by Sam Gurwitt | Mar 6, 2019 2:00 pm

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Posted to: Hamden, Legal Writes, True Vote

The Hamden police officer under investigation for threatening to shoot a man in his driveway was no stranger to allegedly losing his composure, his personnel file shows.

That incident, too, prompted an internal investigation, involving alleged excessive force.

The officer, Andrew Lipford, has been the subject of a currently ongoing internal investigation since WTNH broadcast a Feb. 8, 2018, body cam video showing him following Hamden resident Victor Medina to his home, where Lipford and Sgt Michael Sigmon arrested him at gunpoint. Lipford, who was allegedly afraid that Medina had a gun, at one point told Medina, “If you do something that you’re not told you’re gonna get shot.” Lipford did not believe the passenger in Medina’s car when he said that Medina did not speak English. Sigmon was also caught on the tape threatening to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The officers determined that Medina was driving under the influence of alcohol.

The department has reassigned Lipford’s duties while the investigation is underway. Ronald Suraci, the leader of the union to which Hamden’s police officers belong has said that he believes that after the investigation “the officers will be cleared of any wrongdoing.” Mayor Curt Leng called the incident “disgraceful,” while members of the Legislative Council called for the creation of a civilian review board.

It turns out Lipford is no stranger to public complaints, based on a review of his personnel file. The department released the file Tuesday to the Independent in response to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request.

Lipford, who is 26, graduated from Milford Police Academy in 2015. He started as a probationary Hamden officer that same year. In May 2016, he became a full officer on the recommendation of Lt. Timothy Wydra.

His file contains two incidents that generated investigations and one complaint about rudeness in his first three years on the force. He was found to have violated department policy in one investigation and cleared in the second. The file also shows a record of successful arrests and positive encounters with community members.

Registration Check Goes Awry

On March 15, 2018, at around 1:13 a.m., Lipford was patrolling the area around Winchester Avenue and Goodrich Street. According to Lipford’s report of the incident, his license plate reader alerted him to the fact that there was a stolen car on the street, a “dark colored sedan.” Turning his car around so he was facing north, he noticed a dark vehicle with the door slightly open. (It turned out not to be the sedan with the stolen plate.)

Lipford reported that he saw an individual partially in the car. When Lipford turned around, he said, it looked like the individual got back into the car “in a manner I would call sinking down into a seat,” as if he were afraid of Lipford. The person in the driver’s seat, Lipford wrote in his report, had “a gray hood pulled tightly over their head.”

According to an interview with Capt. Ronald Smith, even though this car wasn’t the one with the stolen plate, Lipford believed that the person in the car was involved with the theft of the other car. He told Smith that the neighborhood “is a notably and historically violent drug plagued, also including a lot of auto theft, area.”

“On a weekly basis,” Lipford is quoted in the interview, “we have thefts of motor vehicles and burglaries into motor vehicles directly involving individuals in stolen vehicles using stolen plates and misuse of plates.”

Smith asked whether Lipford thought the man in the car “had anything to do with the stolen license plate that this license plate reader notified you of.” “Yes,” Lipford responded.

At no point in the interview or in any of the other documents on the incident did Lipford state explicitly that he thought the car was the stolen one, only that the person in the car had something to do with the stolen license plate.

In his report, he said that he did a routine license plate check, but that he “otherwise determined that the aforementioned plate was not in fact the Dealer Plate that the LPR alerted to as stolen.”

Lipford approached the driver’s side window. He noticed that the man in the seat was wearing a tan jacket with a gray hooded sweatshirt underneath, the hood closed tightly around his head and face. (According to Hamden’s weather record, it was approximately 33 degrees at the time.)

Lipford wrote that the man “seemed to panic when I greeted him and it became evident that his eyes were significantly dilated.” He said that the man continued to panic and spoke “indistinctly” while Lipford asked multiple times for him to roll down his window so that they could talk. Lipford said that the man put his hands in his sweatshirt front pocket, even though he had asked him to keep his hands visible.

Lipford recorded the license plate and went back to his car to research it. When the result came back, it showed that the registration had expired, but that the car was not stolen.

The man in the car, hereafter referred to as the complainant, told a very different story of the incident up to that point. He spoke with the Independent and asked that he remain anonymous.

