Connecticut State Police: Former commanders recall rising through ranks in turbulent 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s (2023)

Then, Long said, "I joined the Marine Corps to get away from factories."

He earned his high school equivalency in the Marines and reunited with friends on the New Haven Police Department as a patrolman in 1961. Long says it was there that he experienced intense racial discrimination that ultimately forged a will to become a force for civil rights in law enforcement. He also continued his education over the years, encountering a young professor named Dr. Henry Lee - now a world-renowned forensics expert - and eventually earning a master's degree in sociology from Southern Connecticut State University.

Like many leaders in law enforcement, Long started at the bottom and worked his way to the top. Long characterized one of his early commanders as "a dictator" while he complained of poor working conditions. When Long reached the top himself, he would be reviled as an intellectual and forced out of his job.

"That has always amused me," Long said. "If they only knew I was a high school dropout."

WHAT'S NEW IS OLD

Long's legacy includes the hiring and promotion of several historic figures who literally changed the face of the Connecticut State Police. Retired state police leaders and the first union president who served with Long recalled the turbulent decades of the last half of the 20th century, telling the Journal Register Connecticut Group about their experiences with racial and labor strife and the struggle to modernize the now 109-year-old department.

In some ways those conflicts mirror the current battle between troopers and management as the state deals with diminishing resources and cutbacks and consolidations under Gov. Dannel Malloy.

ON THE JOB IN NEW HAVEN

In his first law enforcement job, Long served as a New Haven officer for about 14 months. He walked the beat in areas including Dixwell Avenue.

"It was just non-stop," Long said. "You worked very closely with the community."

His turf included a bar affectionately known as "The Bucket of Blood." On one shift, he found a man on the floor who had been hit on the head with a full bottle of whiskey. There were no radios then. Long ran to a call box. Following is Long's recollection:

"The desk sergeant asked, 'White or black?'"

"I told him, black."

"He said, 'We'll send the pie wagon, we don't want to dirty an ambulance.'"

Pie wagon, in police vernacular, was an oversized van with a cage used for prisoners.

"You can see how things have come along - or, unfortunately, in some cases - not come along," Long said.

He met state troopers at coffee shops while working the New Haven beat, learned of openings, took the test and passed.

RISING THROUGH THE RANKS

Trooper Donald Long went through every rank in the department. He was a resident trooper and a detective in the Eastern District, a sergeant, troop commander, field commander and firearms instructor at the training academy.

Long shared these impressions of his early days with the CSP: "When I joined the department in 1962 there was no union and the Commissioner (Leo Mulcahy) ruled with the powers of a dictator - troopers had little or no rights and the benefits and working conditions were poor. It was not a climate where troopers could openly criticize the administration without retribution. Certainly there could not have been a trooper-led vote for anything, let alone a vote critical of the Commissioner. In fact, it was these conditions that caused a union to be formed.

"The union was expressing a form of no confidence when the union was formed," he continued. "The union didn't come about because troopers were happy with the administration - I know, I was there."

Troopers worked 12-hour shifts. They had to ask permission not only for a day off, but also to return to the barracks at the end of a shift.

"If you came in one minute before midnight," Long recalled, "you were told to go back out on patrol."

Troopers found creative ways to overcome an overt quota system for tickets, sometimes waiting near railroad crossings to nail stop-sign violators, Long said.

"The quota system then was one for three -- you had to make one arrest or give out one warning every three hours," he said.

They had one day off every two weeks. That day generally was used to go to court.

MEETING THE GOVERNOR

As he advanced through the department, Long oversaw an agonizing missing person case. Gov. Ella Grasso checked in with him regularly on the case. It turned out a five-year-old girl had suffocated to death accidentally in a grain bin chute in Lebanon, a farming community in eastern Connecticut.

Long recalled Grasso being on the scene for much of the three-day search.

"I believe that she was there because she wanted to make sure that everything possible was being done to find the missing child," Long said. "She wasn't there simply to be seen - she truly cared."

"I was very impressed at how very down to earth she was - I liked her as a person," Long added. "I never knew why she appointed me...I was even a registered Republican at the time, but I've always thought that the time we spent together at this tragic event may have had something to do with her decision."

That was his only contact with Grasso before the Democratic governor forced out then-Commissioner Ed Leonard, a popular leader with the troops.

Leonard was a trooper's trooper. In the field, Leonard used his instincts to get the job done. In the area around the Old Saybrook barracks there was a tough guy known as "Shot-Beer." He had fought many state troopers, and getting the call to respond to an incident at this man's house was not a welcome assignment. A few of the older guys thought they could set Leonard up by sending him to Shot-Beer's house.

As legend has it, Leonard went alone. Shot-Beer was ready to fight. Leonard was polite and firm.

