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11/05/2019 12:30 PMResidents hoping for a resolution to acrimony and confusion surrounding the complaint levied against the behavior of Old Saybrook Police Commission (PC) Vice Chairman Renee Root Shippee at the commission’s Sept. 23 meeting will need to wait a little longer. The PC canceled its regular October meeting “due to lack of business,” according to a notice apparently posted the day of the meeting on the town website.
Detective David Perrotti, the police union president, voiced concerns during public comment at the start of the Sept. 23 meeting about “Commissioner Shippee’s highly inappropriate conduct as a police commissioner” during two incidents. The first allegedly took place in November 2018, during a turkey drive at Stop & Shop, when her “family member was being arrested,” Perrotti said. He did not provide details about what occurred.
After that incident, Perrotti said, the police union wrote a letter to the PC and a meeting was held. Despite his belief that the issue with Shippee had been resolved, there was a second, recent incident, he said.
“[T]hree weeks ago, a family member was arrested, Commissioner Shippee came to the scene, and on the scene, and videotaping the arrest, she caused an unacceptable issue with officers’ safety,” Perrotti said. A police sergeant was diverted from “ensuring his officers’ safety while performing their duty” because he had to attend to Shippee, Perrotti contended.
PC Chairman Karl Von Dassel held off commissioners’ responses or questions during the public comment period.
“[W]e’re just doing [public] comments at this time,” he said.
Later in the meeting, Old Saybrook Police Chief Michael A. Spera asserted that Perotti’s complaints had “fallen on deaf ears” and expressed consternation that the PC had not responded.
“I ask the commission to agenda an item to discuss this,” Spera said.
“When [the police union] presented to you tonight and there was absolutely no comment and then they sat back down and we moved on, sadly I believe [the union members] heard a message,” Spera said. “Sometimes silence is deafening.”
Commissioners Frank Keeney and A. Donald Cooper reminded Spera that Von Dassel had asked commissioners not to ask questions or respond to public comments until later in the meeting.
Soon after, Von Dassel opened “the floor to comments and concerns by commissioners” and Cooper asked whether Shippee had physically interfered with the arrest of her family member.
“I’m going to stop you,” said Spera. “[W]e can’t comment on any ongoing investigations.”
Perrotti did respond to Cooper, but not with specific allegations.
“When you have someone who’s a police commissioner at the scene—it doesn’t matter about interfering or doing anything like that—it’s on the scene,” he said. “And you’re trying to be safe while effecting the arrest and doing your job as a police officer. It’s just not right.
“And that’s where that gets all convoluted because it’s either you’re a citizen or you’re our police commissioner,” he continued. “You can’t have both the same. So sometimes you just need to recuse yourself so we do not have this issue.”
Spera stepped in.
“The actions by Commissioner Shippee and others rise to the level where it took personnel resources to continuously manage during the incident,” he said.
This was followed by what might be described as a confused silence until PC Secretary Alfred Wilcox pointed out that Spera’s statement about an ongoing investigation seemed to preclude further discussion.
“I think I just answered [Cooper’s] question,” Spera told him.
“But what you’re doing is inviting further questioning” of Shippee, Wilcox said.
Shippee welcomed the chance to respond. She said the accusations against her in 2018 involved her behavior at Stop & Shop as well as in the police department lobby, but police cameras were not running and she wasn’t able to get surveillance video footage from Stop & Shop. Her brother had recorded everything that happened in the police lobby, “because he had an incident where video wasn’t retained and he was assaulted.” (She did not say who assaulted him or when.) Her brother’s video from 2018 “clearly shows” that the allegations against her were false, Shippee contended.
Shippee also said that she was not permitted to keep a copy of the letter that made accusations against her.
The more recent incident—which presumably took place on a Friday night in September 2019—involved her nephew being pulled over by the police. She and her brother turned up at the scene.
“All I wanted to do was record what was going on, which I don’t think was too much to ask because the body cameras weren’t rolling at Stop & Shop [in 2018]...and that irritates me because it would have shown that nothing happened inappropriate,” she said.
Shippee maintained that when she arrived, her nephew was already in the police car. She stood behind a parked car and there was an empty parking space between that car and the police car, she said. She filmed what was going on to ensure that her nephew’s rights “weren’t trampled.”
