Inside the New Rochelle Police Department Clown Show — Part VIII

Christopher Castiglia

Christopher Castiglia had two major disciplinary incidents in his career (so far), one in 2008 involving a taser and one in 2016 involving social media posts.

In 2008, Castiglia possessed a New Rochelle Police Department taser “without authorization or training”. He shocked an off-duty civilian NRPD employee (not named in the report but believed to be Kenny “Skippy” Skinner, a CSO). According to a source familiar with the incident, at a party one night, Castiglia allegedly took a taser from a member of the NRPD who was authorized to possess the taser and, thinking it would be funny to discharge the taser, he tased the civilian NRPD employee.

Castiglia received a command discipline for Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and was suspended for five days without pay, from January 25, 2008, to January 29, 2008.

In 2016, Castiglia published social media posts critical of the Black Lives Matter movement on July 8 and August 8-9.

The posts were noticed and reported by Black Westchester magazine on August 29 resulting in Castiglia’s suspension without pay.

Mainstream Media Mum About White Westchester Officers Invidious Facebook Comments About BLM

Castiglia went on a Facebook rant July 8th, telling blacks who protest police brutality, “Don’t call the police when your world is in disarray to help deal with the worst 10 minutes of your life, figure it out yourself or better yet call Shaun King and Black lives Matter for help…”

Then again on August 8th a day after a successful and peaceful BLM Rally in New Rochelle, Castiglia posted on Facebook, “We protect them while they exercise their first amendment rights to protest us.”

The New Rochelle Police Department issued a statement:

Earlier today, the New Rochelle Police Department became aware of a private social media post attributed to one of our members that was critical of the Black Lives Matter movement. The post was neither made with the knowledge or approval of the Department, nor does it reflect the opinions of the Police Department and its members. This matter is being fully investigated and discipline will be forth coming should it be determined that the individual member violated the Department’s policy governing the use of social media. The N.R.P.D. will continue our efforts to foster trust, communication, and cooperation between members of the Department and the community we serve.

Black Westchester reported on the suspension on August 30:

New Rochelle Cop Suspended For Invidious Facebook Comments About BLM

Jared Rice, then a New Rochelle City Council member and today a New Rochelle City Court judge, was quoted in the Black Westchester article disclosing confidential information, that Castiglia had been suspended without pay.

“Successful 21st century policing requires true police accountability,” New Rochelle Councilman Jared Rice. “Faced with the unprofessional remarks by the officer in question, our department acted swiftly in suspending him without pay pending final disciplinary action. We take seriously our efforts to improve police-community relations, and today’s actions reflect just that.”

“Breaking down barriers of distrust between police and the community is not a one-sided affair,” New Rochelle Councilman Jared Rice tells BW. “We’ve made great strides in the last year with our Youth and Police Initiative, but there is much more work to do. Ultimately, I would like to see New Rochelle implement effective racial sensitivity training for our police department so that we can avoid incidents such as these in the future.”

Rice did not know at the time what the “pending final disciplinary action” would be; that information was never made public until now.

The Journal News picked up on the reporting by Black Westchester (without credit):

New Rochelle cop suspended for Facebook post

At the time, the exact nature of the Command Disciple was confidential under 50-a, repealed in 2020. Castiglia’s disciplinary file was obtained by Talk of the Sound on August 30, 2021, after about a year of stonewalling by NRPD.

Castiglia pleaded guilty to three counts of misconduct: one count of Misconduct for his “failure to conduct himself in a manner as to reflect most favorably on the department”, one count of Misconduct for “engaging in conduct that negatively affected the public perception of the department” and one count of Misconduct for “engaging in conduct over social media that did discredit or reflect unfavorably on the department”.

On September 12, 2016 Castiglia agreed, retroactively, to a suspension of 7 days without pay then returned to work.

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.