Experts: Friction builds as police chief, union spar
SHELTON — Six cops fired. Three lawsuits pending. And one embattled police chief.
When the Board of Aldermen formally appointed Shawn Sequeira to be the city’s top cop in 2017, it appeared all was well between department brass and the rank and file.
In the time since, the relationship appears to have deteriorated — badly.
Sequeira has fired six of the department’s 46 officers since late July after two separate internal investigations.
The union is appealing the firings, which could eventually lead to a courtroom battle, while the city and the union are already at odds on several fronts.
Mike Lewis, a former Shelton cop and union spokesman, said the union is optimistic of success given some recent victories reversing disciplinary actions in front of the state labor board. He said Sequeira’s actions have led to a drop in morale — and the effectiveness of police protection in the city.
“Morale is in the toilet,” Lewis said. “People are nervous they could be next so they keep their head down to avoid getting it lopped off.”
Sequeira said he’s trying to rid the department of bad cops who broke rules.
He said he has the support of most of the department’s officers, bar a handful of vocal malcontents.
“Everything’s running fine,” he said. “Everything’s running smooth.”
Experts said that while it’s impossible to know everything happening behind the scenes, continued fighting between supervisors and officers could hinder police departments in their core functions: preventing crime, preventing the fear of crime and increasing the quality of life of residents.
“If a police department as a whole is not happy, they’re not able to do those three basic functions as well as they could,” said John DeCarlo, a former police chief who now is director of the University of New Haven’s master’s program in criminal justice.
“Usually it’s indicative of the fact that some kind of communication has broken down,” DeCarlo said. “And that’s not to make a value judgment, saying either the administration or the union has done anything wrong.”
It started with toilets, it ended with firings
The Shelton Police Department has seen a number of public controversies erupt in recent months.
The first came in May when the union filed a grievance alleging three female officers were denied use of their headquarters restrooms while the 49 men had access. Citing the COVID- 19 pandemic, the police chief then limited use of headquarters locker rooms and bathrooms for both men and women and set up portable toilets for patrol officers in the parking lot.
In an attempt to photograph the portable toilets, Lewis received a ticket for simple trespass May 25 at his home. Lewis was issued the ticket, a $ 92 fine, for entering a restricted area and taking pictures, inside and out, of the newly delivered portable toilets, according to police. The union spokesman said he was contesting the ticket and as of Wednesday, he said a court date had not yet been set.
In June, a total of a half- dozen photos of officers purporting to show cops changing in the police station parking lot were posted to the “Support the Shelton Police Union, Inc” Facebook page. The union has said it posted them in response to the order from Sequeira limiting the use of locker rooms and bathrooms.
That prompted Sequeira to launch an internal investigation into what he called “possible indecent exposure” in the pictures.
As a result of the probe, the chief in August and September fired three officers — Caroline Moretti, Roger Falcone and Dan Loris — for allegedly staging the photos and lying during the internal investigation.
Those firings came after the firing in July of Lt. Dave Moore and officers John Napoleone and Michael McClain for alleged dereliction of duty in an unrelated case.
Sequeira, in his letters of dismissal to Napoleone and McClain, said they did not properly investigate a sexual assault complaint at the apartment of since- fired Bridgeport police officer Steven Figueroa and another Bridgeport police officer. Moore was fired, according to Sequeira, for attempting to “cover up” Napoleone’s and McClain’s “mishandling” of the incident, the chief said at the time.
The chief said the six firings, which the union has argued leaves the department understaffed and too reliant on overtime, have not impacted the department’s efforts.
The department began the year with 52 officers. As of last month, it had 46 — with 29 assigned to patrol.
The conflicts have spawned an anonymously authored website called “Where Did He Come From?” that notes Sequeira was hired as a Shelton cop after investigating a nearly $ 1 million embezzlement from City Hall while a state police detective. The website, which alleged the chief is unqualified for his job and is replacing the fired cops with friends from the state police, suggests Sequeira’s investigation was not as thorough as it should have been and also links his hiring to Mayor Mark Lauretti’s quest for the governor’s office.
Sequeira and Lauretti deny there was any link. The chief said the union is grasping at straws.
“They decided to make up lies and make up rumors,” Sequeira said. “I wish them all the best. What they’re trying has not worked. All their claims, all their allegations, are false.”
