10 Conn. officers decertified in 2023

One Guilford police officer had a friend call from a different department feigning an emergency to get her out of work, a Bridgeport officer pocketed $800 from a drug bust as investigators were standing nearby and a New Milford cop had his son send town officials an inflammatory email complaining about how an operation was handled, documents show.

Documents obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media Group for the 10 officers who were decertified in 2023 by the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council reveal a range of alleged wrongdoing from domestic violence to drunken driving and falsifying traffic tickets.

Many of the officers who were facing decertification never showed up for their hearing on the matter, POST documents show.

The 10 decertifications were the most since 2014 when about 80 percent of the officers who were decertified were convicted of felonies, records show. But recent police accountability laws have since allowed officers to be decertified for a wider range of misbehaviors, including those classified as violations of the public’s trust.

Officers who have been submitted by their police chief to be decertified are entitled to a hearing process before a recommendation is made for the entire POST Council to vote whether to decertify them.

An officer’s length of decertification depends on what the hearing process finds, but generally is not more than two years. None of the decertified officers have requested to be reinstated in Connecticut, POST officials said. Officers who are decertified in Connecticut are placed in a national

database so law enforcement agencies in other states are aware of their history.

There were 30 more officers in the pipeline to be decertified as of late January.

Here’s a list of the Connecticut police officers who were decertified in 2023:

Former Connecticut State Police Sgt. John McDonald

Former Connecticut State Police Sgt. John McDonald was the first state police trooper to be decertified since the agency did not participate in the decertification process prior to the 2020 police accountability law. But POST officials had to halt their decertification process for McDonald in 2020 even after he was charged by his own agency with assault with a motor vehicle in a crash that seriously injured a woman and her daughter in 2019.

McDonald was in his state-issued vehicle at the time of the accident, state police said. Video from an Oxford brewery where he was attending a retirement party showed he had nearly a dozen drinks before he got in the cruiser to drive away, an arrest warrant said. McDonald was placed on leave and later charged with second-degree assault with a motor vehicle and three misdemeanors by his own department.

But POST officials determined they couldn’t move forward with the decertification process because the accident occurred before the 2020 police accountability law was enacted and because he pleaded to lesser charges that were not felonies. That decertification process was stopped, documents showed.

During the criminal process, McDonald remained an employee of the state Department of Emergency Services and Police Protection, which oversees the state police, even after he received two years probation in the crash case. Three weeks after the criminal case was completed in May 2021, McDonald was accused of fraudulently accessing a DESPP computer system after his access was revoked, according to POST documents. He resigned in 2021 during an investigation into the computer incident. Since he resigned during the investigation, McDonald was prohibited from being hired as an officer in Connecticut under a 2015 police accountability law.

POST voted to decertify McDonald in June.

Former Norwalk Police

Officer Edgar Gonzalez

Former Norwalk Police Officer Edgar Gonzalez was decertified in February 2023 following internal and criminal investigations into allegations he fabricated nearly three dozen traffic violations in 2021, POST documents stated. Gonzalez resigned during the internal affairs investigation in June 2021 and then later was arrested in February 2022 on five counts of third-degree computer crime and five counts of second-degree forgery.

Gonzalez pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors — two counts of third-degree forgery and fourth-degree computer crime — and received a suspended sentence of 364 days in jail and three years of probation. POST officials recommended his decertification after he waived his right to a hearing, documents said.

Former Bridgeport Police Officer Christopher Martin

As part of a task force investigating drug activity in Bridgeport in 2021, Christopher Martin was accused of pocketing the $800 that was used to make a controlled purchase, according to POST documents. When task members realized the money was missing, all officers involved in the sting were searched, the documents said. The money was found in Martin’s back pocket, police said.

He was charged with larceny and resigned that day, the documents said. No internal affairs investigation was done due to his resignation. Martin was decertified in June.

Former Connecticut State Police Trooper Jamie Solis

Jamie Solis, a former Connecticut State Police trooper, was arrested on domestic violence charges by Vernon police in August 2022 after a woman reported that he struck her in the face while she was holding her infant son, according to POST documents. The injury she received from the blow required 13 stitches, documents said. She later told state police during an internal affairs investigation that Solis had physically abused her at least 40 times in the past year in a variety of ways, including punching, slapping and striking her with objects including a belt, according to the POST documents.

Solis resigned from the state police as the internal affairs investigation was being conducted and as his criminal case was making its way through the courts, documents said. He pleaded guilty to assault and threatening charges in exchange for probation and no prison time. He was decertified in October.

Former New Milford Police Officer Thomas Kenney

In 2019, several New Milford town officials received an email signed by a police sergeant who contended there were “ethics violations” and “illegal activity” happening at the police department, according to POST documents.

