Eleven Schenectady police recruits introduced at news conference
- OFR -
conference
By MIKE GOODWIN
Gazette Reporter
SCHENECTADY - Marlon Ivery wanted to be a police officer so much, he
paid to put himself
through the police academy at Columbia-Greene Community College.
"I wanted to be an officer for quite a few years," Ivery said Wednesday.
The 36-year-old Schenectady man's search for a permanent role in law
enforcement, a multiyear
quest that included stints with the town of Woodstock Police Department
and six years as a support
staffer in the Schenectady Police Department, has ended with his
appointment as a rookie patrol
officer on the city force.
Ivery and 10 other police recruits were introduced to the public
Wednesday night during a news
conference at City Hall.
"It's certainly very exciting times," Mayor Albert P. Jurczynski said as
he welcomed the officers.
"This is great news for the Police Department."
Coping with an increase in gang activity, drug-related crime and the
retirements of a number of
senior officers, the Police Department is expanding.
The 11 new officers will increase the size of the force to 164, Police
Chief Gregory T. Kaczmarek
said. The department is budgeted for 162 officers, although at one
recent point, staffing dropped to
just 145. The department is using a grant from Schenectady County to
fund the extra positions and
is in the hunt for a federal grant that officials hope can help add
another 20 officers in the next few
years.
Besides Ivery, the new officers are Brian Bienduga, Eric Fluty, Kyle
Hunter, Dwayne Johnson,
Andrew Karaskiewicz, Thomas Kelly, Darren Lawrence, Dan McDonald, Peter
Mullen Jr. and
Jeffrey St. Onge.
The officers range in age from 24 to 40, with several in their 30s.
Recruits and police leaders said
they believe the older age of the new recruits should translate into
greater maturity and patience
when the officers hit the streets.
While the other new officers have just started their six months of
training at the Zone Five Police
Academy in Troy, Ivery, thanks to his prior time in an academy, is
already on patrol. He is currently
assigned to work with a training officer.
The Police Department also is dealing with the impact of a federal
investigation that has seen the
indictment of two officers and the conviction of one. There also have
been complaints from the
minority community that some officers are insensitive or abusive.
With that in mind, the department, with the assistance of the National
Black Police Association, has
mounted a drive to add black and Hispanic officers to the force.
Ivery, Johnson and Hunter are all minorities.
Jurczynski called their hiring a positive
step toward increasing the number of minorities on the force.
All of the recruits are city residents; several recently purchased homes
in the city.
Several of the recruits, including Fluty and Johnson, are local or state
corrections officer.
Johnson, 40, has spent the past seven years as a state corrections
officer. He most recently worked
in the Coxsackie facility, a state prison populated by young inmates and
considered one of the most
dangerous prisons in the state.
Fluty's great-grandfather, John Sherman, was a city police officer.
Sherman died in 1941 from
injuries he suffered when he lost control of his squad car on State
Street. Sherman was answering a
police call.
For Fluty, an officer at the Schenectady County jail, the decision to
join the force came down to a
simple desire to protect those he cares about.
"The people that I know and the people that I care about live in this
city," Fluty said. "That's what
makes it important for me to police this community."
--
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- OFR -
sentencing
Work program a money-maker for Albany County
By MARNIE EISENSTADT
Gazette Reporter
ALBANY - Albany County's alternative sentencing program saved the county
close to $300,000 in
jail costs in 2000, and enabled the county to earn $3 million by renting
out the unused cells to other
counties.
Sheriff James Campbell said he now wants to expand the Work Alternative
Program to run seven
days a week instead of five, which would make more cells available to
boarders and allow more
inmates to participate.
He said the expansion would not require any staffing additions, because
the county recently hired a
second supervisor for the program. In 2000, 57 people who would have
gone to jail instead
participated in the work program.
Campbell said that since the program's inception in 1991, between 650
and 725 people have
participated, saving the county $90 per day per person.
Only first-time offenders who commit low-level non-violent crimes are
eligible, and they must first
admit guilt. Then, instead of going to jail, they go to work for eight
hours a day, five days a week.
They are unpaid.
Campbell said 42 different work sites throughout Albany County benefit
from the free labor. They
range from municipally owned properties to non-profit organizations.
In 2000, the different sites saved a total of $105,760 in labor costs by
going through the Work
Alternative Program.
Working at the sites can benefit the laborers, as well, said Mark
Quandt.
The director of the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York in
Latham said his organization
has hired at least two of the people who began working there as part of
their sentence.
"We've found it be very useful," he said.
There, the jobs range from stocking the warehouse and filling orders to
answering phones and
making copies, he said.
