Secretary Files Civil Rights Suit Against Police

Update at 4:05 p.m.

The lawsuit document has been added to the gallery that accompanies this article.

Original Story (Friday at 12:30 p.m.)

A loyal assistant of former mayor April Capone has filed a lawsuit against East Haven claiming she was falsely arrested along with her boss in a 2009 incident.

In an article published today in the New Haven Register, reporter Mark Zaretsky writes that the lawsuit filed by Erica Berg, Capone’s former secretary in the mayor’s office, draws some parallels to civil and criminal complaints of police mistreatment of Latinos in East Haven.

The lawsuit claims that former Police Chief Leonard Gallo, Police Officer Michael Sorbo and several other officers engaged in a conspiracy to deprive Berg of her constitutional rights.

In the incident at the Town Beach, Sorbo arrested Capone, the mayor at the time, for interfering with a police officer when she objected to his ticketing of cars parked near the beach. Berg said she was arrested simply because she was with Capone.

The Register’s article says Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. was also named as a defendant in Berg’s lawsuit because Maturo offered Berg a job in an attempt to head off the lawsuit against Gallo.

Gallo has since retired as police chief following the arrest of four East Haven police officers on federal civil rights charges.