The sergeant, who also received the email, immediately responded that she had not written the email, the documents said. An investigation revealed the email had come from the IP address belonging to New Milford Police Officer Thomas Kenney’s son, the documents indicated. Kenney and his son initially denied any knowledge of the emails. But his son later recanted and admitted he sent the email on behalf of his father who was mad about the way a drug bust was handled, the documents said.

Kenney was fired by the department for untruthfulness in 2020. He was decertified in August.

Former Guilford Police Officer Cassandra Lall

In September 2022, former Guilford Police Office Cassandra Lall told co-workers she had to leave work because her wife had just called and said she was going to Milford Hospital because she had fallen and injured herself, POST documents said. Guilford police later learned the call had actually come from an employee of the New Canaan Police Department at Lall’s request because she needed to leave work that day, according to the documents.

The plan unraveled when Lall’s deputy chief showed up at the hospital to provide “support” to her and her wife, but neither one was there, the documents said. Lall received a similar phone call three weeks later from a man who said he was her cousin, documents said. During that call, he told Lall that her mother had been in a bad crash in Albany, N.Y., according to the documents. Her superiors also could not find information on that crash and opened an investigation.

Lall did not return to work after leaving that day and resigned during the investigation. She later admitted that the first time she left her wife was not injured and that her mother did have an accident but was also not injured. She was decertified in August.

Former East Haven Police Officer Jonathan Andino

Jonathan Andino drew scrutiny from the East Haven Police Department after he claimed continued injuries from a crash in his patrol car in March 2019, POST documents said. After his claims of dizziness, vomiting, loss of balance and neck and back pain lasted for months, a private investigator began taking surveillance videos of his activities, the documents said.

The videos showed him moving and behaving normally without the assistance of a cane or hand rails if he was going up stairs, the documents said. He continued to claim the injuries had left him with symptoms during a deposition with his department, according to POST. He returned to work for one day after the crash and then resigned in 2021 during an internal affairs investigation. The IA investigation was never completed because he resigned, POST documents stated. He then was arrested in 2022 on charges he misused the department’s computer system in 2017. He pleaded guilty to those charges in April 2023.

Andino was decertified in June.

Former Glastonbury Police Lt. Kevin Troy

After leaving a pub in Agawam, Mass. on the evening of Feb. 6, 2022, police believe former Glastonbury Police Lt. Kevin Troy crashed his car in Enfield while driving drunk and then tried to say a man he didn’t know was behind the wheel, documents showed. When officers arrived, Troy, who was bleeding, said an unknown man offered to drive him because he was drunk, but the person fled after the crash, according to POST documents. Troy said he was sleeping in the front passenger seat when the accident occurred, the documents said.

The driver’s side door was stuck shut due to the crash, leading police to believe that another person was not in the vehicle and able to easily flee. Troy refused a sobriety test at the scene and declined medical treatment even though he was bleeding, POST documents said. He resigned in May 2022 before the internal affairs investigation into the crash was completed. He was decertified in October.

Former East Hartford Police Officer Ian Allison

A construction company was working a road job in East Hartford on Aug. 3, 2020 when Officer Ian Allison noticed the street was closed and no officer was working to direct traffic, according to POST documents. Allison wound up being arrested by his own department on allegations he conspired to have a second officer get overtime for hours that weren’t worked at the road job, the documents said.

According to a POST hearing officer, Allison told employees of the construction company that he was “penalizing” them for not hiring an officer so they would have to pay from 7 a.m. when the second officer didn’t arrive until 10:45 a.m., the documents said. When the officer left the road job at about 3:20 p.m., he wanted a construction manager to sign a pay slip for 7 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., but the manager refused, the documents said.

Allison went back to the road job with the officer and told the company he wouldn’t allow their second shift to start work until the pay slip was signed for work completed from 7 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., according to the POST documents.

Allison was fired in 2021 after his arrest. A year later, a state Department of Labor board ruled he should get his job back. The East Hartford police chief instead submitted his name to POST to be decertified, the documents said. POST concurred with the chief and an internal affairs review that Allison had violated several of the department’s policies by trying to force the company to pay the other officer for the hours he didn’t work and for denying he had participated in the deception, the documents said. Allison was decertified in October.

Former New Haven Police Officer Alex Morgillo

On the afternoon of a shooting on April 8, 2021, former New Haven Police Officer Alex Morgillo told a sergeant he was unable to respond to the scene because he was dealing with a car accident with injuries, according to POST documents. When the sergeant remarked that he should send him back out to the shooting scene, Morgillo is accused of starting an argument with his superior by using profanity. He was told to write a memo detailing his interaction with the sergeant, but didn’t tell the truth, documents said.

An investigation revealed that Morgillo had completed dealing with the accident in plenty of time to head to the shooting scene and had lied about when he had finished the accident report, POST documents said. Data from his cruiser indicated he drove from the scene of the accident to a location near the police station and then waited there until his shift was over, the documents said.

He retired from the police department in October 2022 and was decertified in October 2023.