“By the nature of the work we do, we are suspicious of what people are doing,” said Tinti. “Now, we have people coming into our environment and asking questions of us — it was unsettling.”
Detective Division commander Lt. Patrick Scanlon, who was a sergeant in the patrol division when the Matthews case broke, said that he never doubted the integrity of the officers he worked with. In fact, he said, he welcomed the investigative onslaught as necessary to restore the department’s good name. But, he said, the cloud of suspicion took a toll on morale, and the ability of police to do their jobs. People who could once be counted on to cooperate with police suddenly couldn’t. Cops on the beat faced an unceasing barrage of trash talk about the department’s, and their own, ethics.
“We would arrest people and take their property into evidence and they would question our integrity,” recalled Scanlon. “We were very much ostracized in the city. It was a catastrophic event.”
Keep your head up
Sgt. Barry Rell is head of the Kingston Police Benevolent Association. During the depths of the crisis, with morale at low ebb, he called together the union membership for a pep talk.
“I told them look, you gotta keep your head up high, it’s sad that one or two people can shed such a negative cloud over everybody else,” said Rell. “But when the truth comes out, they’re going to find that the vast majority haven’t done anything wrong.”
As it turns out, Rell was right. Besides Matthews, just one otherKingstoncop, retired detective Maurice Vandermark, was accused of wrongdoing during the months-long probe by the auditor and the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office. Vandermark was charged with third-degree grand larceny, accused of submitting phony transcripts to receive reimbursement from the department’s educational assistance program. His case is still in court. While the FBI has been mum on their investigation and the Comptroller’s Office official report won’t be released for another month, Tinti said he was confident that the worst of the scandal was in the past.
In its wake, however, Tinti said he saw the best chance in decades to remake the department into something new, more modern and more effective.
Time to tighten
The first step, Tinti said, was getting the department’s financial house in order. While the Comptroller’s Office audit is still under wraps, Tinti said the auditing process revealed a series of vulnerabilities in the department’s handling of time and attendance. Over the past year, a new system has been put in place to make it easier to account for officers’ time. Mayor Shayne Gallo said the controls now in place at the police department are currently being extended to the entire city workforce.