Shot-Beer asked him to have a drink. They sat down and talked for quite some time. Leonard brought Shot-Beer back to the barracks, both of them unmarked and unharmed, stunning the old guys.

It was Leonard - commissioner after Mulcahy - who brought management training into the department.

Leonard essentially ended his own career by proclaiming a young man in one of Connecticut's most infamous cases guilty after state police had been admonished by the judiciary for coercing a confession and withholding evidence.

Peter Reilly had been convicted of killing his mother, Barbara Gibbons, in Falls Village, but won a new trial. The state ultimately declined to prosecute him again.

Shortly after being promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1978, Long walked into Leonard's office and saw his boss cleaning out his desk. "He [Leonard] said, 'You're in charge.'"

Grasso then summoned Long to an early morning press conference a short time later at Old Lyme Town Hall where she would announce him as the new commissioner.

"She said, 'Hey, I'm not doing you any favors,' " Long recalls.

Long mentioned he was a proponent of affirmative action.

"Ella told me, 'This is going to get you into hot water,' he said. "Of course, it did."

CHANGES CAUSED FRICTION

There was virtually no training when Long became a trooper. A guy in a starched white shirt read aloud from the motor vehicle statutes, causing some troopers to nod off. Riot equipment included leftover World War II blue fighter pilot helmets and imitation shields - aluminum sledding discs with plastic handles.

Long built on the management training begun by Leonard and riled the old-timers by bringing civilians into key positions, including fleet manager.

"Bringing in civilians - that's called management," said Dr. Lee, who served as commissioner from 1998-2000. "Donald Long brought me in [to start the crime lab]. He understood the importance of physical evidence."

Among those promoted to sergeant by Long was a young African American trooper named Reuben Bradford, the current commissioner.

"He did get in a lot of trouble promoting affirmative action," Bradford recalled. "He was extremely progressive in his thought."

Long wrote to Bradford recently, noting, that he, too, was the subject of derision by the troops. Bradford and the current commander, Col. Danny Stebbins, were the targets of an overwhelming no-confidence vote by the trooper union last month.

Jerry Herskowitz, the first president of the trooper union, generated a voice vote of no confidence against Long by about 200 troopers at the training academy in 1981. Herskowitz said the vote was at least partly directed at Grasso, whom he described as "really cheap - she was against minimum staffing rules."

As troopers protested budget cuts with a job action at the Bethany barracks, Long suspended five of them who suddenly became "sick" on the job, leaving the area without coverage for a couple hours.

THE KKK IN CONNECTICUT

From 1980 to 1984, the Ku Klux Klan conducted 16 rallies and demonstrations in Connecticut. During that time state police seized a large variety of guns, knives, swords, machetes, baseball bats, pipes and chains, as well as slingshots, weighted knuckles, a detonator and clubs. One of those rallies occurred over a few days in September 1980 in rural Scotland, near Willimantic in eastern Connecticut. Another young African American trooper, Joseph Perry, had been promoted by Long and was the captain in charge of the Eastern District. Perry would go on, in 1992, to become the first African American commander of the Connecticut State Police.

"The wizard or grand dragon and I were dealing with each other on the phone," Perry recalled. "He envisioned cops and Klansmen standing against the commies. I had to tell him we were neutral. He told me no Indians, no Pakistanis and no Negroes were allowed at the rally."

Perry met with the Klan leader in a private room at Bradley airport, accompanied by a lawyer representing the state who happened to be Jewish.

"I told him I was in charge of the rally for the state police," Perry said. "I asked him if they were going to wear sheets. He said they weren't sheets - they were uniforms or robes."

Perry remembered Long as an innovator.

"He had some refreshing ideas," Perry said. "He had a management team approach. He took a more open approach. People in the past campaigned for the job. He didn't."

Long said he also upset many union members by taking away high-powered, air-conditioned cruisers from staff not on patrol and giving them Ford Fairlanes without air conditioning. He said he gave up his huge car to then-Lt. Gov. Bill O'Neill and used a Fairlane himself.

"You can understand the union position - you're taking away a benefit," Long said. "The move was good for citizens and taxpayers, but it was bad for trooper benefits."

As Perry put it, "These are probably some of the same issues Reuben is solving now."

THE END FOR LONG

It was another Klan rally that spelled the end of Long's career with the state police.

Legislators slammed Long for not assisting Meriden police during a Klan rally in 1981. By that time, Grasso had died of cancer while in office and was succeeded by O'Neill. O'Neill moved Long to an out-of-the-way desk job and ultimately replaced him with Lester Forst.

After retiring from the department in 1982, Long worked as a security manager for utilities including Boston Edison. He settled on Cape Cod, where he keeps in touch with former colleagues, including Leonard.