Walking slowly, desperately hoping to reach a nearby school, the New York City Police Department veteran with 43 years on the job did his best not to fall down.

Out of the darkness someone had handed him a moist towel to help him breathe.

Photo by Angela Datre

During a lengthy and exceptionally candid recent interview with the Press, Dale admitted to being scared, even “petrified,” yet like so many other brave first responders on the scene that day, he stuck it out, both accepting and giving orders—orders that undoubtedly helped save lives.

Sept. 11, 2001 was a defining and life-changing moment for the now-63-year-old, he says, and has forever shaped his outlook on life and the way in which he handles his job—which since his December 2011 appointment by Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, has been heading the Nassau County Police Department, an agency that for the past several years has been the subject of not only an unprecedented downsizing, but several high-profile scandals.

Dale has been charged with cleaning up the mess.

“I almost died that day and I felt a lot different toward people after that day,” he confides, following a pause. “I saw tragedy that day and I saw people working with one another that I had never seen in my lifetime. The entire city, the entire Island, the entire United States—we worked together,” he recalls.

As much as a team player the former NYPD chief of personnel is, Dale’s not afraid to go it alone, something he’s had to do since nearly his first day at the helm—whether in front of the county legislature defending Mangano’s controversial plan to shutter half its precincts (to jeers from even “people who worked for me,” he says), or taking it upon himself last month to travel upstate to personally inform 21-year-old Hofstra University student Andrea Rebello’s parents that their daughter was accidentally killed by one of his officers May 17.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says of his visit to Tarrytown. “I’m the head guy. I thought that’s what a man should do.”

“The investigation is going on as we speak,” he continues, “we’re not finished with it. Every time there is a shooting we want to go through the procedure: Can we do something not to shoot? Can we make it better? This one is more exaggerated because of the seriousness of it and you always try to find if there is something we can do better.”

“Doing better” could be the mission statement of Dale’s administration thus far. Almost immediately upon his appointment he’d been thrust into the hot seat.

Dale was tapped shortly after New York State Inspector General Ellen Biben issued a report on the department’s troubled crime lab, which in 2010 became the only such laboratory in the nation to be put on probation following a scathing accreditation agency inspection report that November highlighting 26 areas of noncompliance with universally accepted standards. (It’s still closed and officials at the time had put the cost for outside testing and analysis of narcotics, blood and ballistics at $100,000 per month.)

“When I got here I found a lot of problems that I don’t think people thought about when they said, ‘Just close the lab,’” he says. “We are the people that bring the product in. We bring the evidence in here every day, the fingerprints, the blood sample, DNA. These are the other things. What are we going to do with it if we don’t have a lab to deal with it? Who do we give it to? There was no one to give it to.”

Dale appointed his new deputy commissioner to deal with “this very complicated issue.”

His goal is to have the lab completely outside the purview of the police department.

“It just doesn’t make sense anymore,” he says, “why have officers in there? You can have civilians who went to school for that. Put a sergeant in there and the sergeant gets promoted. I have an evidence management team that has set up a report every month on every piece of evidence.”

Dale hopes to stop sending out their evidence to numerous different places including Pennsylvania, Westchester and Texas, and to set up a complete lab in the county medical examiner’s office.

Three months on the job, Dale had to handle a different type of scandal. A March 31, 2011 Press investigation into the department and nonprofit Nassau County Police Department Foundation had resulted in a probe by the Nassau District Attorney’s Office and the indictment of three of the county’s top former cops a year later for their roles in covering up a burglary committed by a wealthy foundation donor’s son.

Former Nassau Police Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan was convicted of conspiracy and official misconduct this February. Ex-Deputy Chief of Patrol John Hunter pleaded guilty last month to the same charges. Retired Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe’s next court date is June 26.

After reading our series and subsequent agency reports, Dale was swift with his response.

“I realized I could do some things right away,” he says. “So one thing was they [foundation members and donors] all have these special ID cards. I asked them and they agreed from now on everybody has the same ID card. We do have a lot of civilians with ID cards. We have an Explorer board that have ID cards, we have a foundation board, we have some honorary surgeons that we deal with. A lot of people who have ID cards, but I want everybody’s to be the same so there’s no one special.”

In addition to the police IDs the members had police shields, though putting the kibosh on those wasn’t going to be that easy.

“I can’t tell them not to buy a shield,” he explains. “I don’t give them a shield, they buy it themselves. I can’t stop it. I said, ‘Guys, you should not be showing them, that’s not appropriate.’”

Dale did “immediately” cancel a department-wide order requesting officers verify foundation membership, however.

“We revoked that order immediately,” he says, adding that the group’s members no longer have free access into police headquarters, nor an office there, as was the situation under his predecessor former Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey (who retired the following day of our series’ first installment). Dale closed that down, too.

After researching other foundations, Dale says he told members that there had to be a separation between him and the organization. Regarding the larger issue of monetary donations often coming with strings attached, Dale says:

“There are two ways that we are approaching it. One way is basically what has happened, which scared the pants off of most everybody here. The other way is internally. What I do now is every day I read every complaint that comes in. If someone makes a complaint anywhere—Internet, any government office, or through us—I get it and I read it. I get briefed from our internal affairs on a lot of the cases that were always handled out there. Now they are not handled by them, they are handled by me.”

As a result of his changes, Dale believes that “the guys out there on the street know that I mean business. These were very serious cases that I have been dealing with since I got here. Can I ever prevent somebody not to call up somebody? I told them, I met them in person and spoke to them—man to man, woman to woman—‘If you do this, you’re going to get in trouble.’”

“I have to do everything in my power to prevent that, but it’s a very difficult thing to prevent, very difficult. It would be naïve to say it would never happen again.”

Dale says one of his goals was to reinforce the authority of supervisors. Prior to his taking office, he said the route was a cop would go to the union, who would go to the government and do an end-run around their supervisors, leaving those supervisors without any authority. He was able, he says, to get a “bill passed where I am in charge of discipline.” Now, when a cop is put on disciplinary probation, a supervisor can write them up and they may be terminated. “I have empowered the sergeants and lieutenants. They had no power before—I needed to empower my bosses.”

