Historical Perspective - 1999 - part 1.
[QUOTE=Mighty Spearsman]Someone definitely dropped a dime and reported this guy ahead of time.
Realistically, if the cops are doing surveillance and spot an off-duty fellow officer picking up a hoe, the cops would just tell him to beat it.
Also, why didn't Sanchez know ahead of time where the surveillance team would be located?
There's definitely more to this story than has been reported.[/QUOTE]
Fifth Hartford Officer Arrested In Probe
By JOSH KOVNER - This story ran in the Courant June 11, 1999
A Hartford police officer who counsels troubled colleagues was accused Thursday by federal law officers of twice raping a prostitute in the winter of 1997.
Officer Salvatore Gallo, 42, becomes the fifth city officer arrested in a continuing corruption probe of the embattled force.
Gallo, an officer for 15 years, was on duty and in uniform when on two occasions he coerced the woman into his cruiser under threat of arrest, drove her to a remote area and forced her to have intercourse and perform oral sex, according to the indictment.
Gallo, a married father of three children, was suspended without pay and ordered to turn in his gun after his arrest at police headquarters early Thursday morning.
U.S. Magistrate Donna F. Martinez set a bond of $50,000 for Gallo at his arraignment later Thursday morning, and he quickly left the courthouse with his wife, Maria, and his lawyer,Michael Georgetti of Hartford.
Gallo told the judge he'd been seeing a psychologist for stress.
Several of his colleagues sat in the courtroom gallery.
``I'm here to show him support,'' said Officer Matthew Rivera, who was reinstated to the force after a larceny conviction stemming from an earlier corruption probe in 1994 was overturned. ``I've been the target of allegations myself. I know Officer Gallo is going to pull through. When you know you're innocent, it can cause chaos in your mind.''
Gallo adamantly denies the charges, Georgetti said.
``He intends to vigorously defend himself at trial. This is a man with an unblemished work record who has never even been disciplined in any fashion,'' Georgetti said.
The one-count indictment refers to the victim by her initials, L.L.G. The woman, 25, is a former Manchester and West Hartford resident who's serving a seven-month sentence at York Correctional Institution in Niantic for narcotics possession. She's due out in September.
L.L.G. is one of seven women whose grand-jury testimony has figured into the arrests of the five officers. Four current and former officers were charged in April; two have pleaded guilty.
For the past 18 months, Gallo, 42, has coordinated the department's employee-assistance program, a referral service for department members coping with substance-abuse problems or personal crises on the job or at home. He was a peer counselor in the program for years before becoming coordinator.
Gallo also was a popular, highly regarded officer whose beat was Franklin Avenue in the South End. He was honored by the Franklin Avenue Merchants Association in 1994, and received a merit award from the department in 1995.
``Sal was instrumental in helping to break up the gangs we had in south Hartford and along Franklin Avenue. He was fearless, a super policeman,'' said Joe Bordonaro, merchants coordinator of the association.
``I remember when he interrupted a robbery and was struck with a board by a suspect who was hiding. It broke some bones and he was out for a while. There's not a businessman out here who doesn't have high praise for Sal Gallo,'' Bordonaro said.
Gallo was among 10 officers cleared of any wrongdoing in the 1993 arrest of a young suspect who had fled into a crowd at a city soccer game. One of the coaches, Weldon Lorenzo Ricketts, later charged in a highly publicized lawsuit that he was beaten by some of the officers as he intervened in the arrest.
``If he's done something wrong here, I'd be the first to say he should be dealt with accordingly,'' said Sgt. Michael Wood, head of the police union. ``But Sal was an outstanding beat officer and he's been there for a lot of cops coping with personal traumas. This investigation is starting to make me
very, very worried. I think it's turning into a witch hunt.''
But federal agents charge that Gallo crossed a line on two days in January and February 1997 by using the power of his badge to commit sexual assault. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on a civil- rights violation, though under sentencing guidelines that consider a defendant's clean criminal record and other factors, a conviction could bring a much shorter sentence.
