Edward Griffin-Nolan grew uneasy as he watched a Syracuse police officer lift a young Hispanic boy up by his shirt collar and smash his head into a concrete pillar during an arrest in a crowded Carousel Center last December.

An hour later, the officer returned to Griffin-Nolan’s massage kiosk to ask if he planned to file a complaint. When Griffin-Nolan wouldn’t give a definite answer, officers arrested him, too.

‘There was no reason those officers needed to use that much force with that young boy,’ said Griffin-Nolan, who owns The Art of Massage in Marshall Square Mall. ‘They were over the top and out of control.’

Officers charged Griffin-Nolan with obstructing government administration, a charge that was dropped a month later. During the next 18 months, though, Griffin-Nolan’s experience would expose him to the operations of a police department that many critics say is unaccountable for its actions and dominated by a culture of secrecy that shelters officers from the fear of repercussion.

Recent events have also shed light on the department’s problems. On March 27, former Police Chief Steve Thompson resigned after being charged with driving while intoxicated when his car grazed a biker in Geddes. That same day, police officers forcefully arrested Syracuse University football player Eugene Brown on Marshall Street, and many students who saw the arrest questioned the tactics the officers used.

For two months, a team of SU journalists has investigated the policies and practices within the Syracuse Police Department and found that:

The number of black officers in the department is disproportionate to a city with a 25 percent black population. The few minority and female officers in the department rarely receive promotions but continue to work in an atmosphere of racism and sexism.

Three-quarters of the tickets issued for local law violations, such as loud music and loitering, are given to black people. Four years ago, the Syracuse Common Council promised to conduct a study to determine if police officers, 85 percent of whom live outside Syracuse, engage in racial profiling. Because of flaws in data collection, the study reached no conclusive results.

Overtime costs nearly doubled the amount allocated by the mayor, after the department declined to participate in a money-management program used by almost all city departments.

A handful of officers are repeatedly cited for using excessive force. Yet the secrecy of the discipline records-records kept even from the Common Council-protects these officers, whose cases are left to be handled by the Internal Affairs department, where officers punish fellow officers.

In many cases, complaints against police officers come from criminals who have a history of arrest. That wasn’t the case with Griffin-Nolan.

‘I’m a white, middle-class guy; I own my own business and I’ve never been arrested before,’ Griffin-Nolan said.

Griffin-Nolan said officers threatened him with arrest to dissuade him from filing a complaint. His experience raises the question of how often officers threaten citizens who witness police wrongdoings.

Alan Rosenthal, a lawyer who has handled about 100 cases involving police misconduct, said most obstructing government administration charges are dropped shortly after they are issued. He added that officers often use the charge against people who challenge their authority during an arrest.

‘(The charge is) an indication that police have overstepped their boundaries, and it’s used to justify police actions,’ he said.

Even police officers themselves say the charge’s loose wording can make it prone to abuse.

‘A bad cop could go to town on OGA,’ said Virgil Hutchinson, a Syracuse police officer of 17 years.

Though Griffin-Nolan’s charge was dropped shortly after his arrest, he said he was not satisfied. He filed a complaint with the Internal Affairs department, where police officers investigate the charges brought against other police officers.

However, some question that department’s efficiency.

‘I am routinely disappointed by the quality of the (Internal Affairs Department’s) investigations,’ said Inspector Michael Kerwin, who has worked in the department for 27 years. ‘Oftentimes the finished product is not thorough.’

He added that the department is not consistent in the time it takes to investigate and in the punishment that the officers determine.

In response to his complaint, Griffin-Nolan received a letter four months later from the police chief at the time, Dennis Duval, saying his complaint had merit. Internal Affairs investigations are not public record, though, and Griffin-Nolan has no way of knowing what punishment, if any, the officers received.

Griffin-Nolan also filed a complaint with the Citizen Review Board, the only other action a citizen can take against the police department short of filing a lawsuit.

The board cannot effectively act on the complaint, though, because officers are immune to its subpoenas because of a clause in the police union’s contract.

‘The Citizen Review Board, the way it’s structured right now, is a complete waste of taxpayer money,’ Kerwin said. ‘It was designed to be powerless.’

Jeff Piedmonte, president of the police union, said he tells fellow officers to ignore the board’s subpoenas. An appearance, he said, exposes officers to bad publicity, and because the end result of an officer’s discipline is not released to the public, an officer would not be publicly cleared of potentially unsubstantiated allegations.

Edward Uhlig, who retired from the police department in 1998, said testifying in front of the board would not be a smart legal move.

‘If you give information before the case goes either to trial or before a judge, you’re giving the defense ammunition for what you feel is a strong case,’ Uhlig said.

The police department’s immunity from the board’s ruling power reflects the sentiment that the department is treated differently than other city departments.

The police department is one of the only departments that do not participate in SyraStat, a money-management program that saved the city $14 million in its first year of use, said Jim Gaffey, the city’s assistant director for quality control.

Gaffey said the police department participated in the program in 2003, but it stopped because the department found it hard to process such a large amount of data.

Common Councilor Stephanie Miner, who oversees financial issues for the council, said that the department’s excuse is not valid.