Campbell said any expansion of the alternative sentencing program would
have to be approved by
judges first.
- OFR -
Conspired
to kill
fellow
cop who
exposed
him
by
Graham
Rayman and Leonard Levitt
Staff Writers
A former police officer stood up in federal
court in Brooklyn yesterday and pleaded guilty
to running with a prolific band of robbers,
ripping off drug dealers and conspiring with his
partner to murder a fellow cop.
Yet, even as he went from the courtroom to
the hands of U.S. marshals, the ex-officer,
Anthony Trotman, 35, of Brooklyn, was still
something of a puzzle, according to law
enforcement sources and court records.
On the one hand, he aided a robbery gang and
committed robberies while in uniform. He
secretly fed police equipment and inside
information from police computers to gang
members. He plotted to kill Det. Michael Paul
because Paul had unwittingly exposed their lie
to federal prosecutors when he gave an
account of a gun arrest.
On the other hand, Trotman waged an
emotionally exhausting eight-year court battle
in the name of his son who was tragically
injured in a 1992 hospital accident. And in
1994, he fatally shot Keith Richardson, a man
police said had a BB gun that looked like a
real gun.
The shooting was ruled justified, though a
bullet also struck and killed a bystander. At
the time, Chief Allen Hoehl told reporters that
Trotman and his partner were "in fear of their
own lives.” Mayor Rudolph Giuliani visited the
bystander's family, and the Rev. Al Sharpton
organized protests.
Trotman and a former partner indicted with
him in connection with the robbery ring, Jamil
Jordan, were fired last year from the Police
Department, not because of the robbery gang
but on grounds that they lied to federal
prosecutors about their arrest of an accused
gun dealer. Authorities said they fabricated an
account to create probable cause for the
arrest.
Yesterday, dressed in a dark suit, speaking in
a voice empty of emotion, Trotman told U.S.
District Court Judge Frederic Block, "From
May, 1997, to April, 1998, I agreed with
others to kill Det. Mike Paul.”
Authorities say the two officers used police
computers to find Paul's home address and
enlisted a member of the robbery ring to kill
the detective. They did not follow through.
Trotman also admitted to being one of six men
involved in an August, 1997, robbery of H.L.
Gross Jewelers on Franklin Avenue in Garden
City. He drew his police gun in the crime and
used it to smash a display case. And he
pleaded guilty to robbing drug dealers in the
Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
He took part in the robbery ring while
assigned to the 77th Precinct in Brooklyn.
As part of a cooperation agreement he signed
with prosecutors, Trotman is expected to
testify today or Monday against James
Woodard, an alleged member of the robbery
gang now on trial in U.S. District Court in
Brooklyn. He is also expected to give
evidence against Jordan, who has been
indicted on the murder conspiracy charge.
Trotman pleaded guilty to six charges,
including robbery and conspiracy to commit
murder. Prosecutors said he could face at least
25 years in prison but would likely receive less
if his cooperation agreement is honored.
On the surface, the case brought to mind the
"Buddy Boys” scandal in the same precinct in
1986, in which a ring of police officers robbed
drug dealers. But police officials said this case
differed because the corruption alleged was
limited to two officers.
Police officials were aware of the activities by
Trotman and Jordan as early as 1997, when
an informant approached them and
subsequently federal authorities with
allegations of their involvement in a robbery
gang, a police source said.
It took a long time before investigators were
able to corroborate the allegations against the
officers, police sources said. In the meantime,
Trotman and Jordan were were fired for lying
to federal prosecutors about the gun arrest.
The saga of Trotman's son fills two separate
case files in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
According to court papers, the child, also
named Anthony, suffered a severe electrical
shock when a nurse hooked him up to a
heart/lung monitor at Downstate Medical
Center in Brooklyn. Just 5 years old, he was
at the hospital for treatment of sickle cell
anemia. He now requires constant medical
care.
In 1994, Trotman sued the hospital, the doctor
and the nurse, along with Hewlett-Packard,
the company that manufactured the machine,
for $150 million. The lawsuit claims that the
nurse negligently hooked up the machine, and
that Hewlett-Packard failed to warn the
hospital of dangerous conditions. That case is
now 1,953 days old, and pending.
The two officers had sued the city to get their
jobs back and until recently were represented
by lawyers paid by the Patrolmen's Benevolent
Association.
According to a union source, the PBA will no
longer represent the two officers in "the best
interest of the union because of the nature of
the charges against them,” referring to the plan
to kill another officer.
Paul, the detective who was targeted, remains
on the force and works in Brooklyn. He joined
the department in 1982.