Opinion ID: 780508
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiff's Career Before 1997 and His Public Criticism of the Department

Text: 4 In June 1987, when he was a police lieutenant, Mandell testified before the Suffolk County Legislature's Public Safety Committee. His testimony described the department as insufficiently proactive in fighting organized crime, resistant to change, and more focused on protecting its internal bureaucracy than on protecting the public. He also set out his view that the old-boy network within the department covered up officers' misconduct, including criminal activity, and that racism and anti-Semitism were systemic. On the following day, plaintiff's photograph and an excerpt from this testimony appeared on the front page of Newsday under the headline, Suffolk Cop Charges: `They Look Out For Their Own.' 5 Apparently members of the department were offended because in January 1988 plaintiff was expelled from the Suffolk County Patrolmen's Benevolent Association for having branded the entire department as racist and anti-semites. Plaintiff says his expulsion was another manifestation of the general hostility toward him, triggered by his testimony, that persisted in the department for years. 6 Later in 1988 Mandell was promoted from lieutenant to captain. This promotion, like those before it, was not discretionary to the commissioner, but based on a civil service examination, subject to the commissioner's bypass. As part of the promotion procedure, Mandell's then-supervisor Inspector John J. Stewart wrote an evaluation that gave a generally positive assessment of plaintiff's work as a police officer, describing him as an acceptable candidate for promotion to the rank of Captain. In the evaluation Stewart also stated that plaintiff was a somewhat controversial individual and complained that he (Stewart) had spent too much time on issues relating to plaintiff, the media, and internal investigations. He wrote, specifically underlining the second clause, 7 While I do not consider that the attitude projected [by plaintiff] should necessarily affect [plaintiff's] suitability for promotion [to captain], I do feel that his attitude should be taken into account when placing him in any future assignment. 8 This evaluation was placed in plaintiff's personnel file. 9 A year later plaintiff was promoted to the rank of deputy inspector. This promotion was distinct from Mandell's preceding promotions because all promotions beyond the rank of a captain were made at the discretion of the police commissioner, who at that time was Daniel Guido. Unlike the commissioners before and after him, Commissioner Guido was not from Suffolk County; he was an outsider and a known reformer. Mandell attributes his promotion to Commissioner Guido's effort to institute a merit-based promotion policy and maintains that after Commissioner Guido's resignation, the department reverted to its old-boy network's practices of nepotism and cronyism. The 1989 promotion to deputy inspector was not only plaintiff's sole discretionary promotion; it was also his last. 10 Several years later, in the summer of 1992, at his supervisor's request, Mandell gave an interview to Newsday for its series of articles entitled  Black `n' Blue in Wyandanch: Summer in the 1st Precinct.  The series focused on the operation of the predominantly white police force in a predominantly black community of Wyandanch. The second article quoted plaintiff as saying that the Suffolk County Police had difficulty recruiting black officers because the black community viewed police officers as oppressors. The article reported, in addition, plaintiff's comment that he had to remove some officers with racist attitudes from covering Wyandanch despite his efforts to screen officers for racist attitudes before assigning them there. 11 After the publication of the Newsday article, Mandell's co-workers' hostility toward him escalated. For example, other police officers would not talk to him unless they had to, and two police chiefs expressly warned him that his comments in Newsday might harm his chances for advancement. Within days of publication, Chief Edwin Michel told him that if he wanted to be a chief he would have to learn to keep his mouth shut, and Chief Gerald Marcoe advised that his career might be adversely affected because he was still carrying the baggage from having testified, referring to the 1987 Public Safety Committee testimony. In January 1993, five months after the interview, Mandell was transferred from the executive officer position he held in the First Precinct to a post of commanding officer in the Staff Services Bureau. Plaintiff viewed this transfer as punishment because his superiors knew he preferred to work in the more prestigious patrol division rather than in the desk job at Staff Services.