‘I think that if the police department had pressure to get the numbers, they would,’ she said.

Departments in other cities, such as Baltimore, have participated in CitiStat-the original version of the program-without problems, said Troy Harris, an agent in Baltimore’s police department.

‘The fact that (the police department) hasn’t gone through SyraStat, the mayor’s crowning achievement, shows that the police department is being treated different than other departments,’ Miner said.

The SyraStat program tracks city departments’ expenses, ranging from office supplies to overtime pay, Gaffey said.

This year, the police department spent $9.5 million on overtime when they were originally given $5 million, said Bill Ryan, a common councilor.

Miner said the overspending exposes management issues with the police department during a time of financial difficulty for the city.‘There is nothing sacred about the police department,’ Miner said. ‘This city has been through fiscal crises, and the police department should not be treated differently than the other departments that serve the public.’

Ken Mokrzycki, the city’s director of administration, said that the police department regularly reports its payroll to the mayor. He added that the mayor hopes the department will participate in SyraStat soon, but he could not say when.

The lack of accountability for both police actions and expenses is made even more serious when the city’s race relations are taken into account. Even Syracuse police officers have had difficulty holding other officers accountable for allegations of racism and sexism.

According to the latest census, about 25 percent of Syracuse residents are black. Yet the most recent police data show that 41 percent of people stopped for traffic violations were black. During that same period from January 2004 to June 2004, 76 percent of tickets issued for local law violations-such as loitering and loud music-were given to black people. A person was seven times more likely to be issued a loitering ticket if he or she was black during that time period.

One alleged example of racial profiling involves Thomas Emanuel, a middle-aged black man who was pulled over for playing his music too loud, according to court documents. Emanuel testified that there was no stereo equipment in his car and the charges against him were later thrown out.

Four years ago, the Common Council decided to sponsor a study to look at possible instances of racial profiling in the police department. The study, though, was flawed in its design, Ryan said, and ultimately the LeMoyne College professor who conducted the study drew no conclusions.

Some say the possibility of racial profiling is caused by cultural differences between the police officers and the residents of the neighborhoods they patrol.

Eighty-five percent of Syracuse police officers do not live in Syracuse, Ryan said.

All city employees-except firefighters, police officers and public works employees-are required to live in the city. The three exceptions came after Manhattan city employees from those areas said they could not afford to live in their city, but Syracuse employees have applied the rule locally, Ryan said.

Common Councilor and former police officer Thomas Seals said the cultural difference between the city communities and the suburbs fosters paranoia in some officers while they are on the job.

‘When you’re outside the city, you don’t see black folks,’ Seals said. ‘(On the job), they get paranoid … It makes you want to do your job and get the hell back to the suburbs.’

Police Chief Gary Miguel, though, says that officers who live in the suburbs are not disabled in their city-based jobs.

‘If you’re running a business and you wanted to get the best possible people, would you limit yourself to a geographic area?’ Miguel said. ‘It isn’t about where you live-it’s about what’s inside.’

Leigh Hunt, a former police chief, said he created walking patrols in the city’s South Side in response to the cultural rift. After he left, though, the next police chief, John Falge, used the walking patrols as punishment, Hutchinson said. And later, the police union helped stop them all together, saying that the officers didn’t have ‘enough mobility,’ Hutchinson said.

Another factor in a racially unsound department is a lack of women and minorities in the department. The department is composed of 11 percent women and nine percent minorities, according to the department’s data.

To date, there has never been a black lieutenant, captain or inspector, said Sgt. Frank Fowler, a black police officer of 16 years. Currently, only five of the 84 lieutenants and sergeants in the force are women.

Hutchinson said, because of the disparity, some minority officers will leap in ranks to one of three deputy positions, which answer directly to the chief. That was the case with DuVal, a black former police chief. Compensation in that way, though, does not fix the problem, Hutchinson said.

‘It’s not fair to any of us,’ Hutchinson said.

The issue of sexism within the department has recently been brought to light in a current lawsuit against the department. Officer Sonia Dotson is suing the department for gender discrimination. The lawsuit came after a supervisor ignored her complaint that fellow officers that were watching pornography while working in the office.

And in December, the department’s problem almost got worse, when former Police Chief Steve Thompson hired Officer Patrick Hennigan from Clay’s Police Department.

A committee of police officials voted, 6-1, against his hiring because of an incident in which Hennigan allegedly screamed racial slurs and waved a gun around a DeWitt night club five years ago.

‘The whole (hiring) was offensive,’ Kerwin said. ‘He had no interest in the Syracuse Police Department.’

Hennigan resigned in early February. He did not return several phone calls made to his home.

Hunt said he is familiar with the fight to keep the department free of troublesome officers.

‘You’re constantly doing battle with half a dozen officers that keep getting in trouble,’ he said.

Now, even after 18 months of filing complaints and pushing litigation, Griffin-Nolan is determined to press on until the department offers an apology and changes to become more complaint-friendly.

‘I have a strong feeling that what I saw wasn’t an aberration,’ Griffin-Nolan said. ‘It was thuggery, and I want to do what I can to see that it’s stopped.’

Published on April 24, 2005 at 12:00 pm