20 Years of On-Duty Sex, Plus Overtime, Cop Retired Early at 42 with 7 Years of Health Benefits
The New Britain Herald reports on the results of an internal affairs investigation of the now former Captain Anthony Paventi, who was the subject of a federal lawsuit filed by four female officers, was placed on leave last September when the internal affairs investigation started and negotiated a retirement deal at the end of the year:
An internal affairs investigation into his activities concluded that Paventi had sex on duty throughout the span of his 20-year career and even rented hotel rooms for the trysts while he was working.
Investigators determined that he rented rooms at the Days Inn on the Berlin Turnpike, in Berlin, 15 times in 18 months while he was on the clock and department and hotel records indicated that at least twice Paventi was receiving overtime pay during the trysts. He also met a woman for sex on the day in August 2011 the allegations were revealed, the report said. Many of the meetings for sex occurred as Paventi was the commander of the Professional Standards Division and while he was being sued by four female police officers.
Paventi's retirement deal in December left him with a pension of 54 percent of his pay, or $51,000 a year, as well as seven years of health benefits paid by the city. New Britain Mayor Tim O'Brien said then that the deal (which was also supposed to keep the results of the internal affairs investigation secret—freedom of information laws kicked in) "prevents potentially long and costly litigation and is in the best interests of taxpayers." In January, the city set aside up to $25,000 on legal bills and retained private counsel for Paventi and another officer charged in the sexual harassment suit, John Carlone, on a $36,000 a year disability pension since 2009.
The police chief William Gagliardi retired at the beginning of the month.
More Reason on police and public unions.
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So that's how that works? You get paid for harassment? I always thought my company fired people for that. Huh.
I'm in the wrong line of work, that's for sure.
That's it. I'm running for Sheriff instead of President in November.
I'm 50, so a little late for retiring at 42. But I figure I can definitely get in a couple years of fuckin' on overtime before tossing down my weapon, raising my arms, and playing Let's Make a Deal.
New Britain is a shithole, just like New London. I'm not surprised their police departments are shitholes too.
Pretty much seems to be a "New" thing. New York, New England, New Coke - all BAD!
No, don't be an idiot. There's plenty of Connecticut which is absolutely gorgeous and nice. But the two cities I listed are shitholes. I guess by your logic, New Mexico is a shithole too?
Also, New New York would have to be doubly bad.
"Old New York: the city that inspired a casino in Las Vegas."
Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New New England.
Minus the food, the bunny rabbit wallpaper... *gasp!* I'm getting 100 bucks a kid and they're costing me 110!
that's alot of wing-wang!
There are some nice places in Connecticut. The rich people from New York didn't move there for nothing. But the cities are all shit holes. It is not just New London and New Britain, there is also New Haven and Hartford which bring new meaning to the word suck. Hell, I would rather live in Providence than Hartford.
I agree with you there, John, but West Hartford (where all the wealthy people who work in Hartford live) is really, really nice. I am a fan of Providence, though. It's sleepy, but it also has Lovecraft connections.
Stamford is actually pretty nice. Bridgeport is horrible, as is Danbury. But some of the wealthiest towns in America are in Connecticut, and they are really, really nice.
Waterberry always looked really depressing. The towns in eastern Connecticut where the New York money lives are gorgeous.
And I like Providence too. I like what they did to their downtown. It has a lot of character. And it is close to Newport, which is great. RI is known as the Alabama of New England, but I think it gets a bad rap.
You fuck one cousin...
Who calls Rhode Island that? I've never heard that, so it sounds like something made up by people who know nothing about New England.
Rhode Island has some fantastic shorefront, too. I've spend countless hours at Misquamicut.
My in-laws in Massachusetts say that Epi.
Well, I guess one can expect Massholes to say strange things.
Massholes hold all of the rest of New England in total disdain. It is Cow Hampshire and Vermont Hicks and Alabamans in RI.
Well, that tends to be reciprocal, though the western Mass folks don't tend to deserve that. Inter-New England TEAM REGION crap can get pretty extreme.
Yes, please leave western Mass out of your bullshit example of Massholes. Except for Northampton, fuck them.
The people in Boston don't even know there is a state outside of the 128 loop.
I know. I always cringe when some douche says that Worcester is western Mass.
It's almost entirely the fault of Massholes. Also, CTers drive like assholes, but they are at least usually tolerable not behind the wheel. Maine is full of people who were too white trashy to live in South Boston, Vermont is full of the progressive descendants of Puritans, and no one cares about Rhode Island, not even the people who live there.
