Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said Friday that his office is not at fault for the duration of a long-unresolved probe into an alleged police beating, which for over 19 months has seen no disciplinary hearings held for officers and no decisions made in an ongoing criminal review.

Paul Cumby, Jozelle Ligon and Jackie Ligon, who say that a group of off-duty officers beat them following a verbal argument at Nathan Bill's Bar and Restaurant in April 2015, have expressed dismay that no justice has been served. And the 12 officers accused of misconduct have continued working in legal limbo, with no clarity on whether they will keep their jobs or whether they will face criminal charges.

According to internal police emails obtained by MassLive in a public records request, the cause for the delay is in dispute.

On Oct. 25, after MassLive published the first public account of the allegations, Deputy Chief Mark Anthony wrote to Police Commissioner John Barbieri questioning the length of the DA's criminal probe.

The department's Major Crimes Unit had turned over its criminal investigation to the DA's office on Aug. 14, 2015, Anthony wrote in the email, and since then the DA's office had neither released any findings or reached out to the department's Major Crimes Unit for further information.

"The question remains if there are no criminal charges or a grand jury presentment, what took so long?" Anthony wrote.

When asked in October why no disciplinary hearings had yet been held for the accused officers, the city's law office told MassLive that the department was awaiting the results of the DA's review.

Anthony echoed that line of thinking, but also questioned whether the department should wait on the criminal probe to discipline its officers.

"I think from our end, we should come up with a plan with [City Solicitor Ed Pikula] and [Director of Human Resources and Labor Relations William Mahoney's] advice, for future cases as to whether we go forward with a [Community Police Hearing Board] hearing in a timely manner," he wrote. "14 months is way to [sic] long."

FILE PHOTO: Springfield Police Deputy Chief Mark Anthony ( MARK M.MURRAY / THE REPUBLICAN)

In an interview, Gulluni agreed with Anthony on one count - that the investigation has taken too long to resolve.

"I will say that 20 months is less than ideal and the procedure probably isn't perfect," Gulluni said. "You hope that in the future it will be better and it will be cleaner. We will learn from this situation."

But he strenuously denied that his office was at fault for the hold up.

While the DA's office did receive the Major Crimes Unit investigation in August, later that winter the DA's office was asked by police and city officials not to make any findings until the administrative Internal Investigations Unit report was complete, Gulluni said - a request that held up the case for months.

"Mark Anthony's sentiment in there is inaccurate," Gulluni said. "Deputy Chief Anthony was either forgetful or mistaken in that email about the actual timeline."

The DA's office did not receive the Internal Investigations report until July, and since then has been conducting a thorough review of the case, including interviewing the alleged victims and their attorneys, Gulluni said. The case has been handled by Gulluni, First Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Fitzgerald and Chief Trial Counsel Eduardo Velazquez

"We're really making sure we're poring over those reports," Gulluni said. "We're making sure it's a thorough, thoughtful and definitive decision."

Last winter, Internal Investigations head Capt. Larry Brown and a member of the city's legal team requested that the DA hold off on finishing its inquiry, saying they believed new information would come to light during the internal investigation, Gulluni said.

"At that point I made the decision that based on that advice, we should hold off," he said. "Needless to say that in any investigation we are better off having complete facts."

Gulluni told MassLive the approach did have merits. Administrative inquiries are not bound by the same standards of legal procedure as criminal probes, and there was the possibility Internal Investigations could turn up information using methods not available to Major Crimes or the District Attorney's Office.

But it was also an irregular request. Criminal and administrative inquiries into police misconduct typically run in parallel and do not merge, Gulluni said, and he had never before been asked to hold off on making a determination to wait for an Internal Investigations Unit investigation to finish.

"Indeed it is uncommon for these IIU investigations to come over to the criminal side," Gulluni said. "We were advised by these two officials to wait. We respected that."

The nature of the case has also contributed to the length of the investigation, Gulluni said, with nearly everyone involved admitting to having consumed alcohol and with challenges in obtaining clear suspect identifications from the victims.

"This is a complicated situation that began and remains as somewhat difficult to get to the bottom of," Gulluni said. "It was indeed a bar fight. Sometimes these are complicated and murky situations."

Cumby and his cousins Jozelle and Jackie Ligon were drinking at Nathan Bill's Bar and Restaurant on April 7, 2015 when Jozelle got into an argument with a group of off-duty police officers. One of the officers believed that Ligon was hitting on the officer's girlfriend, while Ligon claimed he was whistling at a bartender for another round, Cumby said in an interview last month.

The groups took the dispute outside, where the off duty officers made it clear Cumby and his cousins were no longer welcome, Cumby said. They left before the argument became physical, but that was not the end of the conflict.

FILE PHOTO: Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

After 2 a.m., Cumby and his cousins were in the nearby parking lot of Rocky's Hardware Store when they saw the group of officers from the bar approaching them, Cumby and Ligon said. One of the officers allegedly began shoving Jozelle Ligon, and another allegedly clubbed Cumby in the back of the head with a baton, knocking him unconscious and loosening his front teeth.

Cumby said that he came to with a broken leg, and that responding officers downplayed his injuries and falsely claimed he refused to cooperate in a subsequent police report.

The officers' account of the night is not yet public; the city has refused to release the completed Internal Investigations report due to DA's ongoing criminal review. City and police officials have declined to comment on the specific allegations raised by Cumby during his interview with MassLive.

But Gulluni did share some new information about the case, saying that his criminal review was centered on the actions of a "small handful" of off-duty officers who were potentially involved in the fight.

The on duty officers who are facing administrative charges over their response to the situation did not commit any criminal acts, and in fact, helped identify officers who may have been involved, Gulluni said.

"You really do have police officers performing their function in identifying persons of suspicion," Gulluni said.