Police Union Files Complaint Against East Hampton Chief

A high school scholarship, the food bank, Little League, Glorious Gallop Road Race at Old Home Day, Project Graduation … these are some of the beneficiaries of the East Hampton Police Union raffle that is held annually around this time of year.

It is the organization’s largest fundraiser. This year, however, there will not be one.

That is why you haven’t seen the motorcycle being raffled, or jet ski as in years past, on display at the town hall parking lot on weekends. It is why you won’t see one at Old Home Day next week.

“The community is really going to suffer this year because that was the only way that we made money,” said local police union president Mike Salafia, who estimates the loss this year at about $4,000. “We’re talking hundreds. Hundreds to each organization.”

Why won’t there be a raffle?

The union and Police Chief Matt Reimondo are again clashing. At the heart of the matter is the sally port, a part of the police station that is about the equivalent of a one-car garage. For years that is where the union stored the motorcycle or jet ski. That changed during the spring, when Reimondo ordered the sally port cleaned out, stating in a memo that “Officer safety is first and foremost in the use of this facility.”

That part of the building had been used for storage but also was home to gym equipment and a grill used by the department. Told to get their stuff out of there or it will be thrown out, the union held a silent auction to sell their gym equipment.

“It had to go or we would have lost it,” Salafia said.

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Once emptied of most of its contents, Reimondo issued a memo on April 30 stating in part, “Now that the sally port is clear of all external debris, there will be no using this area for personal storage. … This is a designated sally port for prisoner movement in and out of the building only.

Salafia says the union doesn’t have a problem with that. What he didn’t expect, though, was the directive would include prohibiting the storage of the motorcycle to be raffled.

“We were told no,” Salafia said. “No compromises, no nothing.”

The union is not happy about it. So much so, it has filed a complaint dated June 25 with the State Board of Labor Relations charging that the town is in violation of Section 7-471(5) of the Municipal Employee Relations Act (MERA).

“He said no to the bike, now we’re going to fight it with the state,” Salafia said. “We’ll let the state make the decision. We can stop pretending that we’re one big happy family here because we’re not. I never thought in a million years he would say no to the bike raffle."

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the raffle. When the union found out for certain that Reimondo’s directive would not allow for the storing of the bike, it was mid-May, time to commit to the purchasing of the bike.

Caught by surprise, the union had few if any options.

“This is a $10,000 piece of equipment that is not insured,” Salafia. “We’ve got to be around this at all times.”

Without enough money in its account to purchase the bike, a Harley-Davidson, outright, the union has been allowed to take the bike with a down payment, then relies on ticket sales to pay it off. Not having a safe place to store it made going through with the raffle risky. Also, the bike would frequently be displayed at the town hall parking lot to spur ticket sales or outside the station for people to come look at it. Transporting it back and forth to town hall from another location would have increased the chances of damaging it and wasn’t much of an option.

“We had to keep it at the PD for this to work,” Salafia said. “We couldn’t take the risk. I had to cancel it.

“We’re going to have to figure out another way.  Hopefully we’ll figure it out through this [complaint] where we get the use of our sally port back.”

The union claims in its complaint “The town’s unilateral discontinuance of the union’s use of the sally port […] is an elimination of a benefit and violation of a past practice resulting in harm to the union.”

The union is seeking a return to status quo, payment of attorney’s fees and making the affected party whole, which would include payment of lost earnings from the aborted raffle.

Interim Town Manager Jeff Jylkka was familiar with the complaint but would not comment on Thursday.

“We’ve forwarded it to our labor attorney to look at,” Jylkka said, “so it’s in our labor attorney’s hands.”

And don’t expect the town council to get involved.

“I look at this as an issue that needs to dealt with by the town manager, police chief and police union.,” council member Kyle Dostaler said.

Salafia believes a police officer made a formal complaint that resulted in Reimondo’s directive. However, the issue of the sally port first came to light in a memo last fall by then-Acting Town Manager Anne McKinney. The sally port, and the condition it was in, was one of 15 concerns raised by McKinney. In the memo she said, “Those who complained to me about the condition of the sally port are concerned that it is creating an unsafe circumstance for our officers and the prisoners that we transport to the police department for lockup.”

In his response, the Chief didn’t disagree, saying “he was more than willing to work with the officers on improvement to the facilities.”

Salafia also agreed the sally port was cluttered, but added “What does he do, he takes it to the extreme.”

“We believe, the union believes, this is a personal thing,” Salafia said. “Where does it stop?”

What also bothered Salafia is that after the memo, the sally port was used to store boxes of documents from public works. According to the complaint, in the days that followed, public works was allowed to use the sally port as an office to shred documents while the facility was left open. In another instance, Salafia observed the janitor using the sally port, unaware there were new restrictions.

“We’re banned from using it yet everybody else is using it,” said Salafia, a 12-year member of the police department. “If that’s the case then let us have our bike raffle that we use to give back to the community, that’s all I’m asking for.”

Since the union’s vote of no confidence in November, there clearly remains within the department a great deal of tension, in part, Salafia says, because there is a lack of communication.

“Morale is better, only because we have spoken up and let the community know what has happened and we have switched to a strong, police-only union that we believe is going to take care of us and protect us,” said Salafia, referring to Council #15, AFSCME, AFL-CIO. “We have a great union that is sticking by our side.”

Reimondo was not available Thursday afternoon.

The plan for now is to see if the complaint will result in a favorable outcome. If not, the union will have to come up with a Plan B to raise funds for the community, whether it is a motorcycle raffle or by some other means.

“If I got to bake cookies to make money I’ll do it,” Salafia said. “We’re going to do something. This year it caught us off guard, we weren’t expecting it. We just have to regroup for next year.

“I just want to apologize to the community because there won’t be a raffle this year.”

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