John Hunter, the Nassau County police former Deputy Chief of Patrol.

A former Nassau County police commander has admitted to helping cover up a burglary for his friend’s son in a conspiracy that another ex-police brass member was convicted of two months ago.

John Hunter, a retired Deputy Chief of Patrol, pleaded guilty Wednesday at Nassau County court to misdemeanor counts of conspiracy and official misconduct. The 60-year-old Oyster Bay man initially pleaded not guilty to those charges last year.

“I apologize for any embarrassment to the police department that I have loved and served for 35 years,” Hunter told the court. He later declined to comment to reporters while leaving the courtroom.

Judge Mark Cohen sentenced Hunter to three years of probation, 500 hours of community service and gave him a week to pay a $250 surcharge.

“It is fundamental to our democracy that the police…must treat all citizens fairly,” Cohen told Hunter after accepting the plea. “By your actions today…[you] have finally taken responsibility.”

Hunter will also be required to produce a Nassau police academy training video aimed at dissuading police cadets from committing misconduct by learning from his case. His Rockville Centre-based attorney, William Petrillo, said Hunter proposed that idea himself.

“If we wanted to, we could have filled this courtroom and courthouse with his supporters,” Petrillo said in court while noting only a small group of Hunter’s friends and family were among the two dozen in the gallery. “He is genuinely sorry for his actions.”

The plea comes after William Flanagan, the former second deputy police commissioner, was convicted of conspiracy and misconduct charges in February. A jury acquitted the 55-year-old Islip man of receiving reward for official misconduct, a felony.

Prosecutors alleged that Hunter, Flanagan and a third suspect—retired Det. Sgt. Alan Sharpe, 55, of Huntington Station, who’s due back in court May 15—conspired to quash the arrest of Zachary Parker, a 21-year-old Merrick man, for stealing $11,000 in electronics from his alma mater, John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, in 2009.

Will Fallout From Flanagan Conviction Strain Nassau Police Relations with the DA?

Parker’s father, Gary, had been affiliated with the Nassau County Police Department Foundation that is fundraising to build a new police academy in a public-private partnership. The younger Parker later pleaded guilty to burglary and was imprisoned upstate after he violated the terms of his probation sentence.

Gary Parker had been identified in court during Flanagan’s trial as an unindicted co-conspirator for using his connections among the police brass in an attempt to keep his son out of jail, but was not arrested himself. Prosecutors also cleared the foundation of wrongdoing.

Zachary Parker is on track for a July 18 completion of the Shock Incarceration Program, a six-month prison boot camp in which graduates become eligible for early release, according to a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Corrections. His start was delayed a month after he got into a fight his first day, but he faced up to three years in prison.

Flanagan has vowed to appeal his conviction. His next court date was adjourned to June 26.

The Nassau County district attorney’s investigators launched a probe into the case and later secured a grand jury indictment against the trio following a 2011 Press expose.

“We brought these cases to make sure that there isn’t one set of rules for the rich and connected and another for everyone else,” District Attorney Kathleen Rice said. “John Hunter violated his oath and the law when he gave special treatment to a wealthy friend’s son, and today’s guilty plea ensures that he will face serious consequences for his conduct.”

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.”

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.

A Lynbrook couple was found dead Thursday morning in what appears to be a natural cause death and a suicide. (Long Island Press)

An elderly man and woman married 20 years were both found dead Thursday morning inside their Lynbrook home, Nassau County police said.

“At this time it appears to be a natural cause death and a suicide,” Nassau County police spokesman Det. Vincent Garcia told reporters at the scene.

Police did not immediately release their names.

The 73-year-old woman is believed to have died of natural causes, pending autopsy results, police said. It appears that her 70-year-old husband died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a shotgun.

The couple was discovered after a home health care aid arrived at the house but was unable to get inside the locked door, Garcia said. The health care aid called the family and someone came by with a key to open the door when the discovery was made and a witness called 911 shortly before 10 a.m., police said.

The woman was found on a bed, police said, and her husband’s body was discovered nearby.

Officials said Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and an employee were at the scene. A spokesman for Rice’s office said the incident involved a relative of an employee of the district attorney’s office.