tammi Means as part of an internal investigation.
Early Sunday morning, he found out on the TV news that the alleged shooters were cops.
Scruggs was “infuriated.”
“There’s no way we should have to be afraid of New Haven police department officers who are supposed to protect us,” Scruggs said.
He said he thinks the off-duty officers got special treatment when on-duty cops allowed them to leave the scene. A black civilian would have been thrown in jail, he argued.
Scruggs said when he committed an assault and robbery in 1998, cops locked him up when he was picked out of a photo lineup—before any charges were made. He ended up with a 10-year conviction.
“I paid,” he said.
He said he wants to see tougher charges for the offending cops.
Back at Christopher Martin’s, Chris Garaffa was biting into a Cajun chicken sandwich and drinking a beer Friday afternoon when he heard the news from a passing reporter that the cops had been arrested.
“Finally,” he said.
Garaffa, who lives directly above the pub, said he was at home Sunday morning around 2:30.
“I heard five loud bangs,” he said. The bangs were quick; they lasted just a few seconds. Then he heard male voices outside.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” said one voice.
“You scared the shit out of me,” said another.
“I figured it was drunk people,” Garaffa said. “I didn’t think it was gunshots. It didn’t cross my mind out here,” in East Rock.
Garaffa looked out the window and saw cop cars around 3 a.m. He didn’t piece together the story until he read about it in the news.
“It’s about time,” he said when he heard about Friday’s arrests. “They should’ve been arrested as soon as they found out who it was.”
Firing shots into the air is dangerous, Garaffa said. “Who knows where the lead is going to come down.”
No Tolerance
Mayor John DeStefano called the arrests are evidence of firm policy against police misbehavior.
“The chief’s expectations are clear,” DeStefano said in an interview Friday. “More importantly, I think citizens need to know that this kind of behavior of firing weapons is not tolerable in a city that has experienced more than its share of gunfire.”
“This is a very unfortunate event. How can anyone, a cop or not, think it’s OK to be shooting a weapon in the middle of a major thoroughfare?” remarked Board of Aldermen President Jorge Perez. “It’s unfortunate that we find ourselves here. The city is doing what it needs to do” to let people now it’s now tolerable.
The arrests followed a swift internal affairs investigation, as well as repeated comments by Chief Dean Esserman to the press and to cops at line-up and this week’s regular CompStat crime-data meeting that he intended to take this case very, very seriously. Internal affairs probes have traditionally taken months or longer in New Haven; some have quietly disappeared without follow-up or public comment despite hard evidence.
Since taking over the department four months ago, Esserman has vowed to restore community policing in New Haven, with public trust in the cops a bedrock of the program.
The officers were released after turning themselves in Friday. They have an April 20 court date for arraignment.
Esserman declined comment Friday.
The swift action against the three officers offers a dramatic contrast to the city’s eventual handling of another case involving officer misbehavior. That one involved a rookie cop, Jason Bandy (also class of 2008), who in 2009 called in sick to work and then went out drinking at the Center Street Lounge. There he got drunk, urinated on the bathroom floor, and refused to leave when staff tried to evict him, police said. Then-Chief James Lewis successfully moved to fire him. Then Lewis left town, and City Hall got him his job back.
Return To Christopher Martin’s
For Officer Kim, the Christopher Martin’s episode contained an ironic turn of events.
On a Wednesday last September, Kim was on duty shortly before 3:30 a.m. when he responded to a burglar alarm at Christopher Martin’s. He arrived to find a man with a hammer, knife, and 2-foot metal bar outside the dining room door. Kim saw that a portion of the door frame had been detached. Kim arrested the man, whom he found had been trying to break in.
Now Kim, who graduated from the police academy in December 2008, himself could be in some trouble.
Click here to read about a cultural event Kim and other Korean-American officers held at Lincoln-Bassett School last November; and here to read about a baseball outing with neighborhood teens in which he and other Newhallville cops participated.
Had enough? Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America. Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent DOJ office on Police Misconduct.