Charges, but No Penalty, for a Chief’s Role in a Convention Arrest

By JIM DWYER

In a rare review of actions by the city’s top police commanders, the Civilian Complaint Review Board has charged a deputy chief with abuse of authority for ordering the arrest of a woman during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

The deputy chief, Stephen Paragallo, ordered the arrest of a 56-year-old Brooklyn woman near Herald Square on the night of Aug. 31. The board found that there was no probable cause to arrest her, and that the chief had acted "without due and reasonable care that his actions be proper."

The board recommended a mild punishment, known as instruction, for Chief Paragallo, but Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who has the final say, declined to administer that or any other discipline. He was following a recommendation by the Police Department’s internal prosecutor, Mr. Kelly’s spokesman said last night.

The board was unable to reach a consensus on the behavior of other chiefs who ordered mass arrests, and it made no public findings on complaints against them. Two other officers, a lieutenant and a sergeant, were charged last year by the board for their actions at the convention. The lieutenant retired and the sergeant lost two days of vacation.

The civilian board, an independent agency that reviews complaints against the police, rarely examines the actions of chiefs, since patrol officers are far more likely to come into contact with members of the public. The convention, however, brought many chiefs onto the streets. They supervised hundreds of arrests in Lower Manhattan and at 16th Street that were later dismissed by Manhattan prosecutors, but the board did not make public any findings on complaints from people who were taken into custody at those places.

The results of the unusual inquiry were announced yesterday at the board’s monthly meeting. Officials said that the department resisted the inquiry into the chiefs for nearly a year, and as a result the board did not complete its consideration of the last seven complaints from the convention until yesterday morning. Although the statute of limitations for bringing disciplinary charges expired in late February, the significance of the delay was a matter of debate.

Christopher Dunn, a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said senior officials in the department were able to stymie the investigation by simply ignoring investigators for months on end.

"Civilian oversight in this city is now a dead letter when they can get away with what they did here," Mr. Dunn told the board.

But the chairman of the board, Hector Gonzalez, said that although there had been delays in making senior officers available to his agency’s investigators, the review had been thorough and timely. "I don’t feel thwarted," Mr. Gonzalez said. "I think we have a very good relationship with the department."

Mr. Gonzalez said delays in making the police available were the result of "a dialogue to ensure that the high-ranking officers really needed to be interviewed."

Of the three cases in which the board voted to bring charges, he noted, the department had time to begin its internal disciplinary process.

The Police Department hailed the results, saying they showed its restraint during the convention. Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said 500,000 people had demonstrated in the city, and 10,000 police officers had kept the city safe, with only three substantiated complaints against the police.

"Considering the numbers, that’s a success story," Mr. Browne said.

The board was established in 1993 to investigate complaints of misconduct. It can recommend discipline, but the police commissioner has the final say. A majority of the members are appointed by the mayor and the police commissioner.

The woman whose arrest was ordered by Chief Paragallo was standing on the corner watching street demonstrations with her husband for about 45 minutes, said Rick Best, a lawyer who represents her. Mr. Best said she did not want any personal information released, and her name was not made public by the complaint board.

A videotape made that night shows that the woman and others, after being told to clear the sidewalk, lined up in a single file against the window of a Gap store, Mr. Best said.

"My client’s position is that one of the officers said, ’As long as you’re lined up along the edge of the sidewalk, that’s O.K.,’ " Mr. Best said. "About 20 people did that, and then an officer comes up and says, ’You wouldn’t leave when we asked you, now you’re all under arrest.’ "

The woman and her husband, who both worked as computer technicians, were held for 44 hours, Mr. Best said. The husband had previously been convicted of a traffic offense, and quickly accepted an offer to plead guilty to a minor violation. The charges against the woman were dismissed. The man and woman filed identical complaints with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, but because the man had pleaded guilty, his complaint was not substantiated, Mr. Best said.

"It was just shocking to find out how easy it was to be arrested," Mr. Best said. "She was quite eloquent about all her life loving New York. This scared her, and her husband. They just didn’t like the city anymore. They quit their jobs and left."

Correction: Mar. 11, 2006, Saturday:

Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about a civilian review board’s decision to charge a deputy police chief in New York with abuse of authority for his role in an arrest during the 2004 Republican National Convention referred imprecisely in some copies to the status of seven other complaints against the police stemming from the convention. The board completed its review of those cases on Wednesday; they are not still open.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/n...