Inside the New Rochelle Police Department Clown Show — Part III

As responses to our more than year old, illegally stonewalled, Freedom of Information requests to the New Rochelle Police Department for police disciplinary records continue to trickle in, we now move forward as promised with exposing the brutality, racism, misogyny, homophobia, cruelty, malfeasance, incompetence, insubordination, buffoonery, and even criminal acts that have been hidden from the public over the decades.

While we still do not have all the records, we now have enough to get started. We are not going to let NRPD Command win by delaying our publication of these records by holding off until they eventually get around to full compliance with New York State law.

Under the New York State Freedom of Information Law, an agency has 5 days to produce requested records, deny the request (which triggers a 10-day appeals process) or request more time up to 22 business days. Basically, agencies like NRPD have up to about a month to comply with public records requests.

NRPD has historically been very good about FOIL compliance but since we first began requesting police disciplinary records after the repeal of 50-a, the law that exempted the disciplinary records of first responders, on June 12, 2020, FOIL compliance has gone from very good to non-existent. Of the 835 requests we made in 2020 for NRPD disciplinary records, precisely zero have been acted upon in compliance with New York State law. It is always a problem when a law enforcement agency sees itself as above the law.

Going forward, we intend to add the following editor’s note or similar for each part in the series where we public accounts of our findings as we go through NRPD disciplinary records:

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Law, which hid disciplinary records of police officers, firefighters, and prison officers from the public. 50-a was repealed by the New York State Legislature and signed into law by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo on June 12, 2020.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 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 these series.

With that, let’s begin by catching up on two Internal Affairs investigations previously reported outside the scope of this series starting with Kevin Kealy.

Kevin Kealy

Kevin Kealy was one of the highest ranking Commanders in the New Rochelle Police Department in 2007 when he was recorded demonstrating egregious racist behavior.

On April 8, 2007 Kealy was speaking with then-Deputy Commissioner Anthony Murphy from a recorded telephone line in the Communications Unit at New Rochelle Police Department Headquarters. During the course of the telephone conversation Captain Kealy used the word “fuck” several times and used the phrase “these fucking Zulus are running wild”.

Zulu, in and of itself, is not a racist term. Zulu people are the largest ethnic group and nation in South Africa, with an estimated 10–12 million people living, mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Zulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa, where it is an official language.

Zulus in the context of the Internal Affairs investigation into Captain Kealy’s use of the term appears to be predicated on Kealy apparently applying the word Zulus to Black people in New Rochelle — few if any of whom are Zulu people or Zulu language speakers — to convey a racist belief that Black people in New Rochelle are out of control savages, an entirely different context.

April 8, 2007 is the date of the so-called “Easter Riot” when according to news reports at the time, “200 police officers in riot gear were called from across Westchester County to deal with more than 1,000 unruly teenagers ejected from” New Roc City.

On the charges of Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and Use of Profanity, Kealy accepted a Command Discipline of the Loss of 5 Leave Days. The report does not specify whether the charges were based on the racist statement itself, the use of profanity, or that the racist statement and profanity were made during a telephone conversation on a recorded line.

Kealy served as Division Commander for the Police Services Division.

According to New York State Pension records, Kealy joined the New Rochelle Police Department on February 3, 1975. He remained as Captain for 7 more years after the incident until his retirement on December 31, 2014.

The incident raises serious, unanswered, questions about the treatment of Black people by New Rochelle Police under a command structure with an overt racist as a Division Commander and a Senior Command that tolerated such a person as Division Commander even long after that racist behavior was the subject of Command Discipline.

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.