The history of the New Rochelle Police Department has been a one-sided account told by the department itself without fear of contradiction. Needless to say, it is a narrative where police officers are selfless heroes, upholding the ideal of “to protect and serve”, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.
In numerous instances, for the bulk of officers as individuals, the narrative holds true. Many residents can cite positive interactions with many police officers. New Rochelle police officers have acted selflessly and heroically on behalf of the public and fellow officers.
There is, however, a darker side which only rarely comes into view, when a cop rapes a crime victim, or shoots someone dead, or brutally assaults a civilian in broad daylight on Main Street, or sexually assaults a member of the department behind closed doors.
For decades, police command has been highly effective in shielding from public view the brutality, racism, misogyny, homophobia and downright cruelty of some of its officers — as well as the clownish immaturity and childish nature of others. For decades, internal affairs investigations and any resulting disciplinary action against officers was confidential by statute, so cases of malfeasance, incompetence, insubordination, buffoonery, and even criminal acts were kept secret.
That is about to change with the publication of our latest series, Inside the New Rochelle Police Department Clown Show, of which this article is Part I. We expect this will be a long-term multipart series modeled on our similar series on corruption, malfeasance, and incompetence in the City School District of New Rochelle.
New Rochelle Board of Education: Criminal Enterprise Masquerading as an Educational Institution was a Talk of the Sound series that began with Part I published on February 8, 2015, and ended (for now) with Part XXIV published on August 17, 2017. The reporting coming out of that series, and related articles, resulted in the “employment separation” of dozens of employees — gutting the business office and buildings & grounds departments, along with multiple criminal investigations, federal indictments and the long-term incarceration of one of the kingpins (John Gallagher) who served a multi-year sentence in federal prison.
After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the public learned that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered Floyd, had 18 prior complaints against him. That such information might be made public concerning a police officer in New York State at that time would be unlikely if not impossible.
George Floyd changed all that.
On June 12, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed police reform legislation into law which among other reforms repealed “50-a”, the section of the New York State public officers law which served to hide police misconduct records from public scrutiny.
New Rochelle Stonewalls on Release of Disciplinary Records for Cop Who Killed Kamal Flowers
Also, on June 12, 2020, Talk of the Sound filed a Freedom of Information request for the disciplinary records of Alec McKenna, the New Rochelle Police Officer who shot and killed Kamal Flowers on the night of June 5, 2020, following a questionable traffic stop. Those now-public records were required to be produced within about a month, but were illegally withheld by the City of New Rochelle and the New Rochelle Police Department. Our June 2020 FOIL request was never specifically filled. Instead, McKenna’s disciplinary record was released as part of a public statement on March 4, 2021 – 9 months later.
In July 2020, City Manager Charles B. Strome claimed that the illegally withheld McKenna records were not relevant to the shooting death of Kamal Flowers, that McKenna had never drawn his service weapon in the line of duty, that McKenna had no complaints of excessive use of force. Police records later made public by Talk of the Sound showed the opposite — in the six months before McKenna killing Kamal Flowers, McKenna had been subject to an unusual command discipline based on an internal affairs investigation triggered by his supervisor’s concerns over improper traffic stops, that McKenna was cited for 158 violations during a 60-day review, and the vast majority of those violations related to traffic stops. Less than a month after McKenna was hit with a “loss of 7 leave days” he was back on the street.
On January 11, 2020, McKenna drew his service weapon and prepared to shoot two 24-year-old black people following a highly questionable traffic stop for an “illegal” U-turn.
Five months later, a 24-year-old black person was shot dead by McKenna.
In response to the decision to illegally withhold the McKenna disciplinary records (which, in hindsight, had they been released in the days after the death of Kamal Flowers, would have certainly set off howls of protest beyond what was already occurring at the time), we set up a computer program to automate the delivery of over 800 individual Freedom of Information requests between August 2020 and October 2020 seeking the disciplinary records of every current and former sworn member of the New Rochelle Police Department we could identify going back 100 years. More than a year later, the New Rochelle Police Department has still failed to produce all the requested records.
The officer in charge of producing the disciplinary records, the officer directly responsible for repeated foot-dragging and stonewalling, the officer engaged in repeated insubordination relating to NRPD senior command, is Captain George Rosenbergen.
After reporting numerous issues with Captain Rosenbergen’s poor conduct over the past year, to NRPD senior command and City officials, we heard back from several officials not to take his behavior personally as he is well-known to be an obnoxious jerk with everyone and widely disliked within the department.
In March and April 2021, Talk of the Sound was provided “CO 2” documents which are like a table of contents for a disciplinary record — date, case number, a brief note on the nature of a violation and, if any, the command discipline. While useful, they are highly deceptive as they mask any real understanding of the full scope of the actual disciplinary records.
For example, McKenna’s CO 2 was a short list briefly describing two Internal Affairs investigations on a particular date.