I left Connecticut last month, but consider myself more of a refugee than an emigrant: I can afford to buy a house there, but can't afford the property taxes that would enable me to keep it. And West Hartford is what made me realize "I have to GTFO of here" a few years ago; I wrote for an alt-weekly, covered WH, and did a story about the town's revaluation for tax purposes -- an old man who lived in a Cape Cod house he'd inherited from his parents had a property tax bill of $8,000 in 2007, bumped up to $15,500 in 2008.
This year, in West Hartford, a house worth $200K will have an annual property tax bill of $7,150. And in West Hartford, a $200K house is basically a one-bedroom crack shack built over a toxic waste dump.
New Britain was gorgeous from about 1880 through the 1960s. Then the manufacturing jobs dried up, "urban renewal" replaced viable neighborhoods with concrete highways, and even before this latest scandal broke, everybody knew the cops were a corrupt joke.
This year, in West Hartford, a house worth $200K will have an annual property tax bill of $7,150.
Holy shit Jennifer. That is about the property tax bill for a $600,000 house in Montgomery County Maryland. And Maryland is a tax hell. I didn't think there was anywhere on earth worse than Maryland. There is no way anyone with anything approaching an average income or normal job could live there.
And that is why I left. It's a great place if you're super-rich, an okay place if you're on public assistance, and -- as this story shows -- a fucking utopia if you're a public employee with a taste for corruption, but if you're ordinary private-sector middle class, you can't afford to live there unless you don't mind living like a college student forever.
Wasn't West Hartford the town that got sued because they wouldn't hire a guy for the police department for scoring too high on the intelligence test?
No, croaker, that was New London. The town won its court case, and now legally discriminates against intelligent people when hiring cops.
New Mexico is a shithole too?
New Mexico is a shithole.
How in the hell can New London be a shithole when the government has used eminent domain to make things better?
Shocking I know.
Oh, also:
AND NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED
The End
The taxpayer gets fucked the best in this deal.
Let's see another couple awesome dunphy parodies....
Ahh, just post a short note condemning cop-o-crats.
Masshole!
Thank goodness he didn't have a taser.
Paventi was receiving overtime pay during the trysts
You have to love the irony of that.
I don't know whether to say, "Priceless!" or "Don't let anyone tell you cops don't work hard" Those millions of overtime hours cops put in each year are all due to *a lack of sufficient funding* to fully staff departments!
You know things are fucked up when guys like this get busted and the entire institution of police forces either shrug or rush to their defense. It should inform people that this is by no means exceptional.
It was only five minutes of overtime.
I wish I was this guy's lawyer.
"Captain, drop your pants and show the judge our de minimis defense."
A whole bunch of bad apples spoils the whole bunch.
An entire half day without a single troll. Odd how all of the trolls disappear when our most notorious one goes on a bath salt bender and gets her various screen names and IP addresses banned.
Yes, isn't that curious. It's almost like it's all one person. But no; that couldn't be, right?
It is funny. She lurks for weeks. Slowly trolling and building up handles only to go insane on one day and get her various IP address and handles banned caused her to disappear for a while and start the whole thing over.
And it was toward the end of the month, supporting my long held "running out of meds" hypothesis.
And she will always disappears for a few days afterwords. That kind of does indicate some kind of manic stage followed by a crash.
This seems appropriate given today's theme.
The guy was just trying to give new meaning to "Fuck the Police."
It's not his fault. He wasn't trained to not have sex on the job, he can't be held responsible.
/diswutdunphybelieves
no, but past practice and training are relevant in the literally hundreds of arbitrator cases where cop discipline is overturned.
these aren't my inventions.
this is de facto reality
how many arbitrator reports have you read?
the very article i referenced said EXACTLY the same thing i am saying , that the reason the disciplined officer was exonerated was due to past practice and that there was no policy prohibiting what he did. iow, other people had knowingly done it and received no punishment
this case is disanalogous, to anybody with a modicum of legal understanding, which apparently excludes you
e.g. (note facts, not rhetoric)
The Court of Appeals disagreed. An established or past practice can become a binding term or condition of employment even if it is not written into a CBA agreement, it determined. If a practice has become part of an employer's structure, and if the employer has instituted the practice and permitted it to continue, that employer cannot then unilaterally change that practice. In Kentwood's case, every detective in the bargaining unit since 1990 had been assigned a take-home vehicle. The arbitrator relied on this history in making her decision that a take-home vehicle was a term or condition of employment.
