The investigation also revealed that Lieutenant Kowalski had been deliberately vague in his investigations of Castellano's complaints. Kowalski's reports used phrases like "officer was conducting legitimate police work" and "complainant misunderstood standard procedures" without actually examining whether the stops met constitutional standards.
In three cases, Kowalski hadn't even interviewed Castellano before closing the complaint as unfounded; he had simply reviewed Castellano's incident report and accepted it at face value. In two other cases, Kowalski had interviewed Castellano but hadn't asked any challenging questions about why the stop was made or whether racial bias might have been a factor.
The previous supervisor had failed to identify the pattern—or worse, had identified it and chose to ignore it. The investigators noted in their report that Kowalski's failure to properly supervise Castellano had allowed a problematic officer to continue violating citizens' rights for years.
The recommendation was termination.
Castellano's union fought it, arguing that he had been responding to a legitimate call and that his actions, while perhaps overly aggressive, didn't rise to the level of termination.
The department's response was simple: Castellano had profiled a sergeant based on race. If he would do that to a superior officer, what was he doing to regular citizens who didn't have the knowledge or resources to fight back?
The union's argument failed. Castellano was terminated nine weeks after the incident. His appeal was denied. His law enforcement career was over at age 28.
But the consequences went beyond just Castellano. The department launched a comprehensive review of how civilian complaints were handled. They found that under the previous supervisor, Lieutenant Kowalski, complaint investigations had been cursory at best.
The review examined 127 complaints that Kowalski had investigated over his final five years as a supervisor. Of those, 94 alleged some form of discrimination or excessive force; Kowalski had found merit in only three. The rest were dismissed as unfounded, unsubstantiated, or complainant withdrew.