Alec McKenna: A Story of Traffic Stops
The underlying records revealed not 2 but 158 violations, based on one investigation not two, covering a two-month period not one day. In releasing the underlying records (after 9 months of stonewalling), City Manager Charles B. Strome claimed the investigation of McKenna which entailed watching over 100 hours of dash cam video and reviewing hundreds of records was some sort of standard review of new officers, a bald-faced lie. McKenna had logged 5 years with NRPD and even received extra pay as a shift training officer. The impetus for the investigation was not a standard review for new officers, but concerns expressed by McKenna’s supervisor about McKenna’s traffic stops.
We have thoroughly documented the ongoing mendacious response by the Mayor, Police Commissioner and City Manager to the death of Kamal Flowers.
Alec McKenna — Kamal Flowers Archive
After documenting the false narrative put forward by Mayor Noam Bramson and Police Commissioner Joe Schaller at a press conference held 12 hours after the death of Kamal Flowers, we asked the Mayor about his role in spreading “fake news”.
At what point do you take responsibility for being a vehicle for lies and misinformation?
Perhaps you care to issue a corrective statement as to YOUR remarks on 6/6 — that there were no tinted windows, the car was not being sought by police for 2 days, it was not pulled over because of the incident on 6/3, that the identity of the lessee was known, etc.
Do you not feel ANY responsibility to correct a false narrative you presented to the entire community?
Robert Cox
Publisher and Managing Editor
Talk of the Sound
The Mayor’s only response was to point the finger of blame away from himself.
At the second and final press conference addressing the officer-involved shooting of Kamal Flowers, on November 4, 2020, after a Grand Jury failed to indict Alec McKenna the Mayor issued a statement in which he failed to correct the false narrative he promulgated on June 6, 2020.
On June 6, we gathered here to deliver the sobering news of an officer-involved shooting. At that time, we shared whatever information was available to us, expressed our heartfelt grief, and gave our support to a thorough review.
At the 1:30 mark in the above video, we asked again about correcting the false narrative of June 5, 2020. Mayor Bramson dissembled. Police Commissioner Schaller said, “…we provided everyone with the best information we had at the time, not all of it was entirely accurate…” City Manager Charles B. Strome reaches out to tug on Schaller’s sleeve to get him away from the microphone. When another reporter asked what exactly was not accurate, Strome said he could not answer that question until an internal investigation was completed.
That internal investigation was announced as completed on March 4, 2021. There has been no corrective statement issued since then — or ever. The false narrative of June 6, 2020, remains the official position of the New Rochelle Police Department and the City of New Rochelle.
In the past few weeks, matters reached a breaking point with Captain Rosenbergen. Our view is that if City and Police officials want to tolerate an insufferable wanker in their senior command, that is their choice, but deliberately withholding public records is a violation of state law. It is a far bigger issue than rudeness when a law enforcement agency is deliberately breaking the law.
We had intended to wait to report on material in the NRPD disciplinary files until we could complete the database we built using the CO 2 files and New York State pension records, but we are done waiting for NRPD to complete record production. To wait any further is to reward police corruption as exhibited by Captain Rosenbergen personally and the department as a whole.
Part II will involve a step back to review our past reporting on malfeasance, corruption, incompetence, and buffoonery in the New Rochelle Police Department over the last 14 years before we start sharing with readers the good, the bad and the ugly from the disciplinary records we do have — the NRPD Clown Show.
The Complete Series (as published so far):
Inside the New Rochelle Police Department Clown Show – Table of Contents
The Clown Show series is a multipart series reporting on New Rochelle Police Department Internal Affairs disciplinary records of current and former members of the department.
We are keeping the comments section closed until the series has run its course, but if you have your own experience with The Clown Show, please share at robertcox@talkofthesound.com or call/text/signal at 914-325-4616. We cannot do much without details like names of officers, dates, locations, so be as specific as you can. Give us a way to reply and follow up.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The NRPD disciplinary records published in our series Inside the New Rochelle Police Department Clown Show were confidential under New York State Law since 1976 when New York State enacted 50-a, a section of the New York Civil Rights Law, which hid disciplinary records of police officers, firefighters, and prison officers from the public. 50-a was repealed by the New York State Legislature and signed into law by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on June 12, 2020. On that day, Talk of the Sound made its first request for disciplinary records of New Rochelle Police Department officers, those of PO Alec McKenna. Those records were illegally withheld by the City of New Rochelle and the NRPD. In response, we filed an additional 834 requests based on current and past police department rosters, press releases, award ceremony programs and New York State police pension records obtained from the New York State Office of the State Comptroller. NRPD has claimed that about 200 of those requests are duplicative due to slight variations and discrepancies in how names of officers are recorded by NRPD, NRPD Internal Affairs and the New York State Police and Fire Retirement System. Those 600+ records were illegally withheld by the City of New Rochelle and the NRPD. Production of these records began on March 4, 2021, and continued in fits and starts over the following 8 months. As of the publication date of this article, NRPD had yet to complete production of all requested disciplinary records. For the reasons described above, our “Clown Show” series is reporting on incidents in the past, sometimes the distant past, but our obtaining the records published in this series has only just occurred in recent months, weeks, or days and so while the Internal Affairs charges, investigations and resulting command disciplines are not new the public disclosure of them is new, hence “news”. Most, if not all, of the information contained in these decades of previously secret records is becoming known to the public for the first time through this series.