Kentwood argued that the CBA modified that past practice. Courts have found that in cases where the language of a bargaining agreement conflicts with past practice, the contract will control unless the past practice is so widely acknowledged and accepted by employers and employees that it effectively amends the contract. If the bargaining agreement does not specifically address the past practice, then all that is necessary is a tacit agreement that the practice should continue.
In this case, the CBA did not address the matter of take-home vehicles. The language of Section 17.2 did not specifically preclude the past practice of giving out vehicles as a term of employment. Under the circumstances, it was not unreasonable of the arbitrator to conclude that assigning take-home vehicles to detectives was binding past practice. The court reinstated the arbitrator's award. City of Kentwood v. Police Officers Labor Council, Court of Appeals of Michigan, No. 279993 (10/28/08).
Point to remember: Traditional practice can amount to a contractual obligation, even if it's not written down.
http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Staf.....igation-7/
here's an entire arbitrator opinion
good reading for those interested in facts vs. factless rhetoric...
http://media.oregonlive.com/po.....other/City of Portland-PPA, Frashour, Arbitration Award.pdf
trying that link again
http://media.oregonlive.com/po.....other/City of Portland-PPA, Frashour, Arbitration Award.pdf
and if you want an insight into REAL police procedure and actual details, case facts, etc. it's a fascinating read. portland PD is squared away
I am now totally convinced that this guy fucking chicks on the clock is totally both acceptable and should in fact be applauded. Why I thought otherwise was due solely to a lack of understanding of department procedures and arbitration contract resolution. Thank you for clearing that up.
lies noted.
note: his behavior was unacceptable and should be punished.
is it a bfd?
no
Sorry dunphy, I don't get it. Can you explain what you're saying but with longer paragraphs and more links?
Lies? I made no claims.
I just didn't realize that public servants, paid by taxpayers and held up as "america's finest", lauded as making sincere sacrifices to serve the public good, *should not* be criticised for something so trivial as the Captain of a department using his time on the clock to fuck chicks on the hood of his car, or have three-ways...
A woman referred to as Complainant No. 1 told attorneys during the deposition and Wardwell during the IA investigation that she and Paventi had sex on the hood of a police cruiser while he was on duty. She also said they had sex while he was working at a church function and that she broke off the brief affair in 1997 after he invited her to a Meriden hotel where she discovered he wanted to have sex with two women.
In fact, I should probably just pat him on the back and say, "atta boy!" for his red-blooded American virility
The problem is he is not being punished, he's being rewarded. He gets to retire at age 42 with a salary of $51,000 a year for the rest of his life and his health insurance is covered for the next 7 years.
He now can go get a 2nd career working as a corporate security specialist or teaching criminal justice at some podunk community college and pull 2 salaries before finally retiring at age 62 a practical millionaire.
That's not a punishment, that is what workers in the private sector call utopia.
note: his behavior was unacceptable and should be punished.
is it a bfd?
Because 'unacceptable and punish-worthy behavior by police is totally different than for regular people, who would normally instantly be fired for cause and have all benefits revoked'
What constitutes, 'big deal', BTW? Some wannabe-Serpico ratting out the dept?
Kelly Thomas, 2/3 a bfd?
looks like straight up criminal fraud to me. stealing from the taxpayer. arrest him, charge him, give him his day in court. no need for an arbitrator, which looks like an obstruction of justice in this case.
I'm also betting he had a weapon with him when he committed the theft.
stop resisting dunphy!
The punch line? I'm pretty sure that retirement deal is set in stone, and no amount of wrongdoing on the cop's part can change it one iota.
Isn't it odd how often "the best interests of the taxpayers" coincide with the best interests of the malfeasing cops when a union is involved?
did they find for the plaintiffs in the sex harassment suit?
nope.
and fwiw, heller's comment is stupid. it IS his fault.
it's also a pretty minor infraction. iow, big fucking deal
no pun intended
omg, he had sex 15 times on duty in the last 18 months
the horror!!!
hopefully, it was his lunch period.
i know two guys who were hired by a local PD after they admitted having sex several times during their (granted UNPAID ) lunch period (with their wives) within the privacy of the home.
seriously, if a cop is having sex on duty 15 times in 18 months, i would say "BFD"
atfpapic that seems horribly UNLIKELY:
i still have a lunch period during overtime period. 1/2 hr per 4 hrs of overtime
again, that's PAID lunch. it would be LESS inappropriate if he schtupped during UNpaid lunch, but again few agencies HAVE unpaid lunch, my former agency being a conspicuous exception
iow, i agree
I never heard of paid lunch before. Thanks, you introduced me to a new idea. Most of us go to work for 9 hours, take a couple of 15 minute breaks and a half-hour lunch and get paid for 8 hours of on-the-clock time.
