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.

Kathleen Rice points to a board of mug shots at a news conference in her Mineola office Thursday, April 18, 2013.

Nassau County authorities say they made their biggest gang bust ever by rounding up 14 leading members of a Roosevelt-based Crips set for alleged attempted murders, assaults, robberies, gun and drug dealing.

Members of the Rollin’ 60s have been accused of selling illegal handguns they smuggled out of state, shooting someone they believed was a witness to those sales, committing a drive-by shooting and dealing heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Also nabbed were four associates of the gang, which authorities described as “ultra-violent.”

“They were a little too cute in how they were advertising,” District Attorney Kathleen Rice told reporters at a news conference after showing a rap video posted on YouTube in which some of the suspects posed with guns, drugs and cash. She said rooting out the leadership all at once will make it harder for the gang to regroup.

The months-long joint investigation with the district attorney’s investigators, Nassau police and the FBI led to the arrest of the set’s leader, 27-year-old Raphael “Gusto” Osborne, who authorities said dealt guns out of a house he shared with fellow gang leader Derick “D-Nice” Hernandez, 21.

The FBI Long Island Gang Task Force—which Suffolk police quit last year—has estimated there are up to 5,000 gang members living among LI’s more than 3 million residents. Most are members of the Bloods, Crips and MS-13, all of which have chapters nationwide.

The Rollin’ 60s have been operating in Roosevelt since about 2001, but authorities kicked their probe into high gear when a member, Michael Benitez, shot and wounded a Hempstead village police officer in December 2011.

Investigators alleged they documented three instances in which suspects bought guns in southern states and sold them illegally last May. In October, Hernandez allegedly shot someone he believed witnessed the sales. Fellow gang members later tried to lure the victim out of hiding, authorities said.

Hernandez and another suspect allegedly shot and wounded a man and a bystander in August, too. Members of the gang also shot a victim outside of a party following an argument in October.

The suspects are believed to be involved in a drive-by shooting last month and a beating and robbery last week as well.

“Gang and gun violence is not going to be tolerated in Nassau County,” Police Commissioner Thomas Dale said. “Period, case closed, the end.”

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.