Frank
Juliano and Michael P. Mayko
Bridgeport Officer Juan Santiago discharged a gun in a
crowded restaurant, shooting himself in the leg.
BRIDGEPORT,
Conn. -- The veteran police officer who discharged a gun in a crowded restaurant
Tuesday, shooting himself in the leg and blowing a bowling ball-sized hole
through a nearby window, has been released from St. Vincent's Medical Center
and placed on paid sick leave.
But Juan
Santiago, the 55-year-old officer who heads the department's Police Hispanic
Society, faces no criminal charges, nor does he face any violation of
department rules and regulations, which has caused community activists to claim
police use double standards to protect their own.
"This
doesn't surprise me," said James Griffin, the city's former veterans'
affairs administrator who now heads the Waterbury Center for Economic and
Social Justice. "It's just another example of police covering for
police."
Griffin, who
once served as statewide NAACP president, said Police Chief Joseph Gaudett
should have taken immediate action, even if it was just placing Santiago on
administrative leave.
"Anybody
other than a cop would be in big, big trouble," he said.
Lyle Hassan
Jones, who has led marches against gun violence in Bridgeport as the head of
Save Our Babies, agreed with Griffin.
"How
can he not be charged with unlawful discharge or reckless endangerment?"
Jones asked. "That's what would happen to you or me. That gun going off
had to scare the customers to death. You think if I fired it I'd be walking out
of that restaurant scot-free?"
But Jeff
Matchett, executive director of AFSCME Council 15 of the Connecticut Council of
Police -- the union that represents 4,000 police officers from more than 60
state communities -- maintained that firing a gun accidentally inside a
restaurant would not result in an on-site arrest.
"That's
not how I'd handle it, whether it was you, a cop or anyone," said
Matchett, a retired Milford police officer. "I'd trace the gun, make sure
the owner had a permit, interview witnesses."
Once that
was completed, Matchett said he'd apply to the court for an arrest warrant
before taking the person into custody.
"Oh, is
that right?," countered John R. Williams, a veteran New Haven civil rights
and criminal defense lawyer. "Try telling that to the president of the New
Haven County Bar who was arrested last summer at a movie theater for having a
gun that he had a permit for."
Williams
said Santiago's actions represent "a classic case of reckless endangerment
... people's lives were put at risk. If he wasn't wearing a badge, he'd have
been arrested."
Nearly a
dozen police cruisers -- with their sirens screaming, strobe lights flashing
and tires squealing -- skidded to a stop outside the Bagel King restaurant on
upper Main Street around 9 a.m. Tuesday on reports that a police officer was
down.
Inside,
Santiago was bleeding from the leg. Shards of glass from the shattered window
lay on the ground.
Moments
earlier, Santiago was sitting at a table with Det. Juan Gonzalez. Gonzalez had
placed a borrowed .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol atop the table with the
intention of returning it to its owner, a local doctor.