“I was leaving a friend’s home, upon walking to my car across the street,” he wrote in his formal complaint, “I was approached by a speeding SUV that had just did a U-turn in the intersection. I entered my car hurriedly to avoid the SUV that was steering towards me at abnormally high speeds.”

“I thought he was going to hit me,” the complainant told the Independent. “All I had done was I had walked from my friend’s house to my car. Naturally I was already defensive and confused.”

He told the Independent that he is white, but that the officer had profiled the neighborhood, which is composed predominately of people of color.

He said that it took Lipford a few minutes to inform the complainant that his registration was out of date.

At 1:30 a.m., he said, he would not be friendly to anyone.

In his interview with Smith, Lipford said that he asked the complainant whether the car was his, and did not get a yes or no answer. The fact that the man did not answer that “very simple yes or no” question “escalated my suspicions and made me more concerned.”

According to Lipford’s report, the complainant handed over his driver’s license when asked, and then the car’s alarm system went off.

Another officer, Edward Stoor, arrived on the scene. Lipford wrote that he “warned him that [the complainant] was acting extremely unusual and would not remove his hands from his sweat shirt pocket.” As Lipford and Stoor talked, the complainant “abruptly exited the driver’s side door and looked as if he was going to run. [The complainant’s] hands were down by his sides, partially concealed in his pant pocket and his jacket. I also noticed there was a black metallic object now in his right hand. I shouted for Jason [the complainant] to put his hands up, which took several attempts before Jason complied.”

Lipford said that it took him almost a minute to realize that the object was a cell phone.

Brief notes on Lipford’s body cam footage provided in the file confirm that when the complainant exited his car, his hands were in his pockets. The notes on the body cam footage state simply that next, “a struggle ensues,” in which the complainant “continually states, ‘I haven’t done anything to be detained.’”

The complainant wrote in his complaint that he exited his car because he wanted to continue the conversation from his friend’s porch. “I was confused and scared,” he wrote, “and thought it would be best to talk to the officers from the porch of my friend’s home, as I was not going to be driving my car that evening.”

“As I went to walk back to my friend’s home,” the complaint continues, “two officers ran towards me grabbing, choking, and punching me as my hands were raised as high as I could hold them. I was holding my arm in the air yelling, ‘I don’t know why I’m being detained.’”

“I never fought back,” the complainant told the Independent. “As soon as they approached me I put my hands in the air and said ‘I don’t know why I’m being detained.’”

He said that the officers were pulling him down and punching him. He was afraid of hitting his head on the pavement, so he tried to stumble towards the grass.

“The Fight Of My Life”

According to Stoor’s body cam footage, Lipford told the complainant to put his hands behind his back. The complainant then asked, “Why are you punching me?” to which Lipford replied “Are you kidding? Are you serious?”

Lipford then “continues” to state “all you had to do is show your hands.”

Lipford had grabbed onto the complainant’s arm. According to his report, the complainant then displayed “what can be defined as aggressive and definitive resistance.”

Lipford said he then grabbed onto the zipper of the complainant’s jacket, which tore a laceration between his thumb and index finger. He said that it took him between 40 and 60 seconds to realize that the complainant was holding a phone, and not a weapon.

“So for a minute,” he told Smith in the interview, “I’m going to estimate a minute, I was in, what I thought, might be the fight of my life.”

Lipford’s report states that the complainant’s behavior then became “assaultive,” and he assumed an “athletic, fighters stance.”

“I specifically recall being struck by [the complainant]’s right hand in my left ribs,” wrote Lipford. He added that he began to use “open hand strikes” to his arms shoulder, and upper back area.

In the interview, Lipford said that the complainant was “very well trained.” The complainant told the Independent that he does practice martial arts.

Body Cam Turned Off

During the fight, Lipford wrote, his body cam was “jarred” and switched off. After the struggle was over, he said he switched it back on. Stoor’s camera, however, was on for the duration of the incident. The notes on the footage says that there was a “struggle,” but does not state whether the complainant was punching the officers.

“I was scared I was going to get shot,” the complainant told the Independent. “I had two grown-ass men punching me in the face.”

Once the altercation was over, the officers searched the car, which did belong to the complainant, and found cannabis and syringes.

