From Dan Tepfer, CT Post:
City officials have decided to continue fighting to keep a police officer, fired for allegedly using excessive force, off the Police Department.
On Friday, the city filed an appeal with the state Appellate Court of a lower court’s ruling upholding an arbitrator’s order for the city to rehire Officer Michael Stanitis with back pay.
… In October 2020, the city’s Police Commission voted 5 to 2 to fire Officer Stanitis for using excessive force while responding to a loud party complaint at a Colorado Avenue home on Oct. 21, 2017.
The city subsequently agreed to pay $342,000 to a partygoer, Carmelo Mendez, who claimed he was beaten in the face and head by Stanitis with a flashlight as Mendez was held by other officers on the ground.
Full story here.
I don’t know the exact facts of this case as it applies to this employee, however if an arbitration panel ruled to reinstate the officer and a lower court ruling stated the same thing,
I think the city is going to have a hard time with this case. Ultimately this will cost the city and its taxpayers a lot of cash…… Again. The city may end up paying this employee out a bundle of cash in order to keep him off its rolls. I guess we’ll have to see what happens.
Cheers!!
Rich, you are totally rght, the city can’t play by the rules, they lost in arbitration and then in court now where do they go next? Instead of reforming the Bridgeport Police Department (BPD) no, they want to cost the taxpayers of this city in more money for useless cases. This type of mindset with Mayor Ganim, the city council and both the police and civil service commissioners will continue until the voters vote them out of office and that’s happening anytime soon.
Officer Michael Stanitis should have been fired for the brutal beating Mr. Mendez. What’s an affront to all the is right, moral and just is the decision of the arbitrator to give this fool his job back.
The only thing the city did wrong was to bring these white suburban males into Bridgeport with all their bias, animus and racist mindsets into a city that is over 70% non-white. He comes here to brutalize a city resident and then get his job back so that he can again exploit the residents of Bridgeport, but the next time he’ll be damn sure not to do it with a camera in close proximity. Here’s hoping the Appellate Court do what the arbitrator lack the balls to do, rule that he deserved to lose his job!
Don that was the single most bigoted thing you have ever said. The arbitrator and court both saw the evidence that the city presented and showed that it doesn’t display officer Stanitus doing what they allege he did.
For you to single out white suburban males who comes to this city to try and make it a better place is utterly disgusting. Our community in its entirety treats cops like absolute trash, we pay them like trash compared to other municipalities, we give them horrible benefits aside from the pension, and yet they still have to deal with bigots like yourself when they can’t continue to leave for surrounding towns for more money.
I bet if our city actually invested money into the department with state of the art equipment, training, and headquarters it would significantly lower our civil lawsuits. Yet, we are okay with the mayor going to Scotland for whatever BS he wants to justify while the headquarters of your public safety department is a mirror image of a toilet bowl in an abandoned apartment of the former Marina Village.
I can see your bias, your department (fire) never faced this kind of adversity. You were always the cities favorite little spoiled child.
Jo Salling, read what you wrote again because you are making comments that are personnal against Don but you fail to understand what he said. Jo, imagine blacks flooding into Fairfield and being the majority of their police department. Jo, you said, “Our community in its entirety treats cops like absolute trash, we pay them like trash compared to other municipalities, we give them horrible benefits aside from the pension, and yet they still have to deal with bigots like yourself when they can’t continue to leave for surrounding towns for more money.” Jo, you said, “our community” what the hell are you talking about, you are blaming the community instead of the mayor and those in power who can increase their pay and benefits, you said, “I bet if our city actually invested money into the department with state of the art equipment, training, and headquarters it would significantly lower our civil lawsuits,” that’s the responsibility of the mayorand those in power and not the community. Just look at how much time, money and energy has been places in the past5 years in making AJ Perez to be the police chief instead of training the department..Hire Bridgeport residents who support this city.
Thanks Ron. Don, Weren’t there other cops there from all ethnicity’s? Again, I don’t recall all the facts of this case but as you know, each cop is entitled to his or her own separate argument and defense etc. as if each of their actions were a separate incident. I would be more inclined to find out who this particular officer may be related to, or not, OR, were other officers not fired because of their “connections” with city hall or someone from either Suburban Ave or members of the Common Council. I am not discounting what you may be inferring however all angles need to be looked at. Also please understand that I am not looking at this case to find any innocence or guilt I am looking at it strictly as a defense for the particular officer or as a case against him by the city. The city may now be spending more due to what they think is public sentiment rather than what the arbitrators and the lower court have viewed as law.
