A Michigan Avenue resident named Charles Calabro filed suit recently against Niagara Falls Police Capt. David LeGault, charging the veteran cop with police brutality in an incident that occurred more than a year ago.
LeGault was investigating the rape of an infant girl in the troubled neighborhood when Calabro ran out of the house and started yelling at him, according to reports. Other witnesses at the scene reported that shots had been fired inside the house, but Calabro got in LeGault's face.
"The shooter is in the house, get him," he yelled. "Where were you?"
He then launched into a string of profanities at LeGault and his men, who were now concerned about being shot, along with conducting their rape investigation.
LeGault said he pushed Calabro and told him to get back. Calabro kept coming, LeGault said, and so he slapped him and knocked him to the ground.
In discussing the suit with the press, Calabro's attorney, Matthew Mosher, tried to defend his client by smearing the highly decorated LeGault.
"Niagara Falls is a very small community," Mosher said. "Most of our evidence is anecdotal, but (LeGault) does have a certain reputation, and certainly we will bring witnesses."
The fact of the matter is that, in his long career with the NFPD, LeGault has never had one single complaint directed against him for brutality or anything else. He spent many years as head of the department's Emergency Response Team, leading his men on countless dangerous raids involving guns and drugs in the city's worst neighborhoods.
Assistant City Corporation Counsel Douglas Janese vouched for LeGault.
"He's a good guy and a good cop, the captain of the Emergency Response Team, which is like the SWAT team," Janese said. "There have never been any allegations. He's well liked and well respected in the community and by his peers. He always puts the interests of the city and the residents above his own self-interest."
LeGault currently heads up the city's Roving Anti-Crime Unit, which made headlines a few weeks ago for its role in taking down the leadership of the Bloods street gang here.
He is as fine a police officer as we have here in the city, the words of some two-bit lawyer from Buffalo notwithstanding. Niagara Falls could use 100 officers of LeGault's timber.
The suit against LeGault and the department comes on the heels of a similar action filed by Jacquinta Coleman, who claims to have been brutalized in February 2008 by cops responding to a domestic violence incident at the home of her sister.
Matteo Anello, brother of disgraced and indicted former mayor Vince Anello, likewise claimed an officer used excessive force when he was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at a City Council meeting in 2007.
All three of the cases have one thing in common, and it's not police brutality. Calabro, Coleman and Anello all failed to respond to instructions given them by duly appointed officers of the law, and they all then chose to get belligerent about it.
Back in Cleveland, we were all taught that if a cop tells you to shut up and sit down, you shut up and sit down. I wish I could tell you that this civics lesson had everything to do with the high level of moral uprightness that Cleveland children are raised with, but it didn't.
It had everything to do with the fact that cops have authority. They also have radios with which they can call any number of their brethren to the scene in minutes. They also have nightsticks and, when all else fails, they have guns.
Not long ago, NFPD Officers Michael Bird and Walter Nichols were shot without warning and wounded by some dirtbag as they answered a domestic violence call on South Avenue.
Had their assailant been a better shot, they would have been dead.
Every cop in the city goes into the station every day knowing he might not come home after work. I wouldn't do it for a million dollars, but they do it -- day in and day out -- for a lot less. Most of us don't have any interaction with them at all. Maybe you got a ticket once and weren't too happy about it, or maybe you were touched by the sight of an officer stopping traffic on Pine Avenue to help an elderly person cross the street.
It is a well-known fact that more than 90 percent of the police calls here involve fewer than 20 percent of city residents.
With our streets awash in drugs and illegal guns, and murder, rape and robbery in the headlines every morning, do we really want a police department rendered toothless by the threat of frivolous lawsuits and bad publicity?
We can only hope that Capt. LeGault won't become too discouraged by the nonsense. No judge is likely to admit the "anecdotal evidence" mentioned by Calabro's mouthpiece, since anecdotal evidence is pretty much just lawyer-talk for unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo.
Feeble attempts to besmirch his reputation, and the reputations of the many brave officers who serve alongside him, should be seen for what they are.
And dismissed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 21 2009 |