Troy Council will see secret shooting memo
Mayor Madden discusses follow-up report on deadly police encounter of 2016
The City Council will get to examine a 19-page memorandum the city commissioned and kept secret that disputes key findings in an internal affairs report that found a patrol sergeant lied about his actions in the fatal shooting of a DWI suspect during an April 2016 traffic stop, Mayor Patrick Madden said Thursday.
Meeting with the Times Union’s editorial board and reporters, Madden offered slightly more information about the secret memo than he has in the several weeks since the public learned of its existence: He said the memo accepts the findings by an international expert in vehicle forensics that Sgt. Randall French’s patrol car sideswiped Edson Thevenin’s small sedan and forced him to crash into a concrete barrier, but rejects the
conclusion by Internal Affairs Capt. Joseph L. Centanni that French lied about his actions on the night he killed Thevenin.
Madden refused to release a copy of the memo, which was written by Michael D. Ranalli, a former Glenville police chief who was selected by city police department chiefs to analyze Centanni’s findings last fall.
City and police officials said Ranalli’s report is believed to be the first time that the city paid an outside expert to conduct a review of an internal police report.
The police department selected Ranalli to review Centanni’s report, Madden said. In the past, however, the city has requested that other police agencies review excessive force complaints. This happened in 2014 when the melee at the former Kokopellis, a now-shuttered downtown nightclub on Fourth Street, led to allegations of police brutality. The police officers who responded were cleared by an internal review and an external FBI investigation.
City Council members have demanded a copy of Ranalli’s memo after learning that the Madden administration had commissioned it after receiving Centanni’s report, but never informed council members. City Council President Carmella Mantello has argued that the Madden administration should have shared the report, and that council permission was needed to pay for it. Madden said the report, which he estimated cost less than $5,000, was paid for out of the police department investigation budget.
The council was not briefed about either the internal affairs report or the Ranalli study during executive sessions earlier this year to discuss the pending civil rights lawsuit filed by Thevenin’s widow, Cinthia Thevenin, against the city in U.S. District Court in Albany. Council members are regularly briefed on litigation against the city, especially if there may be a large cash payout.
The Law Committee plans to meet at noon Wednesday at City Hall to go into executive session to discuss pending litigation and internal affairs reports with Corporation Counsel James Caruso, according to the committee agenda release Thursday.
Madden said the council members were not informed about the two related studies because they dealt with internal affairs matters. He said he anticipates the Ranalli report could be leaked once the council receives it. Madden said he did not plan to have Centanni available to testify because the committee already has his report on French’s shooting of Thevenin.
The 101-page crash report written by Brian F. Chase, a former New Hampshire State Police sergeant who is considered an international expert in vehicle forensics, was an important piece in Centanni’s conclusion that French gave “empirically untruthful statements” about events the night of the shooting. Chase has also been hired by the State Police to analyze the October limousine crash in Schoharie County that killed 20 people and resulted in criminally negligent homicide charges against Nauman Hussain, the limo company’s operator.
Troy’s police department hired Chase to do a “vehicle autopsy” that “revealed compelling substantiation of full, forceful vehicular sideswipe impact — consistent with the 2013 Ford Taurus operated by Troy Police Sgt. French overtaking and impacting the 2000 Honda Civic operated by Edson Thevenin.”
During his review, Ranalli “assumes the Chase report to be accurate and bases his position on that,” Madden said at the Times Union. The mayor responded with “yes” when asked whether Ranalli’s memo refuted Centanni’s conclusion that French lied, but offered no details.
Madden said he will release Ranalli’s memo to the public following the conclusion of the federal court case.
The secrecy of the report led to a public protest a week ago when the City Council met at the Polish American Club in South Troy. Protestors called for transparency about the investigations into the police department.
The mayor continued to cite the finding of U.S. Magistrate Daniel J. Stewart, who is overseeing the federal case, that the Ranalli memo is “attorney work product” that the city can withhold from public release and discovery in the lawsuit. Madden admitted that that determination doesn’t prevent him from releasing the memo if he desires, but he repeatedly insisted he would not do so before the trial.
“By virtue of its being an attorney work product it gives us the discretion not to release it. We’re using that discretion to preserve it for trial,” Madden said.
“I happen to believe we get to the truth through the court,” said Madden, who is an attorney.
The existence of Centanni’s internal affairs report only became public in June after the Thevenin family’s attorneys were tipped off about it. The judge rejected the city’s arguments that, under state civil service law that keeps a police officer’s personnel files confidential, it couldn’t be released.
Neither the internal affairs report nor Ranalli’s memo were in French’s personnel file. Instead, Centanni’s report was kept in another file in the internal affairs office accessible only by the captain assigned to bureau and the police chief.
Mantello said the City Council should be fully informed by the administration about the contents of the various official reports about the shooting of Thevenin.
“The City Council as a whole body should sit down with all four reports, have a questionand-answer session with Centanni (about the) internal affairs report, Ranalli and the person (Chase) who wrote the forensics report,” Mantello said. The fourth report was written by the state attorney general’s office.
Mantello said she has not received any copies of the reports after requesting them from the mayor. “It’s silly for him not to keep us in the loop. Everything is a secret,” Mantello said.
Mantello said she would discuss with other council members employing the City Council’s seldomused subpoena power to compel Centanni and Ranalli to appear if the mayor won’t make them available. Centanni, she said, wants to testify but told her the mayor must grant permission.
Since Thevenin was killed in April 2016, Madden has refused repeatedly to speak publicly about problems with the investigations or police operations. He has said there were problems with the state attorney general’s findings, but still will not discuss what its shortcomings were — once again citing the pending litigation.
Madden has, indeed, never spoken out about the police department’s handling of the French investigation.
Former Police Chief John Tedesco should not have exonerated French within days of the shooting, Madden said Thursday. The mayor didn’t speak out publicly, but said he spoke privately to the former chief.
“I felt it was more appropriate to talk about it in private,” Madden said of his response to Tedesco’s virtual exoneration of French in a news conference soon after Thevenin’s death. “I made it clear that if the (attorney general’s office) came in, we were to provide full cooperation.”
Madden summed up his message to Tedesco after the news conference: “We need to make sure we’re operating in a way that doesn’t sway decisions at this point in time. The pursuit here is not to protect Randy French, but to find the truth,” the mayor said.
Madden said he didn’t comment either on former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove’s handling of the grand jury investigation in which French testified without waiving his immunity to prosecution because Madden expected the attorney general would take care of that.
Abelove was indicted in the matter for perjury and official misconduct, but the case was dismissed. The attorney general has appealed.
On Thursday, Madden admitted that Abelove’s conduct did not meet the standard of due process for the Thevenin family.