Spera took issue with a commissioner expressing concern that the police would trample someone’s rights.
“I submit that we do the opposite of that, that we are guardians of people’s rights,” he said, “but that when folks commit crimes, they suffer consequences.”
Spera contended that, “[a]s a police commissioner, you should have faith that the department is running appropriately and that we’re doing the right things. Otherwise, you are sending a message to the rank and file that you don’t trust what they do” which, he said is “harmful to the esprit de corps of the department and hurtful to the individual members.”
Spera claimed that Shippee made “several derogatory comments” that night in September about him, and “you made a comment about Patrolman [Christopher] Palmeri, you made derogatory comments about an ethnicity when you were visiting somebody in the jail, and you continued to make comments to the point where my patrol sergeant had to say, ‘Renee, I don’t want to talk to you about this.’”
Spera also contended that Shippee was “bringing up matters that concern you in your capacity as a police commissioner rather than you and your capacity as an aunt worried about her nephew.”
He went on to claim that he had done everything possible to keep the 2018 incident out of the public realm, “much to the dismay” of some of the members of his department. These efforts included spending more than an hour and a half on the phone with Shippee, he said.
Spera said he’d worked to ensure that “privately written letters that are not in the keepsake of a municipal agency did not reach the light of day and that we could work out things privately and quietly.
“There has to be...some resolution so that my team does not feel that you don’t trust them as a sitting police commissioner,” he said.
Looking for a Response
There was back and forth among commissioners about how to respond to the allegations, with Cooper stating that he didn’t know what the PC could legally do.
Von Dassel asked the members of the police union what would satisfy them, “because as an elected official, we can’t remove Ms. Shippee.”
“We’re bringing our concerns to the PC as a whole,” Perrotti said, adding that police officers have to recuse themselves from any police business involving a relative.
One of the police union members at the meeting stated that there were certain facts that were not in dispute, that Shippee “arrived at the scene, comments were being made, clearly disparaging to the department...comments about getting screwed over on the video in the past, about the comment her brother made about him getting assaulted by Lt. [Jeffrey] LePerry.”
This was the first time that any details emerged about the alleged assault of Shippee’s brother at the police station.
When Shippee suggested that the members of the PC see the video of the recent incident, Spera said he’d be “concerned for your safety because you went on a mantra for 10 minutes of everyone else...who’s selling crack cocaine...So I’m not entirely sure you want that on public access TV.”
After further discussion about what action the PC can or can’t take, Keeney put forth a motion to reprimand Shippee “with a warning that, if it happens again, we will ask for her resignation from this commission.”
The motion was not seconded.
Von Dassel told the union that he believed their allegations, “but I don’t know what I can do to make you whole.”
Wilcox was the one voice that called for a presentation of evidence before making a judgment.
“Renee says she has a tape,” he said. “I’d like to look at that tape. Is there a body cam or a dash cam record of this incident?”
“I’m not denying anything that I said,” Shippee responded. “If they said I said stuff, I probably did say it.”
Then, in response to another commissioner’s comments, which were unintelligible in the meeting video, Shippee said, “But you don’t even know what I said. Someone said I said a racist comment. I mean, really?”
Shippee, apparently in frustration, suggested at one point in the meeting that Spera arrest her so she could get her day in court.
Commissioner Ken J. Reid asked Perrotti if he was concerned that Shippee might have a “grudge against the Old Saybrook Police Department” that might affect her decisions regarding officers’ livelihoods.
Perrotti acknowledged that the union comes before the commission for promotions and labor negotiations, but “[m]y concern as the president of the union is the officers’ safety doing their job. And we’re actually getting analyzed and watched by our police commissioner when it doesn’t have to happen that way.”
“Well, I think we should table the discussion,” Von Dassel said, “and I think we should put it on the agenda for next month so that we can have some time to digest this.
“I would like to talk to our attorney...Before I make a decision or discuss it I need to see any ramifications,” he said.
Von Dassel did not respond to a request for comment about the cancellation of the October meeting.
Video of the meeting is available on YouTube; search “Old Saybrook Police Commission Sept. 23.”