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Detective Delano's disciplinary hearing wraps up

It's All Over But The Crying

Detective Dennis Delano

As downtown Buffalo took on the feel of a ghost town on President’s Day, the disciplinary hearings brought by the Buffalo Police Department against Detective Dennis Delano came to an anticlimactic close. Only a handful of media people showed up to witness the final public hearing. Friends and family were also on hand to the end, notably Lynn DeJac, who had been wrongly found guilty of her daughter’s murder and had served 13 years in prison. She is free now, due in large part to Delano’s work.

Instead of listening to dramatic closing arguments by Assistant Corporation Counsel Diane T. O’Gorman and attorney Steven M. Cohen, it was decided that those arguments would be submitted in writing to be considered by Hearing Officer Thomas N. Rinaldo, as he sifts through exhibits and testimony to determine whether or not to terminate Delano’s 24-year career with the department. The charges hold Delano culpable for complying with a request from Channel 2 News reporter Scott Brown for DVDs of a 16-year-old crime scene and a polygraph test of now-convicted murderer Dennis Donohue—a charge Delano acknowledges as true.

Testimony also revealed that Delano had cooperated with the media hundreds of times and had never been reprimanded. He had also been asked by superiors to talk to the media previously, because of his knowledge about specific cases. Captain Mark Morgan and other superiors had given him permission over the years to make copies of cold case files.

Rinaldo and O’Gorman were shown similar crime scene footage that aired on other local TV news outlets prior to Delano’s alleged transgression. The defendant said he didn’t supply it, and doesn’t know who did. I called a local TV outlet that confirmed that although they’d been denied the footage in February 2008, pursuant to a FOIL request to the Buffalo Police Department, they were able to obtain a copy quite easily through another source—not Delano.

At one point, O’Gorman asked Delano if he had co-authored a book about the Bike Path Rapist. He said that he had. She asked if in fact he would be attending a book signing on March 7 at Sole Restaurant. Cohen objected. O’Gorman suggested that the media coverage (of the hearings in which she was participating) was certainly going to have an effect on book sales. The objection was sustained.

For the record, the Buffalo Police Department is bringing the current proceedings, and no one had mentioned any book signing until O’Gorman brought it up. I certainly didn’t know about it, but since she inserted the info into the record, I thought I’d include it in my account.

BPD Special Assistant to the Commissioner for Communications Mike DeGeorge could not provide O’Gorman’s closing argument to Artvoice, explaining that those documents would be in the hands of Rinaldo until he reaches his decision in anywhere from two to four months.

It seems clear that this hearing, which was made open to the public at the request of the defense, has not been a comfortable experience for the BPD. When asked afterward how she felt about the openness of the hearing, O’Gorman replied: “With all respect to my friends in the media, it’s not good for these kinds of proceedings.”

Thankfully, not everyone subscribes to this goal of secrecy. While many interested parties await the outcome of this whole affair, a process that could take several months, I leave you with this excerpt from Cohen’s closing statement:

The evidence has shown that it is because of Detective Dennis Delano and his extraordinary colleagues of the Cold Case Squad that two innocent people have been set free after spending much of their adult lives in prison. The proof has shown that it is Detective Delano’s persistence, his unshakable passion for the truth that made their exoneration possible. Two unspoken questions loom: [1] How many more innocent people are behind bars, and [2] how will we ever find them? To the first question the answer is this: too many. The second question Your Honor, depends largely on you and other adjudicators who preside over cases like this. Will cops like Dennis Delano be allowed to find innocent people whose lives are wasting away behind bars, when finding them will inexorably lead to discovery and uncovering of errors by prosecutors and other cops? Or will cops like Dennis Delano be shut up and shut down so that the precious reputation of others remains unchallenged at the expense of the liberty of innocent souls? Mr. Arbitrator, this is up to you. This case has attracted national interest and Your Honor’s decision will surely be cited either by politicians and administrators, or by cops, but not by both.

It is indeed fitting that these proceedings took place inside the walls of the Buffalo Police Academy where civilians who choose to dedicate their lives to the service of the citizenry are transformed into officers of the law. A decision from an independent arbitrator, regardless of what Commissioner Gipson ultimately decides to do, completely exonerating Detective Delano of all charges would set the standards for brand new officers just a little bit higher, and it would blow some of the dust off the plaque* that sat in the corner of the very room in which Detective Delano was taken to task for the very conduct that caused him to be included in the Ethics text that is required reading for West Point Cadets, admitted into evidence at Exhibit 21. This case is a test. What role will ethics play in the BPD? For the sake of this extraordinary detective, for the sake of this Department, for the sake of officers who appreciate the solemnity of the oaths they take, for the commanders whose brass is not yet tarnished, for the sake of the families of victims of unsolved homicides, and for the sake of the innocent who have been wrongfully imprisoned I demand that you exonerate Detective Dennis Delano. I demand that you stand with the Governor of the State of New York and the President of the Erie County and New York State Bar Associations and declare with one definitive voice that Detective Dennis Delano’s actions were consistent with the very highest standards desired, expected and required of police officers in this state and every state.

The plaque Cohen refers to reads as follows: “No one is compelled to choose the profession of a police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to perform its duties and live up to the high standards of its requirements.”

buck quigley

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