The New Haven police chief Monday ordered an internal investigation opened into a sergeant who allegedly had a woman arrested and a cell phone camera snatched from her bra after she recorded him beating a handcuffed suspect.
Chief Dean Esserman said he acted as soon as he learned of the allegations.
The allegations against Sgt. Chris Rubino came from two women who observed a tussle between cops and an unruly man in the Temple Street plaza behind Pulse nightclub shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday.
If the allegations prove true, they would dramatically violate, in exquisite detail, police General Order 311.
The order protects the rights of citizens to photograph or video-record cops in public; police cannot use the excuse of arresting someone for using a camera with a blanket “interfering” charge.
The arrested woman is Jennifer Gondola, a real-estate agent and administrative assistant from Ansonia. She and friends went to Pulse for a drink. They left around 1:45 a.m. out the back entrance onto the plaza in the rain.
They came upon a commotion.
Police were arresting a 24-year-old Bridgeport man; police said they had ordered the man and his friends to disperse, at which point the man refused and then started physically attacking officers as they handcuffed him.
People throughout the plaza whipped out their camera phones. Gondola was standing “6 feet away,” she told the Independent Monday. “I wasn’t in their way at all.” She started video-recording the action on her iPhone 4.
