Mass Live – by Jack FlynnSPRINGFIELD — City officials have agreed to pay $28,000 to settle a lawsuit by two women claiming they were strip searched by Springfield police officer Carla Daniele in front of male officers and passing traffic in 2009.
The women, Meredith Blakeslee and Darlene Palazzi, will receive $14,000 each in exchange for dropping the suit filed in U.S. District Court after police stopped their vehicle on Plumtree Road and searched them for drugs.
No drugs were found despite “an extensive strip and body cavity search” conducted by Daniele in view of seven male officers and motorists, the two women alleged in the lawsuit.
As part of the settlement, the city acknowledged no wrongdoing by Daniele, 42, a veteran police officer who has figured in two other high profile cases in the past year.
Neither Kevin Coyle, the lawyer representing Daniele, nor lawyers for the women could be reached for comment Tuesday. No officers were disciplined based on actions described in the lawsuit, City Solicitor Edward Pikula said.
In unrelated matters, Daniele, 42, pleaded guilty to a charge of improper storage of a firearm after her domestic partner, Amy Vacirca, committed suicide with her service revolver in Jan. 28, 2013. The case was continued without a finding, and Daniele was placed on probation for six months.
Last month, Daniele testified in Hampshire Superior Court in the second murder trial of Cara Rintala, who is charged with killing her wife, Annamarie Rintala, at their Granby home in 2010. For the second time in two years, the case ended in a hung jury.
The defendant’s lawyer, David P. Hoose, identified Daniele as a potential suspect during the first trial, but prosecutors ruled her out based on surveillance video showing her at an East Longmeadow health club around the time of the killing.
Daniele, who has returned to work after taking a stress-related leave last year, could not be reached for comment.
In the lawsuit, Daniele and seven unidentified male police officers, listed only as John Doe 1-7, were accused of assault, invasion of privacy and conducting an illegal search.
The seven John Does were later dropped as defendants in the suit, filed by lawyers John J. Green of Northampton and David Kuzmeski of Springfield.
The incident began when Danielle and another officer pulled over a vehicle carrying Blakeslee, Palazzi and a male friend on Plumtree Road on Jan. 15, 2009. Three other cruisers pulled up behind them, according to the suit.
“Where’s the cocaine?,” Daniele asked after the two women and the driver, identified as Kyle Bruno, were pulled out of the vehicle.
Daniele patted down the two female suspects, then conducted a strip search that included probing their breasts, buttocks and genitals without wearing a glove, according to the suit.
No charges were filed after the search, which was conducted in view of the seven male officers and “numerous members of the public (who) were in the vicinity watching the police search the car, Blakeslee and Palazzi,” the suit states.
During the traffic stop, Bruno was arrested for an outstanding warrant in an unrelated case. Police gave both women rides home.
In pre-trial motions last year, Daniele’s lawyers denied there had been a strip or body cavity search.
Palazzi, in a deposition, admitted she had two drug convictions in the 1980s and 1990s, and served a year in the federal penitentiary in Kentucky for possessing and transporting marijuana.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/02/strip_search_lawsuit_involving_1.html
I guess that is is easy to pay a law suit when the city,county, or state,feds will pay it for you like they did for these cops.
Now that this is settled does this mean that there can be no civil case against these cops so that these cops would have to pay out of their own personal savings?
Open lesbians and gays should never be permitted to strip search a female or male. Why would anyone even think that is okay, it’s like letting a pedophile monitor the restrooms in a elementary school.
yes, Barry… my sentiments exactly. What we have here is a crazy bull-dyke running around stripping and molesting female drivers, and as usual, “no officers were disciplined based on actions described in the lawsuit”.
Why on Earth does anyone need to be stripped and cavity searched on the side of the road? And why is there never any disciplinary action taken against the cops who do it?
It’s all part of the process of beating the population into submission, so this crazy dyke, and all of the sick bastards like her, are exactly what the police departments across the country are looking to hire.
All the decent police chiefs and captains retired a year ago, and what we’re left with as “police forces” are gangs of lunatics and perverts robbing, raping, and terrorizing the American people.
In unrelated matters, Daniele, 42, pleaded guilty to a charge of improper storage of a firearm after her domestic partner, Amy Vacirca, committed suicide with her service revolver in Jan. 28, 2013. The case was continued without a finding, and Daniele was placed on probation for six months.
wt- unreal… The cop fingers these girls, and then her DOMESTIC PARTNER caps herself with her gun, ??? omG… Yep I don”t see any connection…