NEW HAVEN — Fire Department Lt. Filipe Cordero started out to help a woman apparently overdosing on drugs, but instead ended up in handcuffs in the back seat of a police car.
Details of what happened Wednesday might be in dispute, but the end result is not, and Thursday the chiefs from the Police and Fire departments launched a joint Internal Affairs investigation into the matter.
“Sometimes at the scene, things become very tense as each side has to do their job,” said city spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga, who confirmed the firefighter was briefly handcuffed and detained. “We’re going to take a thorough look at what happened … and if something needs to be corrected, we’ll find that out through the investigation.”
Cordero ultimately was released and finished his shift. He was not charged.
But what occurred and how it escalated to a point that a police officer cuffed a ranking fire officer is muddied by different accounts circulating through the departments.
The incident occurred on Dover Street in Fair Haven Wednesday evening. Firefighters from the Lombard Fire Station responded to a reported drug overdose just before 5 p.m. and found a female from North Haven slumped in a car. Firefighters convinced her to go to the hospital.
Police, meanwhile, arrived at the scene. Problems apparently started when Cordero took issue with how one officer, Newt Anderson, was treating the woman, and how officers were searching the vehicle. The situation then escalated into a dispute about who was in charge of the scene.
Anderson allegedly told the woman to “go back to North Haven to smoke your crack,” or words to that effect, according to a firefighter familiar with the situation.
“The lieutenant went over to him (Anderson) and asked him if he could calm down and relax because he was creating a situation. They were trying to get this woman to calm down and go to the hospital. It was getting her upset because this cop was kind of berating her,” the firefighter said, asking not to be identified. “That’s when the officer said, ‘Back off, I’m in charge.’ The next thing you know, he grabbed (Cordero) and pushed his arm around and put him in handcuffs.”
Police Department officials, however, said Cordero was the aggressor, and Anderson handcuffed him only after Cordero “got in his face” and refused to back off.
As for Anderson’s interaction with the woman, one police supervisor officer said he didn’t see the comments as unreasonable or offensive “and I think the public would agree.”
Story by New Haven Register
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