L.L.G.'s husband, a West Hartford resident from whom she has been separated for three years, said his wife has told him she has cooperated with law officers in the corruption probe and has testified before the federal grand jury in the case. Court documents state she was sexually assaulted by two of the four officers arrested in April.
The husband said indications are that his wife, a mother of three, has slid further into drug addiction.
``As a person who loves her, I'm disturbed by her victimization,'' her husband said. ``The way to get out from under it is to stop the drugs.''
During L.L.G.'s last encounter with police in February, she allegedly wriggled out of a pair of handcuffs at Mount Sinai Hospital, broke into an apartment to call a cab, then tried to steal the cab before she was arrested.
The latest corruption probe - a joint federal and state effort - began in October and has sunk its tentacles into the force of nearly 500 officers. Tensions are running high.
FBI agents have grilled a number of officers and cadets about the behavior of some of their colleagues. Recently, a veteran lieutenant abruptly retired after being called to testify before the grand jury. Sources say that, after failing a lie detector test, he admitted to having a consensual sexual relationship with a woman who had worked as a prostitute several years ago.
Another source said FBI agents last week asked Gallo to wear a wire and record conversations with other officers who were possible targets of the probe - but Gallo refused.
Seven Hartford detectives, state's attorney's inspectors and FBI agents were present when Gallo surrendered early Thursday morning in the office of Assistant Police Chief Deborah Barrows.
Wood said officers feel as if they're working in a fish bowl - with a magnifying glass pressed up against it.
``We're continuing the investigation,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney
James Glasser said as he left the courtoom after Gallo's presentment.
``Wherever it takes us, that's where we'll head.
Neither Glasser nor his boss, U.S. Attorney Stephen C. Robinson, would say whether additional indictments were coming.
Robinson has said most of Hartford's police officers are honest and effective and just want to do their jobs. But he also said the charges are deeply troubling.
The conduct ``poses a danger to us all,'' Robinson said after the first four officers were arrested on sexual-misconduct charges in April. ``They abused their office and their badges. They violated the public trust and disgraced their uniform.''
Historical Perspective - 1999 - part 2.
Another Hartford Cop Accused
By JOSH KOVNER - This story ran in the Courant June 12, 1999
Three weeks after four Hartford police officers were charged with on-duty sexual misconduct against prostitutes, the department staged a prostitution sting - and was promptly ensnared in new allegations of sexual abuse against one of its own.
And now, a joint federal and state squad tracking corruption in the Hartford force has more sordid accusations to explore.
Two women charged with prostitution at a Brainard Road motel April 29 are pressing separate complaints against a veteran detective.
The women - a 33-year-old Wethersfield mother who works as an expensive call girl and a 21-year-old Wallingford woman who was working for a suspected escort service in Durham - say the detective had intimate sexual contact with them while posing as a ``john.''
It is the first time since the corruption probe began in October that an officer working in a controlled vice operation has been accused of misconduct.
In contrast, the allegations against the four officers arrested in April, and a fifth officer charged Thursday with twice raping a prostitute in 1997, involved patrolmen abusing their power during spontaneous encounters with prostitutes on their beats. Two of those officers have pleaded guilty, and the other three maintain their innocence.
If the latest claims are true, the detective's conduct would be illegal and break the tenets of every honest vice cop: that once a money-for-sex
deal is made, everything stops and an arrest is quickly made. The women
allege the sexual contact occurred after the officer had put the cash on the table.
Hartford police officials contend the new accusations are a fabrication by Pamela Doustou, the Wethersfield call girl who was first to come forward,
and her husband Sam Rickis, 51, who was charged with promoting prostitution.
But the joint courruption squad is pursuing the claims - partly because
the accusations suggest the same pattern of behavior, and because both women, set up in different rooms in the motel, later picked out the same officer's picture from among dozens of photographs during separate meetings with the investigators, sources say.