“They weren’t being supported so I’ve supported them,” he continues. “Now they know when they do something they’re going to have to pay the price. I’m not looking to fire anybody. I’m looking to just maintain discipline. We don’t have enough people to go around firing everybody, that’s just crazy. Everybody is saying, ‘He is firing everybody.’ I’m not firing everybody that comes before me. You don’t have to agree to with what I said. You can go to trial. You can do this you can do that. They don’t want to go to trial.”

The department, according to numerous sources, had become lax when it came to discipline. Dale said his job was to turn that around. He said while he couldn’t discuss specific cases, “I have been strict.” He added that “A couple of people have been terminated.”

Some of the cases he has dealt with, he says, include an officer shoplifting, officers using internal records to run plates for friends, officers involved in the Jo’Anna Bird domestic violence murder case and several “Romeo” cases, whereby officers were involved with women while on the job.

“There was some pretty serious stuff,” he says.

Dale’s been spearheading the internal housecleaning while also keeping his eye on what he says is his main priority: crime. That is no easy task with a depleted department and a shortage of cops.

“Crime is our number-one issue and I think the best way to attack it is to be smart, as we don’t have the personnel,” he says.

Doing more with less has become a major challenge for Dale. He believes the biggest difference between Nassau County and New York City police departments is “we don’t have enough people.”

The city can direct personnel to problem areas, whereas Nassau doesn’t have the manpower to do so, he explains.

“We don’t have that luxury,” he says. “We have to do it with intelligence policing that we developed to try to be smarter with what we got.”

“Omnipresence is our goal but we are so short right now,” he adds. “I am hoping as time goes by and things get better and we start hiring a little bit more, I think it will get better. I know it will get better. I know it’s getting better.”

The grandfather of four doesn’t know how long he will keep working, but one thing he is sure of: “In 1970 my first day on the police department I got up and I had like a fire in my belly and now at 63 years old I still feel the same thing when I go to work.”

When that feeling stops, he stops, he says.

“Now I’m in a position where I can do something some really good things,” he says. “I’ve seen so much, I could use all that experience, and I really try to do that in Nassau County. I have family here, I pay taxes like everybody else and I want to make sure that we get a good product.”

Dale thinks back to that tragic day in September 2001 for inspiration and guidance.

“There was no crime, we were working for a purpose, together, and I’ve accepted that into my own life,” he says. “That is the way we should be all the time.”

He has the towel the stranger handed him during those darkest of hours to prove it.

CROOKED IN HQ: Former Second Deputy Nassau Police Commissioner William Flanagan, convicted of conspiring to cover up a burglary, faced a press swarm after his arrest in March 2012.
(Photo by Rashed Mian/Long Island Press)

After about five frustrated days of jury deliberations, Judge Mark Cohen was preparing to declare a mistrial in the cover-up case against an ex-Nassau County police brass member when a court officer handed him a note: The jurors had reached a verdict.

With the clock running out, two jurors and Cohen—a Suffolk judge brought in after two Nassau judges had recused themselves last year—were about to go on vacation, threatening to nullify the month-long trial. Shortly before 8 p.m. a hush fell over the small crowd at Nassau court in Mineola on Feb. 15 as the jury foreman read the verdict. William Flanagan, the retired second deputy Nassau police commissioner, readily looked on.

He was found guilty of conspiracy, a misdemeanor, and not guilty of receiving reward for official misconduct, a felony, after being convicted of two misdemeanor official misconduct counts on Valentine’s Day.

“This isn’t over,” Flanagan calmly told reporters outside the courtroom.

It was his first public statement since he’d given a round of interviews following his March 2012 arrest—prosecutors had unsuccessfully tried to use those quotes as evidence since he never took the stand.

“We’re very disappointed that the jury mistakenly convicted him of the misdemeanor,” said Bruce Barket, Flanagan’s Garden City-based attorney, who vowed to appeal. “They exonerated him of the most serious charge. The appellate court will take care of the rest.”

District Attorney Kathleen Rice, the top-elected Democrat seeking re-election in Republican-controlled Nassau, now faces strained relations with the police agency her prosecutors work closest with after she took down its disgraced ex-third top cop, sources in both departments say. As two of Flanagan’s alleged co-conspirators await trial—the highest-ranking of the brass to do so after an especially scandalous year for Nassau cops—Rice echoed a Press expose that had sparked Flanagan’s arrest and conviction.

“This case has always been about making sure that there isn’t one set of rules for the wealthy and connected, and another set for everyone else,” Rice said in a statement. “The jury validated our belief in that important principle.”

The scandal erupted five months after Bronx prosecutors accused 15 NYPD officers of fixing tickets in what some described as New York City’s biggest police favoritism case in a half-century. Those cops pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

As far as Long Island law enforcement cover-up scandals go, Flanagan’s conviction may be the most serious case since a New York State commission investigated widespread allegations of Suffolk County police corruption in the 1980s—assuming that discrepancies revealed at the now-shuttered Nassau police crime lab were just mistakes and not acts intended to sway cases.

UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR:
Gary Parker, a CPA from Merrick who asked his police friends’ for help quashing the arrest of his son, Zachary, was a star witness at Flanagan’s trial (Photo by Rashed Mian/Long Island Press)

Nassau jurors unanimously agreed that Flanagan had joined a conspiracy to return electronics stolen from John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore in May 2009 by then-17-year-old student Zachary Parker as a favor to Parker’s father, Gary, a donor to a nonprofit Nassau police foundation, who wanted to avoid Zach’s arrest. But, by acquitting Flanagan of taking three $100 Morton’s steakhouse gift cards from the Parkers as a reward for misconduct, jurors had doubted that there was a quid pro quo, apparently buying the defense argument that the two were friends who’d exchanged gifts before.

“We realized that it was a conspiracy from day one,” one juror told the Press the night of the verdict. “They did what they did. They can’t undo that.”

Now that the first of the conspiracy cases have wrapped, one nagging question persists: Why should a jaded public care?

CALLING SERPICO

For a case that required jurors to listen to 18 witnesses, hear dozens of emails read aloud and watch what observers estimated was a record number of sidebars over 12 days of testimony, there was at least some star appeal to spice things up.

