Conn. Officer Accidentally Shoots Self in Restaurant


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.