A decorated Ansonia police veteran who spent nearly a decade undercover cracking narcotics investigations is on medical leave while state police probe alleged “irregularities” regarding the processing of evidence within the Ansonia Police Department.
Police announced the investigation last week.
Matthew Macero, a police officer for 12 years, was escorted out of the Ansonia Police Department in September as his supervisors simultaneously ordered an internal affairs review and called in a state police major case squad to investigate, sources told the Valley Indy.
State police investigators were camped out behind the police department from Thursday (Sept. 26) to Tuesday (Oct. 1), hauling out boxes and other items, presumably connected to the evidence room in question.
Sources told the Valley Indy the investigation involves drugs that had been stored in the evidence room.
Mayor James Della Volpe told the Valley Indy Sept. 26 the investigation was limited to a single police officer, but said he couldn’t be more specific.
Ansonia Police Chief Kevin Hale issued a statement last week saying he requested help from state police to conduct “an independent criminal investigation into irregularities that the Ansonia Police Department has discovered in the processing of evidence” there.
State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said Monday (Sept. 30) that Hale made the request to state police Thursday, and that the case had been assigned to the Western District Major Crimes Squad.
Vance said he couldn’t disclose much about the case.
“We’re still examining (evidence),” Vance said. “Once we arrive at some conclusions and details we’ll make that public, but we don’t have that right now.”
Vance said he couldn’t estimate how long the probe would take.
“We have no time schedule,” he said. “When we’re done we’re done.”
It’s not clear how police became aware of the irregularities.
Hale’s statement said Ansonia police were conducting an internal affairs investigation of their own in the case.
The Valley Indy sent a Freedom of Information request to Della Volpe Friday seeking access to Macero’s personnel file. The city has requested a extension on the time required under state law to answer the request, but a letter from the city attorney doesn’t state how much time the city needs.
“I have requested the personnel file and will start my review. As to the time, it probably will be sometime next week so that Officer Macero and his union representative have time to consider your request,” Ansonia corporation counsel Kevin Blake said in a follow-up e‑mail to a reporter Monday.
Accomplished Career
Macero’s career at the police department has been marked with accomplishments.
According to the minutes of the May 2001 Board of Aldermen meeting during which he was hired as a recruit police officer, Macero served as an intern in the department’s records room in the 1980s.
Hale said Macero tested and interviewed well during the hiring process. “We liked him very much, and we think he’ll do well,” Hale told the board, according to the minutes.
Macero has played a key role in a number of recent investigations:
- In the days after the murder of alleged drug suspect Javon Zimmerman outside a Derby bar last May, Macero aided Derby police in interviewing Cordaryl Silva, the man who would eventually be charged with Zimmerman’s murder.
- Last November, he foiled an attempted burglary of a Maple Street market, leading to the arrest of four teenagers.
- In February 2012, Macero followed up a drug case that began in Seymour by leading the search of the home of an Ansonia man alleged to be running a large scale marijuana and narcotics dealing operation.
- Macero was one of several Ansonia officers thanked by the federal Department of Justice in March 2010 for playing a role in a Beaver Street weapons sting in 2009.
In May, Macero was given a departmental citation for more than seven years of work as an undercover officer serving in the Valley Street Crimes Unit and the Ansonia Police Department’s Anti-Crime Unit.
“Officer Macero has conducted numerous narcotics investigations that resulted in arrests and convictions,” an officer reading the citation said, adding that because of Macero’s “dedicated work ethic and extensive knowledge of the narcotics trade, the city of Ansonia has been able to collaboratively improve the quality of life for its citizens.”
In General
Hale’s handling of the case thus far is “standard operating procedure,” according to John DeCarlo, a former chief of the Branford Police Department who is associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
“(Hale) did exactly what protocol would dictate” in a case where a local police department suspects an officer of wrongdoing, DeCarlo said.
Calling in an impartial outside agency to probe such allegations maintains the integrity of the investigation, he said.
In a department the size of Ansonia’s, DeCarlo said, “You wouldn’t want to try to conduct (just) an internal affairs investigating dealing with evidence using internal investigators. It’s just too small a family.”
As to investigations of evidence room irregularities in general, DeCarlo said they could be triggered by any number of scenarios.
“It could be an audit issue, it could be something missing, it could be something like the state’s attorney looking for something for a case and them not being able to find it,” he said. “It’s so hard to say. An irregularity in evidence could mean 100 different things.”
Mayor Reacts
Della Volpe last week promised transparency with regard to the criminal probe.
“We’re following all proper procedures, we’re dealing with it right away, we’re going to find out what’s going on,” he said, adding later: “All the facts will come out when the investigation is complete. We just deal in facts and that’s what we’re trying to gain here.”
Ann Marie Pitney, the president of Ansonia’s Police Commission, declined to comment extensively on the case Friday.
“I heard about it,” she said of the investigation. “I support the chief in anything he does.”
The commission had a regular monthly meeting Wednesday (Oct. 2) but did not discuss the matter.
“We are not going to entertain any questions about the situation at police quarters,” Pitney said before the public comment portion of Wednesday’s meeting. “There’s nothing more than we can say besides the chief’s comment.”
The Valley Indy left a message seeking comment Friday morning with Detective James Frolish, the president of the police union’s local chapter.
A message was also left Friday with AFSCME Council 15, Connecticut Council of Police, the Cheshire-based labor union representing Ansonia police officers.
It is not the first time in the recent past that Ansonia police have asked state troopers to investigate one of their own.
A 15-year department veteran was eventually accused of sixth-degree larceny in that case, but was cleared of wrongdoing after a trial at Superior Court in Derby.
The officer in question has since filed a federal lawsuit against Hale, a lieutenant, and the state trooper who investigated the case.