Cheers!
Jo Salling, the court said the face of the officer couldn’t be clearly seen on the tape so they agreed with the arbitrator decision. The fact is that a lot of suburban white males come to serve in Bridgeport with a attitude that Black’s should be subservient to them because they are police and they are white men! That’s makes me bigoted because I call attention to the obvious?
In courts there is a tendency to believe an officer over a civilian, in terms of credibility,” David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer who co-wrote Prosecuting Misconduct: Law and Litigation, previously told Vox. “And when an officer is on trial, reasonable doubt has a lot of bite. Is that because he’s a white cop or because of white privilege? I guess that makes me a bigot as well?
Finally you say the BFD was the golden child of city government is more mindless dribble. We had to sue to get on the Fire Department, sue for hiring and sue for promotions! The BFD was the last bastion of overt discrimination and racism in city government, one that we fought every day for over twenty years to level the playing field for people of color. Not only did we have to fight the racist Fire Chief’s, racists officers and the racist Fire union Local 834. Why is it that some of you white people refuse to see racism like it’s an indictment of your character instead of just that one bigot? Fortunately I was able to see both the Police and Fire Department’s when every one of those were Bridgeport residents and they were better Department’s because both had a stake in this city, lived in this city, had family in this city and paid taxes to this city. Jo Salling, that don’t make me a bigot that makes me prejudice because I think that ALL Bridgeport Police and Fire Department employees should be Bridgeport residents and not suburbanites.
You don’t have to live here to have pride about working here. Maybe if the community pressured city hall to actually take care of their employees, the employees would in return be prideful to work here. Apparently no other big city has an issue except Bridgeport. Even the Bridgeport residents that do get on the job leave. I wonder why, because even as residents they get treated better elsewhere.
Jo Salling, If one had pride in working in the city one wouldn’t beat the hell out of the very residents that pay his salary. Just imagine if he worked in Fairfield or Westport do you think for one second he would still be a cop for beating the hell out of a white person with a flash light? He’s the only cop on scene that used his flash light to hit someone, but because his face wasn’t clear on the video he’s allowed the opportunity to come back to try it again. If this makes me a bigot for calling attention to the hypocrisy of this decision, then I’m a bigot!
Jo, while I won’t say it was Comrade Don’s most “biased” statement he ever said, although it is always ubiquitous and this no exception, just a little more subtle. Very rarely does he miss an opportunity to convey his white racism/privilege POV
His reply to your comment regarding his” bias” is minuscule in subtleness than his original comment regarding the post. When he differentiates and scrutinizes white and black relations, particularly white suburbanites becoming cops, with their privileged servitude mindset of blacks, who works in the Port, policing its black residents that are among that 70% minority group.
Considering there wasn’t any black victim in this incident that that was so-called brutalized. In fact, in this first statement regarding those white privilege/racism suburbanite cups, he didn’t bother to express the race of the victim which would be Latino but instead characterized him as a city resident, or no connotation of servitude indentureship. Even though he will stress that point when he expresses when the victim was black at the hands of those white racist Suburbanite police officers.
To be fair though, somebody knocked that Latino dude in the head with a blunt object, and apparently, no one is going to be held accountable for such actions by the perpetrator (officer) and the loss of their employment, based on the subjective evidence and one’s interpretation of it. If the city loses its appeal to dismiss this officer who the commission found to have been the perpetration.
But Don also has to remember or fails to respond to the fact there were over a dozen cops majority Black and Latino who lied in their police reports regarding the incident in question and the action of those white racist suburbanites in an attempt to mitigate the situation in question. Which one can say is a feasible, fireable offense of their own. To quote MLK
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
PS At least you, Jo, have come to the realization there are a significant number of civil lawsuits against cops where corruption is at play where state-of-the-art equipment training and such can contribute to lowering those lawsuits because they’re not just baseless. However, firing and holding cops accountable for their inappropriate disproportionate abusive behavior while conducting their duties as police officers will also significantly lower civil lawsuits of such actions.
BTY Let’s not forget all these civil lawsuits is money that could be re-invested in what is allocated elsewhere like on the thing you aforementioned are not doing their job properly.
In my humble opinion, you and Don both have your own subtle bias/angel on this thread. Clearly, there is no lost love for Joe and his administration that seems to be your focal point. I’ll even add Rich into the mix, being a cop and not a fan of Joe G because there is an unambiguous fact, that dude got knocked up in the F-ing head with a flashlight by a cop. Allegedly. SMH JS