Clay Tiffany

© Rosabel Rosalind

In the village of Briarcliff Manor, a tony suburb outside New York City, everybody knew Clay Tiffany. Growing up in the 1960s, Tiffany was a Briarcliff Manor High School basketball legend; his name is still etched on a plaque in the trophy case that commemorates the school’s thousand-point scorers. By the time I met Tiffany, in 2002, he was in his fifties, and Briarcliff Manor residents knew him as the village gadfly.

Over six feet tall, white, and with an unruly crown of curly red hair, Clay Tiffany spent his days as a self-proclaimed independent journalist, uncovering local practices he considered unfair or unlawful and complaining about them to local officials and at village council meetings. Tiffany also shared the fruits of his investigative labor on his remarkably named public access television show, Dirge for the Charlatans.

On a March afternoon in 1997, Tiffany was pulled over by a Briarcliff Manor police officer he did not recognize. The officer, Nick Tartaglione, had recently been hired by the department. With bulging muscles and a deep tan, Tartaglione stuck out as much as Tiffany did in Briarcliff Manor. According to Tiffany, Tartaglione approached his car and said, through the open window, that he heard Tiffany like moulinyans—derogatory Italian slang for Black people—and then said, “I’m connected with the Mob. I can have you taken care of any time I want.” Feeling threatened, Tiffany got out of his car and, standing several feet away, said that he was afraid of Tartaglione and was going to flag down the next car he saw and give the driver the name of a friend to call. When Tiffany got a car to stop and started speaking with the driver, Officer Tartaglione grabbed Tiffany, slammed him into the police car, and handcuffed him.

Tiffany quickly turned his investigative attentions to Tartaglione. And it turned out there was a lot to investigate. Tiffany learned that Tartaglione had beaten up people while employed as an officer in neighboring jurisdictions, and had left those jobs under suspicious circumstances. Tiffany then started reporting what he found out about Tartaglione on Dirge for the Charlatans. That apparently got under Tartaglione’s skin.

Over the next two and a half years, Officer Tartaglione assaulted Tiffany three more times—the assaults growing more extreme with every encounter. The final time, Tartaglione maced Tiffany, and punched and kicked him, yelling “You can’t tell lies about me on your television show!” Officer Tartaglione broke Tiffany’s orbital bone and several ribs, landing him in the hospital.

Tiffany sued Tartaglione and the Village of Briarcliff Manor. During litigation, Tartaglione offered to settle the claims against him for $200,000. Soon thereafter, we wrote a letter to defense counsel, explaining that Tiffany wanted to know where the money was coming from—Tartaglione himself, or the village. I assumed the money was coming from Tartaglione; the village had fired Tartaglione and was arguing during litigation that his assaults of Tiffany were outside the scope of his employment. But in the end, after Tiffany had accepted the money, Briarcliff Manor revealed that its insurer had written the check. I was shocked. Why would Briarcliff Manor’s insurer pay six figures to settle a case against an officer they had fired? Why would Briarcliff Manor’s insurer pay to settle a case against an officer they argued was acting outside the scope of their employment? Chapter 10 of SHIELDED helps explain why.

Tiffany v. Tartaglione Fourth Amended Complaint

Tiffany Letter To MJ Re Settlement Information (9.15.03)

Tony Timpa

© Rosabel Rosalind

On a Wednesday evening in August 2016, Vicki Timpa’s phone rang. Her ex‑husband was calling with unimaginable news: their thirty-​two-​year-​old son, Tony, was dead. Although Tony had struggled with drugs and alcohol, anxiety, and schizophrenia, in many ways he led an enviable life. He was a white college-​educated executive who made more than a quarter-​million dollars a year working at a trucking logistics firm.

He had an eight-​year-​old son and was engaged to be married. He had been arrested and sentenced to probation for driving while intoxicated a few years prior but had never been in more serious trouble with the law. In fact, Vicki remembers that Tony grew up trusting, even idolizing, the police.

Vicki was desperate to learn what happened to her son. She called the Dallas Police Department multiple times after receiving the news, and each time she got a different story. One officer told her that Tony had had a heart attack while sitting in a bar. Another told her that he had been found dead, lying next to his car. A third told her he had called 911 and had been put in an ambulance without incident. None of these conflicting accounts explained why, when Vicki visited her son in the morgue, he had bruises on his arms and grass and dirt in his nose.

Two weeks after Tony’s death, with no information from the City of Dallas, Vicki filed a public records request that contained a simple plea: “I want to know what happened.” A reporter at The Dallas Morning News tracked down the Dallas police incident report. It said only, “Sudden Death. Complainant died by unknown means.” But then the reporter uncovered a mandated report by the police department to the Texas attorney general’s office that revealed a startling piece of information: Tony had been in handcuffs when he died. That report divulged another crucial fact: three of the Dallas police officers on the scene at the time of Tony’s death had been wearing body cameras.

The Dallas Police Department refused to give Henley the body camera videos or any other evidence they had about the circumstances of Tony’s death. They would not even disclose the names of the Dallas police officers who had been on the scene. None of this came as a surprise to Vicki’s lawyer. Texas law allows law enforcement agencies to withhold records if “release of the information would interfere with the detection, investigation, or prosecution of a crime.” Vicki’s lawyer had come up against this same brick wall with Texas law enforcement agencies before. And he knew their refusals were going to make bringing Vicki’s lawsuit much harder.

Once a person decides to sue and finds a lawyer, the first step is to file a complaint with the court. A complaint is a document that explains what happened, and why those facts amount to a constitutional violation. Vicki knew that Timpa had died in the custody of Dallas police officers and that he was in handcuffs when he died. But that might not be enough: a judge could dismiss Vicki’s case because she could not say how Tony died, even though the Dallas police officials she was aiming to sue were withholding that information from her. Chapter 3 of SHIELDED explains why, in our legal system, it is exceedingly difficult to seek justice when you don’t know what exact injustice occurred.

Vicki Timpa's DPD Records Request (8.24.16)

Timpa v. City of Dallas Defendants' Motion to Dismiss

Custodial Death Report Anthony Timpa (8.11.16)

Timpa v. City of Dallas Original Complaint (11.3.16)