Legislature never approved tactical unit
A tactical police unit that has responded to barricaded and armed suspects over nearly two decades has been disbanded because, according to Putnam County, the Legislature never approved an intermunicipal agreement with police from Carmel and Kent.
County Attorney C. Compton Spain, in a Dec. 4 letter to Sheriff Kevin McConville, said the department “should immediately abandon and discontinue all involvement” with the Emergency Response Team (ERT), which was composed of 19 deputies and six officers from the towns of Carmel and Kent.
The participation of deputies in the team presented “clear insurance coverage liability issues,” said Spain, because the Putnam Legislature never approved the unit, which was formed around 2005 to respond to serious incidents such as bomb threats and hostage situations.
“For this reason alone, the presently constructed ERT necessitates immediate termination,” he said.
McConville, during a tense 1½-hour meeting of the Legislature’s Protective Services Committee on Dec. 18, said the problem emerged after Undersheriff Thomas Lindert contacted the Personnel Department about fitness tests for new members of the team.
The Personnel Department was “shocked” to discover that the tests, instead of being arranged by its staff as is protocol, were being administered by ERT members, as per usual practice, said McConville. That led to a conversation with the Law Department and the “eye-opening” disclosure, he said.
A team made up solely of deputies will replace the ERT, based on advice from Spain, said McConville. The team will no longer share with Carmel and Kent a federal grant that had been split among the three agencies, he said.
Nancy Montgomery, who represents Philipstown on the county Legislature, and officials from Carmel and Kent suggested that the Legislature could simply approve an intermunicipal agreement instead of having a team of deputies. But McConville said that crafting an agreement would take time.
“Our greatest concern was being able to stand up a team immediately that could respond,” he said. “We would be, alternatively, liable had we not.”
Despite the Law Department’s determination, McConville spent part of the meeting fending off criticisms from Carmel and Kent officials.
Robert Kearns, a member of Carmel’s Town Board, said the disbanding “seems like a power grab,” and Kevin Owens, chief of the Kent Police Department, said no one alerted him to concerns about the team before he received the Law Department’s letter. “We feel like it was backdoored intentionally,” he said.
Michael Cazzari, Carmel’s supervisor and a former police chief for the town’s police department, said he was involved in forming a countywide team rather than continuing to wait for tactical teams from the state police and Westchester County to arrive at emergency scenes in Putnam.
“It’s foolish to go the route that you’re going and I don’t think it’s insurance,” he said. “We were covered; Kent’s covered.”
Their officers and sheriff’s deputies assigned to the ERT have negotiated with armed suspects at a number of incidents.
The unit responded in September 2021 to an hours-long standoff in Putnam Valley when medics answering to a call about a person with chest pains were confronted by a man armed with a shotgun. The incident ended when the man used the shotgun to commit suicide.
Negotiators with the ERT convinced, in March 2020, an armed, suicidal man in the Town of Southeast to surrender after a two-hour standoff. They also negotiated the surrender, in November 2019, of an armed man barricaded for six hours inside a residence in Carmel.
McConville told the Protective Services Committee that the Sheriff’s Department is finalizing an internal response team that will be led by Capt. James Schepperly, who has been consulting with the state police and Westchester County, who each have response teams.
Westchester County has already scheduled training sessions with Putnam’s deputies, said Schepperly. McConville also said that the team could eventually expand to include officers from other municipalities.
Who controls an expanded team is the “elephant in the room,” said Montgomery. “We understand that Carmel and Kent will be allowed back on this team, but what’s not being answered is does it remain under the sheriff’s control,” she said.