As the various controversies erupted and played out earlier this year, Sequeira hired a retired Shelton lieutenant as deputy chief — who then retired again within weeks without giving any reasons why.
The chief said one of his most vocal critics — retired cop David Eldridge — expressed interest in the deputy chief’s job prior to the intradepartmental friction becoming public. Sequeira said that Eldridge used to be one of his biggest supporters but became a vocal critic after being rebuffed for the second- in- command post as unqualified.
“Unfortunately he was upset he didn’t get what he wanted out of the Shelton Police Department,” Sequeira said.
“Oh give me a break,” Eldridge said in a response.
A former alderman who ran unsuccessfully for the Planning and Zoning Commission last year, Eldridge said he’s planning to challenge Lauretti next year for the mayor’s job.
But he said he knew he didn’t have the necessary qualifications for deputy chief, including an undergraduate college degree.
“Can I lead better than any of them? Without a doubt,” Eldridge said. “But I had none of the qualifications. That’s just ridiculous.”
First they offered support, then some withdrew it
Sequeira bristled when asked about labor disputes with the union and said he has the support of most of the department’s sworn officers.
“When you say ‘ the union,’ let’s make it very clear, it’s not the majority of the police department,” he said.
He points to the fact that the union has not taken a vote of no confidence in his leadership of the department, a standard tool of police unions to express dissatisfaction with a chief.
“They just know they didn’t have the votes,” Sequeira said. “The rest of them are at work doing their job, meeting the community, being leaders.”
The chief also noted the union supported him publicly when he was hired.
Addressing the board at its June 8, 2017 meeting, the Shelton Police Union’s then- vice president, Michael Lawrence, told the aldermen: “The Police Union is here tonight to support Chief Shawn Sequeira for the next Police Chief of Shelton.”
“We support the Chief. We look forward on working with him,” he added, according to meeting minutes.
Joseph Giacalone, a retired New York City Police Department sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the union’s initial support is no surprise.
But whatever the public sentiment, he said an outside hire would rankle cops in any department.
“That causes a lot of friction,” Giacalone said, especially when the hire has never been a chief before. “As far as I’m concerned, that should never happen.”
Sequeira was hired as a Shelton police captain in 2015, appointed chief on an interim basis six months later and then ratified as chief in 2017.
“Any union is going to endorse the new guy or girl coming in because they don’t want to start off on the wrong foot,” Giacalone said. “But I’m sure they weren’t happy to have a person coming in from outside the department.”
DeCarlo said it’s difficult to read too much into developments without more information about what’s happening behind the scenes.
“Sometimes a small group of police officers who does have an agenda of some type will use the union as a platform to air their grievances, and those grievances don’t have to necessarily be representative of the entire department,” he said.
For example, DeCarlo said, it could be the chief is trying to rid the department of bad cops the union is trying to protect. Or perhaps the union could be leading a charge to rid the department of a bad chief, he said.
“It’s hard to say without knowing what the nuances are,” DeCarlo said. “It’s so hard to say what the root of it is without knowing intimately what’s going on.”
If it ends up in court, who wins?
With neither side showing any willingness to compromise so far, the fight seems destined to be end up in a courtroom.
The city and the union are involved in three pending lawsuits against each other:
The city is appealing an ar1 bitration panel’s decision to reinstate a Shelton cop who was fired after a number of disciplinary incidents, including a Facebook post in which he called Barack Obama “an anti american muslim piece of ( expletive) president” and another that used a misogynistic slur and said, using curse words, that a judge should be disbarred and hanged.
The two other lawsuits con1 cern changes the city’s aldermen made in 2018 to promotion procedures within the department. The state labor board ruled in the union’s favor, but a judge vacated that decision. The union and the state labor board are appealing in that case
If it comes to a protracted legal battle, both the union and Sequeira say they will be vindicated.
In most cases, it should not have to come to that, DeCarlo said.
“Police chiefs and labor unions should not be at odds, and I’m saying that theoretically, of course,” he said. “Theoretically, there should be a way to make things work for the benefit of the community.”
“I’m not criticizing either side, but it is incumbent as police professionals for both sides to come to the table and work their differences out,” DeCarlo said.