Fire officer says he was set up: suit

An FDNY lieutenant who was accused of robbing cash from a Staten Island Catholic school fair and later cleared of any criminal wrongdoing is suing the school, diocese and parish for what he claims was a malicious setup, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

Lt. Christopher Hughes, 43, of Staten Island, was secretly filmed putting donated dollars into his pocket at a Blessed Sacrament School charity event on Nov. 24, 2019, court documents show.

Hughes (photo) was arrested in December and charged with petit larceny, but cleared of any wrongdoing by the Staten Island District Attorney in May, who dropped all charges.

Hughes is suing the school, the New York Archdiocese, the Catholic School Region of Staten Island, the fair’s organizer and head of the PTA, Peter Vento, and the school principal, Joseph Cocozello, for $1 million.

Hughes’ arrest led the FDNY to suspend him for 30 days without pay. He was then demoted from his role as an instructor in the academy and sent to work in the firehouse.

He says the coordinated act of vengeance destroyed his life and career, according to the lawsuit filed in Staten Island Supreme Court.

Since 2008, Hughes had chaired the “Sweeps Table” at the Blessed Sacrament School’s charity fair with his wife — a raffle table where people buy tickets to place in bags that later correlate with prizes. As they often did, the couple purchased the prizes ahead of time with their own money to be later reimbursed, the suit states.

On the day of the fair, its sole organizer, PTA president Vento, surreptitiously placed a small camera above the table Hughes and his wife were manning. Footage captured Hughes putting an unknown amount of cash into his pockets, the lawsuit describes.

Later cleared of stealing anything, Hughes says all the secret camera caught him doing was putting money aside for an ice-cream and pizza party to be held for the winning class, like every year, court papers state.

In the days after the fair, still unaware he’d been secretly filmed, Hughes went to Cocozello to complain about Vento’s handling of the charity event. Hughes said he was “disappointed, alarmed and upset” with Vento’s “aggressive” behavior at the weekend fair and said the PTA president was acting “inappropriately towards women,” court papers state.

“Cocozello promised to investigate,” the lawsuit says. “[He] never followed up. Rather than investigate defendant Vento, the very next day, defendant Cocozello made a blatantly false and malicious police report alleging [Hughes] stole a small amount of money.”

Hughes’ attorney Robert Brown said the sequence of events leaves little to the imagination.

“When you step back and you look at it,” Brown said, “logically speaking, there’s no other explanation other than that this was done out of vindictiveness.”

Among the evidence presented in Hughes’ lawsuit are several screenshots taken of Vento’s alleged Facebook activity depicting content of a dark sexual nature, court papers show.

One meme the PTA president shared to the Facebook group “All Parents are Insane,” shows a young woman naked, bound, and gagged under the caption, “When she keeps trying to leave the house under quarantine, but you want her to be safe and healthy.”

Several other posts Vento shared to the group refer to male and female masturbation, court exhibits filed in the lawsuit show.

Hughes’ attorney said the screenshots serve as proof his client had reason to question Vento’s “unlimited, unsupervised access to children,” the lawsuit states, and further, gave him a reason to complain to the school principal.

Vento did not return multiple requests for comment.

“We have no comment, thank you,” said a receptionist at Blessed Sacrament School when the Daily News tried to reach Cocozello.

Hughes is suing for malicious prosecution, false arrest, and negligent hiring and retention, his lawyer said.