Camera-Grab Arrest
Headed For Jury Trial
In what a defense attorney called a “sad day” for the court system, the
state has decided to proceed with a case against a woman arrested for
“interfering” with a cop who had a cellphone camera removed from her bra after
she refused to hand it over to him.
Police charged the woman, Jennifer Gondola of Ansonia, on the Temple
Street courtyard shortly before 2 a.m. on June 4 as she and others in a crowd
watched and recorded cops arresting an unruly man leaving a bar.
Her arrest is the subject of an ongoing
police internal investigation into whether the officer in charge, Sgt. Chris
Rubino, violated department policy on the rights of citizens to
photograph police and whether he used unreasonable force against the detained
man. Rubino told
the Independent he did nothing wrong; he said he was acting to
preserve crucial evidence in a criminal case, the video footage Gondola
recorded.
On Thursday the prosecutor, Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo,
offered to have the case indefinitely continued pending the outcome of the
police internal investigation against Sgt. Rubino, according to Gondola’s
lawyer, Diane Polan.
Polan said she rejected that offer, which she called outrageous. She
entered a not guilty plea Thursday on Gondola’s behalf.
So the state’s case against Gondola now proceeds to a jury trial.
Gondola has a Sept. 6 pre-trial court date scheduled before Judge William
Holden.
“It is a sad day when prosecutors are defending the unlawful actions of
police officers,” Polan said. “I’m really disappointed that [the prosecutor]
can’t do the right thing here.”
Asked about the decision to continue with Gondola’s prosecution, New
Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington Friday declined comment.
He said he would not discuss the merits of the case outside the
courtroom.
“There’s a rule of ethics—3.6,” he said. “I can only discuss procedural
matters. You can’t try it in the press.”
The 1998 arrest stemmed from a party on Lynwood Place. An anonymous
noise complaint had come in. Rubino showed up to address to find a loud party.
He knocked on the door. A partygoer saw him and “laughed at him and would not
let him in,” according to memorandum about the incident written by then-Chief
Mel Wearing. “[U]ltimately someone else let the officers in through another door,”
according to Wearing. But Rubino wasn’t satisfied. He “singled out the
non-compliant partygoer (who is not and apparently was not even believed to be
the owner or renter of the premises) and arrested him for Disorderly Conduct.”
Rubino’s explanation, backed up by the police union: “[T]he partygoer
became the actor responsible for the noise by not allowing the officers into
the building.”
Wearing and four other supervisors concluded no probable cause existed
for arrest.
“The arrest of this person ... cannot, by any stretch of the
imagination, be construed as anything other than a FALSE ARREST MADE WITHOUT
PROBABLE CAUSE,” wrote then-Capt. Bryan Kearney. “The lingering, nagging
question here is whether Officer Rubino really acted with good faith and intentions
while enforcing a known statute (in his belief) which was violated, or if he
was imposing punitive sanctions against [the arrestee] because the officer’s
‘feelings were hurt’ by the arrestee’s perceived actions. What is clear is that
the law and the power of our office cannot be precariously employed, or
utilized for vindictive purposes.”
Wrote then-Chief Wearing: “The law clearly provides that a warrantless
entry must be predicated upon exigent circumstances; as a routine noise
complaint does not give rise to exigent circumstances, those attending the
party had the right to refuse Officer Rubino’s access to the premises until he
returned with a warrant,” Wearing wrote. “The fact that Officer Rubino
continues to justify his conduct in this matter as lawful, in the face of
contrary feedback from such an array of supervisors, is especially troublesome.
To me, it manifests either a fundamental misunderstanding of legal standards or
an unwillingness to abide by them.”
The state’s attorney’s office drew the same conclusion, dropping the
charges against the arrestee.