Those who sat with Flanagan supporters were high-ranking current and former officials, including his old boss, retired Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, and Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), who told the Press: “Bill’s a good friend.” Gary Parker testified that Bill O’Reilly of Fox News Channel billed the Nassau County Police Foundation—a group fundraising for a new police academy the two donated to—for $600 worth of his Pinheads and Patriots books. Parker also testified he’d asked for Flanagan’s help while the ex-cop was securing the 2009 U.S. Golf Open at Bethpage State Park.

But, beyond the splashy celebrity lure, such cases can have a real chilling effect.

“There’s an old saying: Everybody does it,” says Peter Cardalena, a St. John’s University criminal justice professor, Floral Park-based attorney and retired NYPD officer. “We just let it roll off our backs. The public should be concerned.”

He recalls students telling him when they think they’ve been improperly stopped by police but rarely report the allegations to internal affairs investigators because they feel “nothing can be done.” Cardalena counters that police retraining is routinely ordered after misconduct claims are made—a sign such allegations are taken seriously.

Police Commissioner Thomas Dale—whose first task was closing half of eight precincts—was hired halfway through a 20-month period in which four cops died in the line of duty and oversaw a year in which a half dozen police employees were arrested. Last May he had the Nassau County Legislature grant him the power to fire officers as he sees fit without arbitration, although the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association is fighting that move in court.

Still, by all accounts, 2012 was the department’s worst year in recent memory. Aside from Flanagan’s two alleged co-conspirators—former Deputy Chief of Patrol John Hunter and retired Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe—ex-Nassau Police Officer Michael Tedesco pleaded not guilty in December to 109 charges alleging he spent shifts at his mistress’ house, police aide Frances Colvin pleaded not guilty to harassing a romantic rival, and another cop was sentenced in June to community service after admitting to shoplifting $40 of baby food. Inspector Thomas DePaola was also demoted for downgrading crime statistics in July.

Justin Hopson, a former New Jersey State Trooper who blew the whistle on corrupt cops and is the author of Breaking the Blue Wall: One Man’s War Against Police Corruption, says Dale will have to do more than fire bad apples to restore public trust in the department.

“Every act of police corruption needs to be unearthed, investigated properly and prosecuted,” he tells the Press, adding that Dale needs to “create a cultural sea change, one where the police police one another.”

Inspector Kenneth Lack, the department’s chief spokesman, declined to comment for this story. Rice’s office referred questions back to her statement.

From left: Retired Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe, ex-Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan and former Deputy Chief of Patrol John Hunter. Sharpe and Hunter had their cases severed from Flanagan’s and are awaiting trial.

OFFICE POLITICS

The difference in opinion between police and prosecutors over whether Flanagan should have ever been charged could be measured in the distance separating his supporters and the district attorney staffers seated on opposite sides of the courtroom during the trial.

How much that rift carries over into everyday inter-agency cooperation—or lack thereof—is open to debate, although observers agree that the internal politics is more an issue than the case’s potential impact when Rice’s re-election campaign ramps up later this year.

“My gut says the verdict has its own implications but it’s going to be like a tree falling in the forest—it’s not going to have any political implications,” says Jerry Kremer, a former state Assemblyman turned LI Democratic strategist.

Although representatives for the police and the prosecution declined to discuss the rift on the record, those close to the situation agree that there are fences in need of mending.

“I think there’s relationships that should be developed and made stronger…for the continued success of policing and prosecuting in Nassau County,” says James Carver, president of the Nassau PBA, which has supported Rice’s past campaigns.

Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli is confident that both sides will eventually bury the handcuffs.

“This is not the first person in a police force who’s been charged with a crime,” says Ciampoli. “This comes up in the course of business. It’s come up before; it’ll come up again. The professionals on both ends are working through it.”

In her statement the night of the verdict, Rice acknowledged that the case is a black eye for the beleaguered police department.

“This is a huge win for the public, but it’s also a sad day for an awful lot of incredibly hard-working Nassau cops who do their brave jobs honestly every day,” Rice’s statement reads. “This case is a reminder that to safeguard the public’s trust and the integrity of our honest officers, we must be vigilant in our fight against corruption and misconduct.”

Still, don’t expect the issue to spark any action in the halls of county government.

A spokesman for Presiding Officer Norma Gonsalves (R-East Meadow) says there are no proposals or public hearings in the county legislature stemming from the case. A spokeswoman for County Executive Ed Mangano did not respond to a request for comment.

The March 31, 2011 Press cover story “Membership Has Its Privileges” sparked an investigation by the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office that resulted in the felony conviction of Zachary Parker and the indictments of three ex-top cops.

JAIL CELL DOORS

Flanagan, who resigned following a year in which he was ranked LI’s highest-paid cop, is scheduled to be sentenced May 1. Misdemeanor convictions are punishable by up to a year in jail, although it’s doubtful he’ll serve much time—if any.

His co-defendants, Hunter and Sharpe, had their cases severed from Flanagan’s and they are due back in court March 15. Their attorneys declined to comment.

Zachary Parker, the burglar who was never arrested by police, pleaded guilty to charges in a grand jury indictment after prosecutors investigated the cover-up allegations in the Press. He’s serving up to three years in prison.

How many others like him whose cover-ups were never exposed we may never know.

Former Nassau County Police Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan faces conspiracy and official misconduct charges. He surrendered to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office March 1, 2012.

An ex-Nassau County police detective testified that the ex-commander who’s a defendant in an alleged cover-up case thanked him after the investigator returned stolen property without arresting the suspect who’s a police donor’s son.

Retired Seventh Squad Det. Bruce Coffey and two current Nassau police officials—his ex-partner, Det. Barry Franklin, and his old boss, Deputy Inspector Lorna Atmore—took the stand last week in the trial of William Flanagan, the former second deputy police commissioner.

“We’re getting calls from pretty high up about this case,” Coffey said one of his bosses, retired Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe—Flanagan’s co-defendant, who’s case has been severed—told him. But, Coffey testified, the brass wanted the charges dropped: “They weren’t looking for an arrest.”

Flanagan has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and misconduct charges along with Sharpe and former Deputy Chief of Patrol John Hunter, who’s also slated to be tried separately. Coffey, who’s cooperating as a witness to avoid prosecution, testified Hunter leaned on Sharpe to have Coffey get the charges dropped.

