COHOES — Two 911 calls made last year by the wife of Cohoes Mayor Shawn M. Morse confirm that she told a dispatcher she had been a victim of domestic violence and that her husband had grabbed her by the throat during a violent encounter at their city residence.

"What's going on there?" a dispatcher asked Brenda Morse, who called 911 on the morning of Nov. 10.

"I guess you could say domestic violence," Morse answered, her voice trembling with emotion.

The first call, which was made from a cell phone and relayed to a dispatcher in neighboring Rensselaer County, was disconnected. Moments later, when Morse dialed 911 a second time, she told the same dispatcher that police had yet to arrive at her residence and that "my husband is the mayor of the city."

"They're probably calling him because he smashed my phone, so I have no phone to get ahold of anyone," Morse said in the recording, which was obtained this week by the Times Union.

The female dispatcher, who had tried unsuccessfully to transfer Morse to a dispatcher in Albany County, asked her what had happened.

"We got into a fight and he — I have cuts on me because he pulled me by my throat to the ground because I went to grab my daughter's cell phone," Morse said before the call was disconnected a second time.

The recordings call into question statements Shawn Morse made last year in the wake of the incident, including his claim that his wife did not tell a dispatcher he had assaulted her or that she had sustained any injuries.

During a series of interviews with the Times Union a day after the incident, Morse said his wife had been setting up a new phone and mistakenly dialed 911. He also noted that under state law the recordings of her call to a dispatcher could not be made public.

At the time, the Times Union had reported information from a police report that indicated Brenda Morse had told a dispatcher that her husband had snatched her phone from her hand and smashed it when she dialed 911.

The report also noted that Brenda Morse had used a "911-only" mobile phone and told the dispatchers that her husband, "the mayor of Cohoes ... grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground, has scratches all over her and there's one child in (t)he residence."

That police record, as Shawn Morse later noted, had two inaccuracies: The phone Brenda Morse used to call 911 belonged to her youngest daughter, but it was only capable of dialing 911 because it had been disabled. Also, the couple's youngest daughter was not at the residence at the time Brenda Morse called 911, but the dispatcher had mistakenly assumed the daughter was present when Brenda Morse said she was using her daughter's phone.

Still, the calls confirm that Brenda Morse accused her husband of roughing her up.

"My wife never got hurt," Morse told the Times Union last November. "The 911 call (report) was riddled with inaccuracies. ... I never hit my wife in my entire life. ... Nobody got hurt. Nobody hit each other."

In response to questions about the incident on Thursday, Morse's attorney Joseph Ahearn provided copies of text messages that he said Brenda Morse sent to a friend of her husband's three days later, claiming the physical abuse never happened.

"I just wanted to embarrass him so he could feel the same pain I felt by him putting (their daughter in juvenile detention)," the text message reads. "Shawn has never put his hands on me, he's never hit me or choked me, he didn't break my phone, I just felt by saying those things it would embarrass him, I never thought I would hear him say he has to resign over this, I just can't believe what has happened."

According to a person familiar with the law enforcement investigation that ensued, Brenda Morse told investigators during a series of interviews that her husband had put her up to writing the text, which she said was sent to Michael Conners, the Albany County comptroller who is a close friend of Shawn Morse's.

She also sent a similar text to Cohoes assistant police Chief Thomas Ross. She told the investigators that her husband sat next to her and told her what to write in the text messages, and reminded her that his career as an elected official was in jeopardy if she didn't do it.

"The matter was referred to the New York State Police and the Albany County district attorney's office, who would have reviewed the 911 recording and interviewed Mrs. Morse," Ahearn said. "More than ten months later, no charges have been filed against Mr. Morse. Mr. Morse denies ever striking his wife."

Brenda Morse declined to comment for this story.

The couple are estranged. Brenda Morse discontinued a divorce proceeding she filed against her husband earlier this year in Albany County, but has recently retained a new attorney to revive the case.

The day after the November incident, Shawn Morse had what appeared to be a scratch on his left cheek near his eye when he attended an afternoon ceremony dedicating the Cohoes Veterans Memorial Park on Columbia Street.

Ross, the Cohoes acting police chief at the time, confirmed later that day that two patrol officers and a sergeant responded to Morse's residence for a 911 call. He said that Morse was not there when they arrived. A police captain, Todd Pucci, who is the mayor's close friend and also the public safety commissioner in the village of Altamont, also went to the residence and spoke to Morse.

Ross said Pucci did not take note of any injuries to Brenda Morse, and there were no signs of damage to the residence.

Pucci "said that everything on the (dispatcher's) report was discounted," Ross said. "No scratches, no choking. There was a little scratch on Shawn's face under the eye."

Ross, at the time, did not note that a domestic incident report filled out by one of the responding officers noted that Brenda Morse told police it wasn't the only time her husband had assaulted her, according to law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.

When contacted a day after the November incident, Shawn Morse denied that his face was scratched, and he asked a reporter how he would know that. "I certainly don't have no scratches on my face," he said. When told the Times Union had photographed him during the park dedication ceremony, Morse still denied he had a scratch on his face.

He also vehemently denied there was any physical contact between him and his wife.



"My family's issues are none of your business," Morse said at the time. "My wife never said that I choked her."

"Nobody got hurt, everything is good," Ross said last year. "Unless I'm being hoodwinked, it looks clean. ... Because of it being the mayor, you want to do it right and you want to go by the numbers."

Two days later, under pressure from the Albany County district attorney's office, Cohoes police turned the case over to the State Police. Investigators with that agency later interviewed Morse and used a search warrant to seize his mobile phone.

No charges have been filed against Morse in connection with the incident, which the district attorney's office said remains under investigation.

"If there was any credibility to Brenda Morse's 911 call law enforcement would have arrested Shawn 10 months ago," Ahearn said.