Category: Connecticut

Local Cop Rapes Teen, Gets 2.5 Years

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This happened last month but I just learned about it: William Ruscoe, a Trumbull police officer who was a member of the SWERT team that murdered Gonzalo Guizan during the May 2008 raid in Easton, CT, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for raping a teenager. Ruscoe’s plea bargain called for five years prison time in exchange for him pleading guilty to second-degree sexual assault. Instead the judge gave him half that. Why? Because some animals are more equal than others, of course:

During the emotion-packed hearing the victim urged the judge to impose the plea bargained 5-year prison term on Ruscoe.

“I was completely betrayed by someone I looked up to as a role model,” the girl told the judge. “I still wake up in a pool of sweat after having a nightmare where I yell stop and no, the two words I yelled that night at him.”

State’s Attorney John Smriga added that five years was the appropriate sentence.

“It’s not that he (Ruscoe) just had a bad day, this was an action that was planned out,” he said.

But [Superior Court Judge Robert] Devlin, while acknowledging that children need to be protected said he was giving Ruscoe credit for his years of good service with the police department.

As if after Ferguson and Eric Garner anybody needed more proof that there is one rule of law for police and another for the rest of us. I know that plea bargains aren’t set in stone and I’ve read several stories where defendants received harsher sentences than what they agreed to, but I’ve never read about someone being sentenced to less than the prearranged jail time. William Ruscoe is a monster. And frankly, so is Judge Devlin.

Via Simple Justice.

This Way to Pleasure Beach

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Eighteen years after the burned bridge cut off access, Pleasure Beach has been reopened. I didn’t manage to go out there via the water taxis that ran during the summer but a Veterans Day expedition confirmed that the pavilion has been renovated, the boardwalk repaired, and amenities such as picnic tables and trash cans provided.

Pavilion at Pleasure Beach, 2014.

I confess I’ve expressed some cynicism on the subject but I suppose nearly two decades is still a short wait to the people who run the DMV. Though everything was locked up for the season, the lights were on and we even met a park ranger — the first time I’ve ever encountered someone out there. “It’s a long walk from Stratford,” he said. Yes, but still easier than loading two kids and a dog on a paddleboard.

The beach is pristine, the sand much softer and cleaner than Fairfield’s. There’s talk of building ball fields and visitors are free to bring their bikes over and ride the old cracked roads. It’s so nice you can almost forget you’re in Bridgeport.

A Connecticut County in Bill Penn’s Grant

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Wyoming Valley by Jasper Francis Cropsey

I have a story at the Journal of the American Revolution about the absolutely true tale of Westmoreland County, a piece of northeastern Pennsylvania claimed by Connecticut as part of King Charles’s grant creating the colony:

The Susquehannah Company was founded in July 1753, when 152 subscribers adjourned in Windham, Connecticut to pay “Two Spanish Mill’d dollars” to join a new joint-stock venture. Declaring “Thatt Whereas we being desirous to Enlarge his Majesties English Settlements In North America and further To Spread Christianity as also to promote our own Temporal Interest,” their aim was to settle an area of the Susquehanna River beyond New York’s borders. … The Company proposed to settle at Wyoming, on the west bank of the river about 50 miles southeast of Tioga. Its clean soil and the scarcity of Native American settlements made it ideal to the Company members. More to the point, they believed the area was included in the Connecticut grant as per the 1662 charter.

I’ve mentioned before how, in the mid-aughts, I shopped a book idea called Lost States, detailing efforts at American state making that went pear-shaped. The book’s sample chapter, all 18,000 words of it, dealt with the first half of the Westmoreland story; this would have been followed by second and third chapters on the Republic of Vermont (using Ethan Allen’s involvement in the Susquehannah Company to segue into the conflict between New York and New Hampshire) and the resolution of the Westmoreland project. Lost States never went anywhere, and I very briefly sent around a proposal focusing solely on Westmoreland until I finally realized not everyone was as fascinated by the history as I was. Fortunately, the editors and readers at the JAR love this kind of stuff. My article is a distillation of that sample chapter.

Even today Westmoreland continues to mesmerize me, especially the religious angle. Was the Company’s obstinate refusal to take no for an answer a result of the New Light zealotry of its members?

Second Circuit Slaps Down Cops’ Appeal

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Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its decision regarding the 2008 tactical raid in Easton, CT that killed Gonzalo Guizan. After homeowner Ronald Terebesi and Guizan’s estate sued the police involved for civil-rights violations, the cops had asked for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, which the district court denied. The police then appealed.

The Appeals Court affirmed the district court’s denial of summary judgment on every point save one: that because “there is no clearly established right in this Circuit to be free from the deployment of a tactical team in general,” [Easton police chief John] Solomon was within his rights to activate the SWERT team in the first place (the town of Easton, probably upon reviewing their insurance premiums after the settlement with Guizan’s estate, appears to have disagreed: Solomon’s contract was not renewed and he was shown the door). But on every other count the court tilted in Terebesi’s favor, noting that the use of stun grenades, being pinned by the officers’ shields, the poor planning and approval of the raid, and even the failure of officers to intervene to stop it are constitutional grounds for a trial.

Read my whole story about it over at Reason.com.

Solar Scuffle at Seaside Park

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Today at National Geographic’s Energy Blog, I have a story about Bridgeport’s environmentalist-on-environmentalist dog pile over a plan to situate a 9,000-panel solar array atop the landfill in Seaside Park:

Torres believes the solar project should be sited elsewhere in the city. “It does not belong in a park. It belongs on any of the countless, countless unused or massively underutilized land owned by the city.”

According to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), Bridgeport has 17 brownfield sites totaling more than 185 acres. This doesn’t include any number of non-polluted but abandoned lots and buildings in Bridgeport, a phenomenon so ubiquitous that Connecticut Yankee Seth MacFarlane once used it to zing the city on Family Guy.

Anybody who’s ever driven through Little-Detroit-on-the-Sound knows the city does not lack space for projects such as this. The real issue, of course, is that Bport doesn’t own any of those brownfields or derelict factories, so they’d have to lay some currency on the countertop before they could even think about siting the array anywhere but on park land. UIL sure as hell isn’t going to buy real estate for renewables.

I’m surprised Finch doesn’t want to put the panels on Pleasure Beach — it’s not like citizens will ever see a return on the $1.9 million appropriation to run ferries out there.