With four police officers charged with violating the civil rights of Latino community members, through harassment, intimidation and physical violence, East Haven police chief Len Gallo has stepped down effective last Friday. The Courant reports that Mayor Joe Maturo, who famously said he "might have tacos" as a way to reach out to the Latino community, is forming a search committee for a replacement and called Gallo's resignation an "unselfish act." Well, is it really unselfish when Gallo is "an unnamed co-conspirator in last week's federal indictment"?
A federal grand jury is investigating Gallo's action. According to the New Haven Independent, "Gallo may be emerging as the big fish in the middle of a closing net. According to two people familiar with testimony before the grand jury, the questioning of alleged conspirators went far beyond the racial profiling and harassment and false arrests of Latinos. It centered on whether Gallo oversaw and perhaps participated in the repeated rewriting and altering of reports involving other arrests—arrests of white people, not Latinos. Especially an arrest of former East Haven Mayor April Capone Almon. The report in that case may have been altered dozens of times." (Almon was arrested when she questioned a police officer's towing of cars at a town beach.)
In a Courant editorial, Gallo's tone-deaf qualities were raised: "Indeed, he expressed surprise Friday when a New Haven Register reporter questioned why he chose a Puerto Rican to serve on a citizen commission looking into police department issues when his Latino community is predominantly Ecuadorean. He appeared to think all Latinos were from the same country." The Board of Police Commissioners Chair Fred Brow wants Gallo to be fired, instead of allowing him to retire, to "save the town the $150,000" of the retirement settlement "because of his terrible behavior as chief... He should be terminated."
As for Maturo, members of the Latino & Puerto Rican Affairs Commission asked him to resign. One told the Courant, "The Latino community feels (Maturo and Gallo) are not fit to be our stewards."
