The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
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 halfdozen 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 sincefired 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-incommand post as unqualified.
“Unfortunately he was upset he didn’t get what he wanted out of the Shelton