No Way Jose

Another corrupt New Haven cop is caught in the feds' dragnet. How many more?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
By Betsy Yagla

Was Jose Silva an enabler or a thief? Consider the facts laid out in a quiet hearing in Bridgeport federal court last week, where the New Haven police detective and his cohort, ex-Detective Justen Kasperzyk, pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

On March 1, 2007, Kasperzyk and Silva conducted a drug raid on Fillmore Street in Fair Haven, and Kasperzyk pocketed $1,000 in drug money. Somehow, $500 of that made it into Silva’s jacket pocket. Silva kept mum about the cash until last Friday, when he pleaded guilty to depriving someone of their civil rights, a misdemeanor which carries a maximum one-year sentence.

In November 2006, the duo took part in a drug raid on Truman Street in the Hill, armed with a search warrant. A black man came out of a back bedroom. The cops found no drugs in the apartment, but Kasperzyk did find cocaine, crack and pot in the shared basement. So Kasperzyk planted the drugs in the apartment upstairs and arrested the guy. Silva filed a police report that said the drugs were found on the guy’s dresser, next to his ID.

The deep corruption that lived inside ex-Lt. Billy White’s narcotics squad is unraveling, since the FBI arrested White and Kasperzyk in March on corruption charges involving stolen bait money and a bail bonds kickback scheme.

Cops like Silva, who’d been on the force 12 years, allowed these indiscretions to continue. So did narcotics Detective Julie Raymond. Raymond has filed a sexual harassment complaint against the New Haven P.D. with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, alleging she was targeted by her male counterparts for two years (with comments like, “Jul, are you a dirty girl?”) and paid overtime she did not earn.

Raymond’s complaint alleges that White filled out timecards for overtime she didn’t do, and says she told him not to, but White “badgered” her into it.

“I finally yielded to his request,” Raymond wrote. This in a year when taxpayers have footed the $1,843,445 bill for 79,338 police overtime hours, so far this year.

“I continually told him not to but he did anyway,” she writes in the complaint. “This made me sick because I did not want money that was not mine or that I did not earn.” She was so disgusted by making extra money that she waited four months to officially complain. Even though she cashed in those checks, Raymond is requesting relief—“compensatory damages, punitive damages, front and back pay, reasonable attorneys fees, interest and such other relief.”

According to Police Executive Research Forum, the high-priced consultants hired to audit the police department after the scandal broke, the P.D. only had 11 internal complaints, compared to 114 civilian complaints (the report doesn’t give a time frame). Raymond and Silva both knew Kasperzyk and White were breaking the law and neither spoke up. Both of them profited financially from the abuse within the narcotics department.

PERF recommends rebuilding the narcotics department with strict policies and procedures. PERF has one dissenter, Andrew Rosenzweig, who says rebuilding the department is a bad idea because narcotics officers are often allowed to bend the law while higher ups bury their heads in the sand in an effort to fight the nation’s “War on Drugs” and rope in the bad guys.

Only time will tell how many other New Haven police officers associated with the narcotics squad received stolen money or unearned overtime. U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor wouldn’t predict more arrests, but says his office will be “interviewing a lot of people in days to come.”