The allegedly quashed case was that of Zachary Parker, a former student at Bellmore’s John F. Kennedy High School, who admitted last year to burglarizing his alma mater in 2009 and is serving prison time for the $11,000 in thefts. His father, Gary, was a friend of Hunter and Flanagan as well as a director of a Nassau police nonprofit. The Press exposed the alleged cover-up in March 2011.

“You didn’t order an arrest…because the school was ambivalent, is that correct?” Bruce Barket, Flanagan’s attorney, asked Atmore, Coffey’s then-supervisor. She agreed, adding that it was “not unusual” for schools to take an initial wait-and-see approach on arresting students.

Atmore testified that the day the report came in she learned Parker was a well-connected suspect who she believed would “very likely” be arrested and reported the case to the Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) because he worked in the department’s Emergency Ambulance Bureau.

“I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to get involved,” she testified of her desire to avoid a case involving a suspect who’s dad is friends with some of her bosses. “I’m thinking this is a good thing, my detectives aren’t going to be responsible for dealing with this mess.”

Her relief was short-lived. Atmore said the same day she called IAU, Hunter called her back and “said that the Seventh Squad was keeping the case.” She said “It was odd and it was weird and I was trying to figure out what his relation was,” because as a patrol commander, Hunter wasn’t generally involved in detectives’ investigations.

Atmore obeyed the order, but transferred the case to Coffey after pulling it from his partner, Franklin, who originally was assigned the case. She was promoted out of the squad days later, leaving Sharpe in charge as commanding officer.

“How many other cases you were assigned were taken away from you and assigned to another detective?” Assistant District Attorney Cristiana McSloy asked Franklin, who replied, “none.”

Franklin said he didn’t properly log in as evidence the two stolen laptops and projector because it was another detective’s case and that it also hadn’t been logged in by the Fifth Precinct, where Zachary Parker’s friend originally turned some of the stolen proerty in.

Coffey said he was “conflicted” about asking the school’s principal, Lorraine Poppe, to drop the charges when they met shortly after the theft. So he went through the motions of interviewing, but not taking sworn statements from witnesses—and never asked for videotape of Parker fleeing the scene the night of the burglary.

“She was very adamant about wanting him to be arrested,” Coffey testified. “It wasn’t the time to do it. I had to show her some respect.”

Also revealed at trial was that another detective had tried to get Poppe to sign a form indicating she wanted to drop the charges a month after the theft, but she refused. Coffey eventually had Poppe sign a form accepting the property Sept. 1, 2009, but she again refused to sign the form dropping the charges, he testified.

Later that fall at a retirement party, “I was sitting down at a table, [Deputy] Commissioner Flanagan came up, shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you,’” Coffey testified.

“I thought it was obviously for the John F. Kennedy case,” he said, “for handling the return of the property.”

When it was Coffey’s turn to retire in October 2010, he said he wrote a memo to close out the Parker theft case indicating that Poppe did not want the suspect arrested—a fact he testified he knew to be untrue.

The detectives’ testimony came after Gary Parker testified for four days last week. Barket asked Parker’s feeling Thursday about how his son blew his chance at probation in the burglary and unrelated drug and traffic cases, landing himself in prison instead of college.

“In hindsight, wouldn’t it be fair to say your son should have been arrested in May 2009?” Barket asked. “Yes,” Parker said after a pause.

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), who Parker testified attended one of many police dinners he paid for, sat with Flanagan’s supporters Friday. “Bill’s an old friend,” King told the Press outside the courtroom. “I worked closely with him on homeland security issues.”

THE ACCUSED: (L-R) Retired Nassau County Police Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe, former Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan and former Deputy Chief of Patrol John Hunter are charged with covering up a burglary at JFK High School in Bellmore to protect the son of a wealthy police benefactor from arrest.

On May 19, 2009, Nassau County’s Seventh Police Precinct received a report of a break in at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore. More than $3,000 worth of electronic equipment was stolen from its auditorium.

The case appeared open-and-shut: Surveillance video caught a student near the auditorium afterhours during the exact time of the theft. School employees reported witnessing the same student attempting to gain access to a restricted area at the school. An acquaintance of the student surrendered some of the stolen goods to the police, telling authorities his friend had given them to him.

Yet despite the compelling evidence, three independent sources within the Nassau County Police Department with privileged knowledge of the case’s inner details—who spoke with the Press on the condition of anonymity because they are barred from commenting on ongoing investigations—tell the Press the student, though identified, was never arrested. His father is a business associate of a little-known nonprofit organization called the Nassau County Police Department Foundation.

It’s no coincidence, the Press has learned. Internal police documents reviewed by the Press and interviews with more than a dozen current and former active and retired police officers, detectives and senior Nassau police officials outline a program that could reward the group’s members through preferential treatment that experts classify as questionable and unethical at best; pushing the limits of the very laws they were sworn to enforce at worst.

That was the lede of the Press’ March 31, 2011 cover story “Membership Has Its Privileges: Is the NCPD Selling Preferential Treatment?”

Without naming Nassau County Police Department (NCPD) benefactor Gary Parker or his son Zachary, the story detailed how the felony investigation into thefts at the school perpetrated by the latter was quashed, allegedly due to his father’s cozy relationship with members of the department’s top brass.

The March 31, 2011 Press cover story “Membership Has Its Privileges” sparked an investigation by the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office the resulted in the felony conviction of Zachary Parker and the indictments of three ex-top cops.

The article sparked a criminal investigation into the thefts by the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, which resulted in grand jury indictments against the younger Parker on three felony counts in Oct. 2011: burglary, grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. He pled guilty to the burglary and was ordered to pay nearly $4,000 for equipment never returned.

It also sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in a 10-count indictment naming NCPD’s third-highest-ranking official, former Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan, along with retired Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe and former Deputy Chief of Patrol John Hunter on conspiracy and official misconduct charges. Flanagan was additionally charged with receiving reward for official misconduct in the second degree, a felony. Sharpe was additionally charged with offering a false instrument for filing. They all face prison terms if convicted.

Flanagan and Hunter retired less than 24 hours of turning themselves in to investigators shortly after sunrise on March 1, 2012; Sharpe had retired less than two months prior. Collectively their annual salaries totaled more than $540,000; their pensions remain intact despite the charges.