The complainant explained that it was CBD oil, which he takes for anxiety.

He was charged with assaulting a police officer and interfering with police. H also had infractions issued for operating/parking an unregistered vehicle and for possession of less than 1/2oz of cannabis substance.

The complainant told the Independent that he went to court and all charges were dropped after he paid a fine.

After the investigation, Smith concluded that Lipford had not violated any of the rules of the department, and the investigation was dropped.

The complainant told the Independent that the incident was indicative of a trend in which Hamden police officers frequently “overstep boundaries.” He said that an officer recently responded to a noise complaint at his apartment, and entered the apartment without a warrant because he said he could not stand on the stairs.

Neglect Of Duty

While Lipford was not disciplined in the 2018 incident, he was charged with a violation of department policy as a result of an investigation he conducted in 2016. According to documents in his file, he violated the Hamden Department of Police Code of Conduct, Article 4: Neglect of Duty, because of “failure to carry out assigned duties or follow Department orders and procedures efficiently and expeditiously.”

All information describing the incident that Lipford was investigating was redacted from the file before it was given to the Independent. The incident involved a restraining order.

A mother and daughter, at whose house the investigation took place, submitted a complaint, stating that in an investigation after the husband requested police assistance, “Officer Lipford failed to follow procedure and call in other authorities.” It appears that Lipford neglected to take necessary steps in the investigation, and may have used video that contained false information because he failed to add relevant information to his report.

The complaint also states that “Lipford’s actions may be a direct result in the fact that he stated to me … that he knew my son… and that our family has been known not to have a good rapport with the Hamden PD in general.”

Lipford met with Ronald Smith, then Deputy Chief John Cappiello, union President Kevin Samperi, and Sergeant John Sullivan. They informed him of what he had done wrong. There was someone whom he should have contacted. Who that was has been redacted from the documents.

Because Lipford demonstrated “a satisfactory level of understanding of these investigative obligations,” no disciplinary action was taken.

The complainants were not available for comment.

An Incident Of Rudeness

The third complaint against Lipford never generated an investigation, as it did not describe any violation of department rules.

In 2017, Lipford was directing traffic at the site of a car crash. The woman whose husband had been involved in the crash drove up to the site, explained that her husband had been driving the car that crashed, and asked where her husband was and whether he was OK.

“He wouldn’t even look at me,” the complaint stated. “He just yelled ‘pull over.’”

The complainant got out of her car and approached him, again asking about her husband, and Lipford replied that he couldn’t hear her and was directing traffic.

She said that she then noticed an ambulance leaving with her husband, and had to ask several times before Lipford would tell her where it was going.

“Obviously compassion can not be taught but professionalism can and he needs someone to teach him how to work with the public in a kindly manner,” wrote the complainant.

Deputy Chief Bo Kicak talked with Lipford about how to speak to the public, but no other action was taken, as Kicak “did not believe Lipford’s actions were inappropriate.”

“An Asset To Our Community”

Lipford’s file also contains four commendations and a few glowing testimonies to balance them.

In three of the four arrests for which Lipford received a commendation, he helped recover stolen vehicles.

“Officer Lipford maintained a calm and professional demeanor during a stressful incident,” one of the commendations states. Another states that he “demonstrated effective patrol procedures throughout the incident.”

His file includes accounts of four other successful arrests. In two cases, he pulled over cars and found that the drivers possessed illegal drugs, and the other two, he helped recover stolen cars.

His file also contains a letter from Hamden Youth Services Coordinator Susan Rubino expressing gratitude for Lipford’s response to an incident at the Keefe Community Center in June, 2017. “It was the first time that I had met Officer Lipford and I was very impressed” Rubino wrote. “He handled the situation firmly, sensitively and intelligently. We spoke for a time afterward and he seems to be quite an asset to our community.”

“Officer Lipford has developed an excellent reputation since joining our department, and I am not surprised that his performance impressed you,” Chief Thomas Wydra responded.

In another letter in the file, a woman who participated in a ride-along with Lipford asked that he be “commended for his indefatigable work,” and called him “an asset to the department.”

The file also contains a memo from 2016 in which Lipford asked for Wydra’s permission to use a department vehicle outside of work hours to deliver Christmas gifts to a family he knew was struggling.