A top-ranking Hartford police official said all the officers involved in the sting deny wrongdoing.
The official, who requested anonymity because of a gag order in the
corruption case, said the detective was wired for sound during the entire
operation and back-up officers were listening from another room.
But the vice squad made neither a video nor audio tape of the sting, and observation equipment was reportedly on the fritz. This places the officers in a ``he said, she said,'' situation at a time of intense public scrutiny of the Hartford force.
``They had three ways to disabuse Doustou's claim - audiotape, videotape,
and the spy glass - and they were zero-for-three on all counts'' said attorney M. Donald Cardwell, who represents Doustou and Rickis.
``I find that absolutley baffling given the recent events involving Hartford officers,'' Cardwell said.
The veteran detective at the center of the latest accusations and the
sergeant who supervises the vice squad did not return voice-mail messages.
Pamela Doustou admits she is a call girl. She's also an erstwhile porn
actress who did a couple of adult videos in 1997 and 1998.
Doustou said she entered the sex trade to pay the $500-a-month tab for
medication she takes for what her doctor described in a court document as bipolar disorder.
She placed an ad in the Hartford Advocate and had for the last year or so been seeing five or six clients a month for sexual encounters.
It was through the ad that police found her, and set up a sting.
Rickis took the phone call and dispatched his wife to the motel.
Doustou said she arrived at Room 211 in an evening gown and a black corset. She brought along copies of the movies and magazines she's been in. She said the client proposed $500 for two hours, and that he plunked it down on the table when she said it was fine.
A short time later, after Doustou took off her dress, the client mentioned that he wanted to give and receive oral sex, Doustou said. Doustou said the officer then began to touch her sexually.
After three to five minutes of this, two or three police officers burst into the room, Doustou said. She was arrested, realizing that her client was a cop.
``I ended up in a holding cell at the police station with three other girls who were arrested at the motel. I said to them, `Oh my God, did he touch you? I was touched.' ''
``And one of the two younger girls [the 21-year-old who later also made
a complaint] said she and her friend were made to do a two-girl show for
15 minutes before the cops came in,'' Doustou said.
Doustou insisted she is telling the truth, and said she knows she can be arrested for filing a false report if she is lying.
``This is the first time I've ever been arrested. I could have made things a lot easier on myself by keeping my mouth shut, taking AR [accelerated rehabilitation], and going on my way.
``But I was touched by this cop big-time. He had his way with me at my
expense,'' she said.
Two of the other women arrested at the motel that night have already
received accelerated rehabilitation, a form of probation that, if successfully completed, results in dismissal of the criminal charge.
Cardwell said he expects Doustou to receive the same in her case, which is pending in Superior Court in Hartford.
After taking Doustou's sworn statement, state Inspectors Michael DiLullo
and Donald Brutnell showed up at the Wallingford home of the 21-year-old woman.
She said in a sworn statement that the veteran detective had sexual
contact with her and a friend, 20, who was also arrested for prostitution.
The woman identified the detective from a book of photographs of Hartford police officers. She declined comment.
Doustou and Rickis also face a charge of risk of injury to a minor.
After Doustou's arrest, Rickis was summoned to Hartford police headquarters
and booked for promoting prostitution. He said he left Doustou's 10-year-old daughter sleeping by herself in the condo after being told he would only be at the station a short time.
After Rickis left the condo, Hartford police asked Wethersfield police to
check on the well-being of a child there. According to court records,
Wethersfield officers went to the condo, confirmed the child was safe and
sleeping, but indeed alone, and also discovered, in plain view, a cache of pornographic movies, pictures and sex toys.
Rickis and Doustou insist the items were in drawers and a closet in their
bedroom, and that the search was illegal, an accusation Wethersfield Police
Chief John Karangekis denies.
Cardwell has notified the town of Wethersfield that he intends to file a lawsuit over the search, and has moved to suppress the evidence as part of
the couple's defense in the risk-of-injury case.