Flanagan, Hunter and Sharpe’s defense attorneys—Bruce A. Barket, William Petrillo and Anthony Grandinette, respectively—have contended their clients have done nothing wrong and a judge has granted them separate trials.

Flanagan told reporters the courtesies given to his friend Gary’s family were the same he’d afford any other member of the public. His trial began Jan. 15.

News of the indictments has been covered by nearly every media outlet in the region. The allegations strike at the heart of what public law enforcement servants are mandated and take an oath to do: serve and protect the citizenry and enforce its laws.

“[Flanagan] violated his oath to uphold the laws of the State of New York,” Assistant District Attorney Cristiana McSloy told jurors in her opening statement, adding that Gary Parker “literally bought access to the police department” with dinners, sporting events and other gifts.

What hasn’t been fully reported, however, are the complete details of what exactly went on behind the closed doors of Nassau County’s Finest in the hours, days and months following the May 18, 2009 break-in—and why despite the surveillance footage, admission by the perpetrator’s parents of their son’s thefts and a signed statement from the school’s principal calling for the student’s arrest, he remained free until our story.

The latest trial testimony fills in many of those blanks, along with providing new details and insights into the motives of the three former police officials and the culture existing within the department that enabled such events to transpire in the first place. It also raises more questions concerning the involvement other department higher-ups may have had in the alleged cover-up.

We now know, for example, that after reading the Press story, Gary Parker “panicked” and began deleting the many emails he had with Flanagan. Prosecutors contend the then-top cop did the same, and in those correspondences, he referred to Parker as “family.” We also know a bit more about the lavish dinners enjoyed by Nassau police’s top brass at top restaurants across Long Island and Manhattan, compliments of Parker, who testified the bills ranged from the hundreds to more than $1,200 each and were attended by not only Flanagan and Hunter, but also former Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, and on at least one occasion, popular Fox News Channel cable TV host Bill O’Reilly. We also have, again from the mouth of Parker himself, descriptions of the police identification cards and “gold” badges doled out to foundation members—still a bone of contention with Nassau Police Benevolent Association President James Carver.

“When our guys pull over someone and they pull out an ID issued from one of these organizations they take a step back and don’t want to get themselves into any type of discipline,” he says. “They are afraid of taking some kind of action.”

“They shouldn’t have the shields,” blasts Carver. “That is the bottom line. If are doing it for the good of their heart, there is really no reason to issue somebody a shield, bottom line.”

Nassau Assistant District Attorney
Cristiana McSloy, in her opening statement at
former Nassau Second Deputy Commissioner
William Flanagan’s conspiracy trial Jan. 15

Regardless of what the jury finds, a Press examination of these latest revelations, court filings, recovered email correspondence between Gary Parker and the trio cited in the indictments and read aloud in court, police records, interviews with more than a dozen current and former NCPD officials, prosecutors, defense attorneys and reporting by this publication and others together paint, at the minimum, an indisputable portrait of how sworn members of the agency charged with protecting its citizenry and upholding its laws did everything in their power to protect and serve the interests of this wealthy police benefactor and friend.

Flanagan and Barket aren’t necessarily denying this, but arguing that all they were doing was returning stolen property to a crime victim, which they say is a core part of the police’s job. The gifts were coincidental, they contend. Prosecutors believe those actions (and inactions, namely the non-arrest of Zachary Parker) were criminal.

Our analysis identifies several key details jurors unfortunately won’t get to hear while weighing their decision, including profound discrepancies between prior statements of the defense, witness testimony and documented facts within the paper trail. So too does it uncover continued lapses in transparency regarding the public/private partnership that is the nonprofit police foundation.

The public would not know about any of these things, however, were it not for the unfortunate misdeeds of Zachary Parker—or our disclosure of a March 2010 internal police department-wide memo stating foundation members were to be treated differently should police personnel come across them during their regular duties.

Though prosecutors recently informed jurors Zachary Parker wouldn’t be testifying (he’s currently incarcerated at Lakeview Shock Incarceration in Brocton, NY following a slew of additional criminal charges, some still pending, since his burglary bust), his significance was not lost on the proceedings.

“You’re not going to see him in the courtroom, but his presence is everywhere,” said Nassau County Assistant District Attorney Cristiana McSloy.

Who was this troubled young man? Why didn’t the police ever arrest him? And just how high up does this scandal reach?

NABBED: Zachary Parker (L), whose father’s relationship with former top members of the Nassau County Police Department are at the heart of an ongoing conspiracy trial, shuns reporters as he departs Nassau County Court. He pleaded guilty to burglarizing JFK High School after a Press article sparked his arrest. (Rashed Mian/Long Island Press)

CAUGHT ON TAPE

When JFK High School Principal Lorraine Poppe learned the school’s projector was missing May 19, 2009, she believed she knew exactly who’d taken it: Zachary Parker, a senior at the time who had already been banned from school grounds without supervision afterhours due to several prior incidents regarding missing equipment.

When she gave a statement to Nassau’s Seventh Precinct to report its theft, she told Police Officer Samantha Sullivan as much. Sullivan initially jotted down Parker’s name on the ensuing police report then crossed it off because she wanted to keep the document objective for the investigating detectives, she testified. Additionally, a custodian saw Zachary in the area “trying to gain access to the area where the projector was being used,” she added.

JFK’s former assistant principal William Brennen testified he saw Parker on school surveillance video afterhours while he was banned “carrying a satchel containing something of a relative size to a projector.”

Brennen, who was in the school’s coaches’ offices the night of the projector theft, said those surveillance cameras were installed because of the prior thefts. He also saw Parker’s car in the back of the school and watched him enter through its gym entrance doors facing the football field. Brennen waited for Parker to exit the same doors after trying to keep an eye on him from afar, but Parker exited another set of doors unexpectedly, though was still caught on camera.

Jonathan Dell’Olio, dean of students, a coach, and 15-year English teacher at the school, testified that he had taken Parker under his wing and that “Zach and I knew each other well.”

He described Parker as “an integral part of setting up and breaking down school events.”

Zachary Parker (Broward County Sheriff’s Dept.)

