a public defender

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Some interesting CT stories from today that I’m really just too lazy to make into full-fledged posts.

First, New Haven public defender Tom Ullmann gives the New Haven police department a piece of his mind and takes a few swings at the State’s Attorney’s office too:

Defense attorney Thomas Ullmann has charged that some members of the New Haven Police Department’s Detective Bureau are “incompetent, unprofessional and untruthful” in handling witnesses and investigating crimes. Ullmann, said the detectives’ performance is “at its lowest level in the 30 years I’ve been here.”

Ullmann accused the detectives of “a rush to judgment, not being thorough, not following up on obvious leads.” He said there was “a shocking lapse of asking witnesses investigative questions, such as who had been drinking or doing drugs.” Ullmann added, “Their attitude was ‘the less we know, the better.’ This feeds into their tunnel vision on the case.”

He alleged the Detective Bureau has “a history of suggesting information and providing facts to witnesses and failing to investigate facts pointing in a different direction.” He said in some cases witnesses have been “harassed.”

Moreover, Ullmann charged, “This culture doesn’t exist without some enabling by the state’s attorney’s office. This doesn’t happen without the prosecutors winking and nodding and looking the other way.” He added, “There are some really good prosecutors here, but sometimes people close their eyes to this stuff.”

Yowza!

Second, the Appellate and Supreme Courts might be in danger of losing heating and cooling May 1st onwards. The Supreme Court recently rejected emergency appeals filed by the State to compel the service provider to continue providing past the expiration of the contract on May 1.

On March 27, Hartford Superior Court Judge John J. Langenbach ruled that TEN Company has no obligation to supply the state buildings with heat, or the chilled water that runs air-conditioning systems, after its contract expires.

Langenbach said he could find no legal authority to “force TEN to continue a business relationship with the State that it wishes to end because the State may suffer harm as a result of its failure to plan for the expiration of that relationship.”

The State apparently figured that there’s no way TEN wouldn’t provide heat and a/c, so they have done absolutely nothing to prepare for this.

TEN offered to sell the piping system to the state, but officials didn’t make an offer. Wrote Langenbach: “The State has not taken a single step to begin the process of procuring an alternative source of heating and cooling for the eight buildings.”

Actually, it’s not entirely true that the state has failed to act. “Well, we filed an injunction. We also sought some legislative relief. So those are the things we’ve done,” one state official told Langenbach.

Public Works officials contend that a permanent system would take six years to install, and even a temporary solution would take two years to implement. But Langenbach gave credence to TEN’s general manager, Derek Rudd, who testified that temporary heating and cooling could be put in place “fairly quickly.”

Luckily, the current term of the Courts ends on April 30 (although the next one starts mid-May!). This should get interesting.