Jennifer Gondola’s Police Footage

It’s been a wild 10 days for Bridgeport city employee Jennifer Gondola who made news after New Haven cops confiscated her phone after she filmed a police arrest. Our friends at the New Haven Independent report the latest.

Jennifer Gondola began Wednesday in state court, proceeded to a meeting with the FBI, then went home with her iPhone4—containing a video that has become the talk of the town and key evidence in two investigations.

Those were the latest developments in the multi-stage drama growing out of Gondola’s controversial arrest in downtown New Haven’s Temple Street courtyard in the wee hours of June 2.

Gondola (pictured at top), who’s 35 and from Ansonia, appeared in state Superior Court on Elm Street Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of “interfering” with police at around 1:55 a.m. that day as nightclubs were letting out and police responded to the usual mayhem. She was recording an arrest and alleged roughing up of a 24-year-old man when the police sergeant in charge of the downtown bar detail, Chris Rubino, ordered her to turn over her iPhone4 camera. She refused and placed the iPhone in her bra. Then Rubino ordered another cop to grab the camera out of her bra and ordered Gondola under arrest.

That encounter is now the subject of an internal affairs complaint at the New Haven police department, which two years ago instituted a strict policy against officers stopping citizens from video-recording them or arresting them for “interfering.” (Click on the play arrow above to watch the video, which the Independent obtained Tuesday.) It also sparked an FBI civil-rights investigation into the arrest that Gondola witnessed and partly video-recorded. She and her attorney, Diane Polan, spoke for about an hour with one federal agent, Dave Cannell, and New Haven Internal Affairs Detectives Craig Dixon and Tammi Means in the offices of the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Church Street.

Before that, Gondola had to deal with her misdemeanor charge at the courthouse a block up the street. There, state Judge Bruce Thompson agreed to continue her case until July 13 at the request of Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo.

“The state is going to need some time to look at further evidence and research into the” law on confiscating cameras, Strollo told the judge. He refused to discuss the matter afterward.

Gondola’s attorney, Polan, did speak to reporters.

She said she intends to press for a dismissal of the charges or else take the case to trial. She said Rubino had no right to take Gondola’s phone.

“This is a clear violation of the department’s policy” on recording cops, Polan said. (Read a story about the policy here.)

She questioned Rubino’s argument that he needed the video as crucial evidence to support a misdemeanor charge against the man he was arresting at the time. Polan noted that other people in the plaza had been recording the arrest. The others stopped recording when police asked them to; only Gondola kept recording, after the arrestee was already in handcuffs and as members of the crowd accused cops of using excessive force (including stomping on his head).

In any case, Rubino’s rationale, if embraced by the state, would put all news reporters in jeopardy. “This would allow the police to grab the video cameras and the still cameras of the press,” she said. If “any member of the media is filming anything that might involve a crime,” cops could “shortcut the legal process and the legal protections everyone has in the name of protecting evidence.”

Read more here.