“[Zachary] earned the trust of the custodial staff, the athletic coordinator…he would be allowed to go fetch things that would be necessary to make the production work” until Brennen informed him of the afterhours ban, said Dell’Olio. “Zach was apart of most conversations dealing with technology because he was very good at it” and in turn knew where the cameras were placed after the thefts started—all outside, none inside, but with “some dead areas.”

The night of the theft he heard a custodian over Walkie-Talkies asking to allow “Zach” to the second floor and spied from afar, the dean continued. “I wanted to see what Zach was up to without him noticing me,” he said. After seeing Parker with a backpack walking toward the auditorium, he tried to intercept him, but he’d gone out a side exit. The next morning at 7:30 a.m., Brennen was in his office with IT aide Donna Hanna, who said the projector was missing. He told her about Parker’s visit the night before, informed Poppe and “then we went to the videotape.”

The police never viewed nor asked to view the surveillance tape, nor interview the eyewitness school personnel.

Parker, 18 years old at the time of the May 2009 break-in, had made no secret of his desire for expensive new sound equipment to add to his DJ rig. It was, in fact, evident to anyone who’d ever viewed his MySpace profile page, where Parker stated under his moniker “DJZeeMac” that he’d started spinning at camp in 2004, DJed sports events for JFK High School and boasted that he “was just recently employed by Nassau County Section 8 Sports to DJ all their postseason sporting events.”

“On my wish list as of now are a set of Mackie speakers, Xone 92 mixer, Denon CD deck, and the PCDJ DAC-3 controller (and flight case for it all to go into), all which’ll probably total up to about $2g’s,” he wrote.

Three days after the May 18 burglary, Zachary showed up at his friend Lothar Keller’s apartment in Franklin Square—his then-girlfriend also lived there. Earlier that month Parker had brought Keller a Dell laptop that he sold for $350. This time, Parker brought three more laptops and a projector.

“He just slapped ’em down on the table and said, ‘Look what I have,’” Keller told jurors.

The 24-year-old self-professed “gutterman” testified that later that day, while driving Zachary around, his father, Gary, called his son and was “bugging out on him,” so he dropped Zachary off at home. On the way back to his apartment, Keller got a call on his cell phone from “Dr. Jones”—Zachary Parker’s nickname. But it was Gary Parker on the other end.

Gary, partner at Manhattan-based Spielman Koenigsberg & Parker LLP Certified Public Accountants and an avid boater, states his company bio, was “a bit of a police buff,” according to ADA McSloy. He testified Jan. 29 that he’d been involved in police benevolence activities since the late 1980s, early 1990s, helping obtain nonprofit status for the Police Foundation of Nassau County—a group that had its nonprofit status revoked for failure to file required tax documents with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and was separate from the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, former Commissioner Mulvey’s brainchild.

The elder Parker wined and dined Flanagan, Hunter and other Nassau police brass with “lunches and dinners”—totaling more than $17,000, according to a source close to the District Attorney’s Office investigation—and other gifts, charge court documents. He testified Jan. 28 about the meals—ranging from seafood and pasta smorgasbords at Uncle Bacala’s in New Hyde Park to top cuts of sirloin at Morton’s in Great Neck and Manhattan’s upscale Sparks Steak House—yet couldn’t recall who exactly attended a slew of feasts at Bacala’s. Flanagan, Hunter and Mulvey also attended barbeques at his house, he testified.

“He was screaming at me that I was in possession of stolen property, that I would be hearing from the police,” Keller said of his friend’s dad.

After he hung up, Keller called the person he’d sold the Dell laptop to, and then called the police, he testified, telling jurors he went to the Fifth Precinct with all the gear Zachary had given him to try and avoid “getting in trouble.” The clerk looked baffled when Keller told her it was all stolen property, he said, and was then interviewed by an officer.

“I told him that I had gotten all of these electronics from this kid Zachary Parker,” he said. “I didn’t want any part of it.” Keller signed a sworn statement and went home.

It wasn’t the last time his association with Parker would bring him trouble with the law, Keller testified.

Later that summer, Keller was cruising along in Parker’s car after they’d just finished smoking marijuana when a state trooper stopped them for speeding on Ocean Parkway.

Keller swallowed the remainder of their joint as the trooper approached, but testified that he and his friend ultimately had nothing to fear, because when Parker pulled out his license, the cop saw his “gold” badge in his wallet and said, “Have a good day.”

Zachary Parker had a history of getting out of trouble that any other person would not, court documents, deleted emails and testimony reveal.

Former Nassau County Police Department Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan surrendered to the Nassau District Attorney’s Office March 1, 2012 to face conspiracy and official misconduct charges stemming from his alleged involvement in quashing the arrest of a police benefactor’s son.

PAPER TRAIL

Hunter, formerly the commander of the Highway Patrol Bureau and a close personal friend of Zachary’s father Gary, was “instrumental” in getting him out of multiple moving violations, state court documents—evident by the fact his license plate had been run by police at least 20 times yet he never received a citation, according to law enforcement sources close to the case.

He was also instrumental, say court filings, in getting Zachary a job within the police department in its Emergency Ambulance Bureau, a position created solely for him. Parker was 16 when he was hired by the NCPD.

Gary Parker testified that in August 2008 he and Hunter spoke about somehow getting Zachary a uniform. Parker’s hire had to be signed off by the NCPD, Nassau’s Office of Management and Budget and the County Executive’s office, according to the police department’s head of public information, Inspector Kenneth Lack. Parker further testified he reached out to another friend—the husband of Mulvey’s secretary—to help land his son the job.

“I asked a friend of mine…to help get my son a job’ with Nassau County Police Department,” he said. “I wanted him to get a part-time job…he wanted to become an EMT, it’s an area he likes and I thought it would be good experience.”

“He was a friend,” Parker testified, of Hunter.

Hunter helped get Zachary a ride-a-long, Gary testified, and the pair’s friendship was so strong, contends court documents, that Hunter even provided Parker with a police generator during a blackout.

It’s no surprise then, that when Hunter—who Gary Parker acknowledged to prosecutors attended annual barbeques at the Parker home and dinners at restaurants on Gary’s dime—learned of the complaint regarding Zachary, broke the normal chain of command for such investigations and inserted himself into the matter to prevent arrest, contends McSloy.

