Inside the New Rochelle Police Department Clown Show — Part VI

VICTORIA FERRARO

On June 28, 2019, Police Officer Ferraro was scheduled to work an overtime tour of duty. During her tour of duty, Police Officer Ferraro posted a picture to her personal Instagram social media account. The photo depicted the interior of an NRPD Marked Radio Car, with an open personal laptop sitting on top of an open NRPD in-car laptop. The text of the photo was “I take OT so I can do schoolwork and get paid”. The additional text on the photo was V-Ferraro, “made with Boomerang”, and reply to V-Ferraro. There was also a few symbols, characters, emoji and a small photograph.

During an investigation Police Officer Ferraro acknowledged the post and admitted that she should not have done it by her action Police Officer Ferraro violated the New Rochelle Police Department, Rules and Regulations chapter 12 § 12.1, which states “department members are free to express themselves as private citizens on social media sites, to the degree that their speech does not impair working relationships of the department for which confidentiality are important, impede the performance of duties, impair discipline and harmony among co-workers, are negatively affect the public perception of the department,” and Chapter 12 § 12.2, which states, “members of the department shall not post transmit reproduce and or disseminate information (text, pictures, video, audio, etc.) to the internet, or any other forum, public or private, that would tend to discredit or reflect unfavorably upon the department, or any of the department’s employees”.

The punishment was loss of five leave days.

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.