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SCHENECTADY----A Schenectady County corrections officer has filed a federal claim against Schenectady County sheriff Harry Buffardi and other police officers, claiming that they falsely arrested and maliciously prosecuted her because they believed that her brother, wanted by police, was in her house.
According to the lawsuit, on Jan. 1, 2004, police went to the Bergeron house looking for her brother, Clifford Johnson, who had fled a traffic stop. Unknown to her, he had entered her home and was hiding inside. She initially told police that he wasn't there but after she realized that he was, even though police didn't have an arrest warrant, she voluntarily allowed them to enter her residence.
Shortly thereafter, she voluntarily submitted a written statement about the incident to her supervisors at the Schenectady County Jail. Two months later, she was criminally charged with filing a false instrument and obstruction of governmental administration, misdemeanors.
Bergeron, the mother of three children and foster mother of two other children, says Buffardi, sheriff's investigator Richard Vore, Schenectady Police Chief Michael Geraci and officers Robert Hamilton and Mark Chaires, discussed her at length including how they could criminally charge her. Ultimately she was fired.
Following jury trial in Schenectady City Court on July 29, 2004, following 22 minutes of deliberation, Bergeron was acquitted of the obstruction charge. The false instrument charge was dismissed when prosecutors couldn't produce the original statement she had presented to her supervisors which they then claimed was false.
Vore himself was later fired from the sheriff's department after he was admitted to stealing money from an evidence locker. He pleaded guilty to one count of petty larceny and was fired from his $55,000 a year job.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/041806HeroCop.html
"All defendants in this action conspired together to present false criminal charges against Bergeron, largely because of Defendant Buffardi's long standing dislike for Bergeron", the claim states.
"The arrest and prosecution that underlies this action was, for a lack of a better term, a joke, and had no merit, either factually or legally. Instead, it was designed to punish someone for an unknown slight against a police officer, and for the Schenectady County sheriff to rid himself of an employee he deemed to be a troublemaker".
She says the statement that she filed was not part of any official record and that police officers had no right to enter her home or compel her cooperation.
Months after she had been charged of the charges, she was rehired. Her claim says that her family and reputation suffered irreversible harm. 12-31-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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