Since Zachary was a department employee, when the commander of the Seventh Precinct Detective Squad received the initial report from Poppe, the head of the squad, in accordance with proper protocol, referred the matter to the NCPD Internal Affairs Unit (IAU).

Yet “within a day,” Hunter, who was not in the detective squad chain of command, “called the squad commander to let her know that IAU would not be investigating the matter despite the suspect’s employment with the department,” say the filings, despite having “no supervisory authority over either the squad or IAU.” Hunter also requested “that he be kept informed of the status of the felony investigation,” contend prosecutors.

The police commissioner is routinely briefed by internal affairs, according to Lack, who was also named by Parker as an attendee at a $2,346.47 feast at Spark’s, alongside Flanagan, Mulvey and others.

On May 22, Gary received a call and invitation from Sharpe to come to the Seventh Precinct and talk about his son, he testified. Sharpe showed him the equipment dropped off by Keller and informed him his son was a suspect—one computer actually having “ZeeMac” scrawled across it in marker. Parker admitted his son’s guilt, he said, and name-dropped a few people he knew at NCPD, though told the jury he didn’t recall who he mentioned.

Sharpe didn’t take an official statement nor voucher the stolen merchandise, which is typical police procedure in any investigation, and instead suggested Parker visit Poppe. (Sharpe’s also accused of entering the department’s computer system and falsely stating that Poppe did not want Zachary arrested for the thefts.)

“I told [Gary] that I was disappointed in his son,” testified the principal. “I told him the plan was to have Zachary arrested.”

She also told him Zachary would be suspended, banned from attending the prom, senior events and graduation. The next day, Parker asked Hunter to meet at Colony Diner in East Meadow and returned his son’s NCPD identification and uniform.

Parker told Hunter he was trying to work with the school, he testified, and “in passing” told him to “put in a good word” with Sharpe. They hugged each other before leaving.

Later that week Parker bought his son a same-day ticket to visit his grandparents in Florida and Hunter, in a recovered email, wrote him “Anything I can do to help, let me know.”

Gary, in another deleted emailed to Hunter at the end of the month, requested the squad “lay low,” states the documents, to which the deputy chief assured him he would “make sure that is done” and then made arrangements to return the property to the school.

“Thank you for being a great person and friend,” replied Parker.

“[A]s you taught me that is what friends are for!” answered Hunter.

Hunter also reached out to a nephew of Poppe’s who was a NCPD canine officer and asked he help get the principal to drop the charges. He refused.

So did Poppe, multiple times, despite not only repeated attempts through May and June by police detectives directed by Hunter and Sharpe to have her sign a withdrawal of prosecution form, emails, court filings and testimony show—but also an intimidating visit at 1 a.m. by one of Barket’s investigators, a tidbit Barket convinced the judge not to allow jurors to hear.

“We wanted to have Zachary arrested,” she told jurors Jan. 22, noting that the detectives who repeatedly tried to get her to withdraw charges “never asked me for a copy of the video.”

Parker then reached out to another friend, then-sergeant in the NCPD’s Asset Forfeiture Unit and a close friend of then-Commissioner Mulvey, William Flanagan.

Or as Parker called him at the time, “Bill.”

“BILL”

RECOVERED: Excerpts from retrieved emails between wealthy Nassau County Police Department benefactor Gary Parker and former Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan, deleted following a March 31, 2011 Press expose.

Despite repeated questioning by prosecutors, Parker insisted he could not for the life of him remember when or how he met Flanagan, or how frequently he and other top police brass, such as former commissioner Mulvey, attended his dinner gatherings.

The judge denied a request by ADA Bernadette Ford for Parker to be recognized as a hostile witness for his forgetfulness; his memory miraculously returning upon his cross-examination by Barket the following day.

Parker did state that he was on a first-name basis with Flanagan by May 2009—though court testimony and recovered emails between the two suggest a much closer relationship with the former deputy commissioner and other top police brass.

Just days before the May 18, 2009 JFK High School theft, for example, Parker offered Flanagan via another deleted email Yankees tickets and access to an “outdoor seating area…custom designed with 1,300 cushioned seats with padded backs that offer an extraordinary stadium experience.” That emailed offer, the filing states, also noted that Flanagan would have “access to the Terrace Level Outdoor Suite Lounge, a separate climate-controlled indoor environment that offers a multitude of exclusive perks, including access to private restrooms, high-definition TVs, a variety of menu options, and a four-sided cocktail bar that delivers an exceptional selection of beverages.”

Parker sent a similar email to then-Police Commissioner Mulvey and current first deputy commissioner Thomas Krumpter and, too, leaving the tickets in an envelope for Flanagan at the Seventh Precinct, he said—describing them as “lousy seats” to prosecutors during direct examination.

The revelations kneecap Barket’s prior adamant assertions to the press that his client didn’t even know Gary Parker at the time of his son’s May 18, 2009 theft.

“It is to some degree mindboggling why it is Deputy Commissioner Flanagan was charged at all,” he professed to reporters outside the courtroom on the morning of their indictment March 1. “He did not even know Zachary Parker or Gary Parker on the date of the crime. He literally had nothing at all to do with the decision to arrest or not arrest Mr. Parker in May of 2009.”

“My client did not know Gary Parker or Zachary Parker at the time of the commission of this crime,” he repeated. “He had no role in whether or not Mr. Parker should be arrested or should not be arrested in May of 2009.

After that, well after that, they became acquainted, they are friends, they socialized together, they go to dinner together, their wives have met, they’ve been to each others’ house. Because they met and liked each other. I think they met at a golf tournament.

“If it weren’t for golf tournaments I wouldn’t have any friends at all,” he joked when a reporter asked if their relationship at seemed at least a little conspicuous.

“Honest to God, I didn’t follow your reasoning,” he insisted. “Is it suspicious that individuals make friends and that police officers have friends and that deputy commissioners have friends? No.”

It’s what sworn police officers and deputy commissioners do for those “friends,” and what those “friends” do in return, that has prosecutors sounding the alarm.

Former Nassau County Police Department Second Deputy Commissioner William Flanagan inside Nassau County Court in January.