FWIW, in the non-public sector of the world any time spent not doing the work you are paid to do while on the clock can be a reason for termination. Certainly banging chicks and sexual harassment enhance the chances of getting canned, but just looking at pinterest when you are supposed to be fixing cars can get you fired in the private sector.
if a cop is having sex on duty 15 times in 18 months, i would say "BFD"
Dunphy, you're usually smarter than this. this set-up was the basis for a Seinfeld joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RvNS7JfcMM
It's a BFD when youre diddling subordinates on the taxpayer's dime. when taspayers have to foot the bill for the EEO lawsuits that behavior generates. When morale inevitably breaks down because assignments are given out--or are perceived to be given out--based on who you blow.
Unfortuately, in government work this kind of crap is tolerated. You can't keep your job at KFC if your screwing at work, but you can keep a gun and powers of arrest.
You're part of some bizarre brain hemisphere separation experiment, aren't you, Fosdick?
It's the only sensible explanation.
devolve to personal attacks instead of discussing issues?
pretty typical.
regardless, my pov is simple
1) absolutely wrong what the officer did, moreso if he didn't do it during an unpaid lunch (most agencies have paid lunch
2) a pretty minor offense. iow, bfd. we had an officer found to have been schtupping a gf on duty. he was relieved of his training officer position and given a 5 day unpaid suspension. which sounds about right
How about if that happened 14 more times?
So I stole from the taxpayers? BFD!
it's a minor offense. yes. bfd. omg, he had sex on duty that many times in 18 months!!!!
oh noes!
Cool, I'm just gonna go steal that much money from you and when you complain say BFD.
silly analogy noted.
i guess everytime an officer takes a 41 minute lunch when he is contractually obligated to take a 40 minute one, he is STEALING
oh noes!
seriously. get over yourself. it was absolutely wrong, and it was relatively minor
5 day suspension'ish with firing for subsequent offense.
and move on
So that gets him fired 13 times ago.
no, again stop being silly. once he's been disciplined/put on notice for X, that triggers the "addition" thang.
are you arguing for the sake of arguing or are you being serious?
What if he was at the racetrack 15 times instead of being on duty? Does any of this matter to you? Or should we be grateful he bothered to show up at all?
all relevant facts matter.
again, the facts aren't in dispute.
imnsho it's the kind of matter that should result in a 5 day unpaid suspension.
i think for a sgt. or captain CONTINUING in their career, a demotion would be warranted. he was retiring, so moot point.
since he was retiring, i think stripping him of 5 days of vacation leave accrued would also be reasonable.
nobody denies it's misconduct. we apparently disagree on the severity.
i'm like ... bfd
bfd
makes me think you're stealing from the taxpayer too. put your hands where we can see them.
Problem is he wasn't just some dumbass beat cop, he was the friggin captain of Professional Standards, you know that group tasked with defining and disseminating what constitutes ethical behavior and department policy? IOW he has to be held to a FAR higher standard as a result of his position.
Times like these are when I think the Brits have the right idea: if you're going to make ordinary people pay extra-high taxes so healthy middle-aged adults can do nothing and receive tax-funded incomes higher than what most working families enjoy, choosing aristocrats born into the Lucky Sperm Club is better than the American system of earning your way into the aristocracy via getting a public authority-figure job and being a total sleaze about it. I've lived under New Britain cops before, and I can't see how living under Liz Two could be any more infuriating.
london metro cops apparently get a decent compensation package
http://www.metpolicecareers.co.....efits.html
It all depends on the town. I had an affair with a West Hartford Commander for 2 years that just ended in May. We met for 2 years at hotel rooms and had sex on the clock. Six weeks before he ended things, he notified the Chief of Police and when he ended things, I got in touch with Internal Affairs and handed over all my proof of on the clock visits and wanted to give my testimony. I was not treated nicely. I was told to stay out of the Town of West Hartford and ordered by Assistant Chief Robert McCue to immediately stop all contact with the department. They did not want to hear that one of their top cops had participated in Ethical or Moral Misconduct. I made 1 (yes ONLY 1) phone call to my cop to talk to him about our break up and I was arrested. There was NOT a restraining order. There was not a no contact order - I had never been told to not contact my lover of 2 years - but MY cop used his authority to manipulate the system. NO slap on the wrist - NO IA investigation. I engaged in Oral Sex and Physical Sex while he was ON Duty - but nothing done -
This was 8 miles away from where Tony Paventi was an officer. It all depends on the cop - the department and the system...