Following Hunter and Sharpe’s failed attempts to return the stolen equipment to JFK and Poppe’s repeated resistance to signing a withdrawal of prosecution, Parker met with Flanagan, according to his testimony, while Flanagan provided security for the Bethpage U.S. Golf Open June 18 and asked him for advice.

“I understood that he had a close relationship with the police commissioner,” he told prosecutors, describing as his logic: “When the school got the property back the matter would be closed.”

“He was undertaking something on his own,” Parker said of Flanagan.

ADA Bernadette Ford had Parker read aloud for jurors a July 16 email he sent to Flanagan that prosecutors recovered after Parker deleted it—a heartfelt thank-you to Flanagan.

“Just the fact that you’re stepping up to the plate is appreciated,” he read. “I certainly realize that they [JFK] hold all the cards.”

“What did you want William Flanagan to do when you wrote this email?” Ford asked. “I’m not really quite sure,” he replied.

Flanagan emailed Parker June 23 that he had “put pieces in motion,” and according to court documents, “made numerous attempts to get the stolen property returned to the school…despite the school’s insistence several days earlier that it would not withdraw criminal charges against Parker’s son.

In another email in mid-August, Flanagan told Parker he had “stayed in contact with the squad supervisor” and that the squad supervisor was “aware of the importance” of getting the stolen property returned, says court documents, and in another assured him “it’ll happen.”

In early September, Flanagan informed Parker by email that the equipment was successfully returned—though Poppe still refused to sign a withdrawal of prosecution.

Ford has Parker read back his response and number of explanation points he included: “THANK YOU!!!!!!”

He also read and translated Flanagan’s response: “de nada family.”

Parker testified that the following day his wife sent two $100 Morton’s gift cards, a flashlight and a card to Flanagan, who replied that the gifts were “[o]ver the top” in a deleted email recovered by forensic technicians.

He also testified that Flanagan, who was promoted to deputy commissioner two weeks after their talk at the U.S. Open, asked Parker to join the foundation in spring or fall 2010. He served as a board member from March 2010 until his resignation on April 1, 2011, a day after the Press article’s publication—and immediately after discussing concerns that his son would be arrested with Flanagan and the nonprofit’s board. That prompting Flanagan to email him: “remember what I said, you’re family, we take care of our own.”

The same day, following calls from Krumpter, Flanagan, foundation board member and assistant commissioner Robert Codignotto and “maybe” Mulvey, he testified, he began cleansing his computer of emails to NCPD officials.

“I deleted them,” he said. “It was probably morally the wrong thing to do.”

Parker testified he’d received identification cards and a gold shield with a blue inset that read “Director” as a member of the group.

He also told prosecutors that a year after Flanagan helped get his son’s stolen equipment returned, the deputy commissioner asked him to help get him an early release of a Tag Heuer “Aqua Racer” watch at a wholesale rate; one of Parker’s clients being French luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), which includes the high-end watchmaker. Instead of paying for the uber-prestigious timepiece—which can cost several thousands dollars at retail and are heralded by Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Maria Sharapova, to name a few of the line’s celebrity “ambassadors.”

Parker testified he got it for $1,510.16—the 50-percent-off rate exclusive to the company’s friends and relatives program—sent it to Flanagan, and told him to write a check to the foundation as payment.

Time is something that his son Zachary has a good deal of now, and may have even more of in the near future, since he’s also facing drug-related charges in Florida.

A jury will decide whether Flanagan, Hunter and Sharpe receive time as well.

CLICK HERE FOR UPDATED STORY

Nassau County police arrested a Seaford man Wednesday for criminal possession of a weapon after they discovered a rifle in his car and several assault weapons at his home, police said.

Detectives said 29-year-old Jonathan Erler was driving a 2004 Subaru north on Seamens Neck Road when Asset Forfeiture Criminal Investigative Rapid Response Team officers stopped him for a traffic violation and found a Flint Lock Rifle in the back seat and marijuana inside the car.

After he was placed under arrest, CIRT task force detectives and the Arson Bomb Squad conducted a search of his Seamens Neck Road home where they recovered six assault weapons, five high-capacity ammunition clips, several Chinese throwing stars, two bullet proof vests, marijuana and concentrated cannabis, police said.

Erler was charged with criminal possession of marijuana, criminal possession of a controlled substance, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and six counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon.

Police did not immediately release arraignment information.

William Flanagan surrendered to Nassau County prosecutors in March.

A school principal and key witness sparred with a defense attorney who cross examined her Tuesday in the trial of an ex-Nassau County police commander accused of covering up a burglary for a friend.

Bruce Barkett, attorney for former second deputy commissioner William Flanagan, asked Lorraine Poppe, principal of Bellmore’s John F. Kennedy High School, about emails she sent in 2009 as well as conflicting testimony she gave to the grand jury and prosecutors.

“You thought the other event they didn’t need to know about?” Barkett asked Poppe of why she failed to tell prosecutors and grand jurors about one of two meetings with detectives involved in the case.

“I did not recall it,” Poppe said, conceding that she must have been nervous and that her memory was not perfect about events four years prior.

She repeatedly insisted that she never waivered in her request to have Zachary Parker, the son of wealthy police donor and Flanagan’s friend Gary Parker, arrested for stealing $11,000 in electronics from the school in 2009.

Flanagan and two other ex-supervisors being tried separately have pleaded not guilty to covering up the thefts. Zachary Parker pleaded guilty this year to the burglary and is serving prison time after the alleged cover-up was exposed.

“I thought I was being stonewalled and I thought the police department was trying to bury the case,” Poppe told Assistant District Attorney Bernadette Ford during direct examination. “As a [school] district, we do not want to treat wealthy kids different than not so wealthy kids.”

Barkett also questioned Poppe about an email she sent to a detective involved in the case in May 2009 saying she wanted police to put everything “on hold.” Poppe said she wrote that because she needed the school district’s authorization before requesting a student’s arrest and she wanted to determine if Zachary Parker had more stolen property in his possession.

“I wasn’t giving [the detective] an alternative, I was informing him I was speaking with the superintendent about alternatives,” she told the court upon cross examination by Barkett. She testified it was “just part of the process that we go through at the school.”

Poppe, who first took the stand on the second day of the trail last Thursday, is slated to be back in court to offer a third day of testimony Wednesday.