District Attorney William Fitzpatrick did not launch investigations into crashes when his son, prosecutor left the ...

Syracuse, N.Y. -- It’s a simple concept, according to Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick. You damage property with your car and leave the scene, you get a ticket. No room for discretion.

He was justifying his investigation into a crash involving Syracuse police Chief Frank Fowler’s son. Fitzpatrick said he’s looking into whether police gave Frank Fowler Jr. preferential treatment by not ticketing him for leaving the scene of a Jan. 8 crash that damaged another man’s car.

But Fitzpatrick could’ve been talking about two other accidents, one involving a prosecutor in Fitzpatrick’s office and the other Fitzpatrick’s own son.

Over the past three years, each crashed his car and caused property damage, left the scene and never got a ticket, according to police reports obtained by The Post-Standard under a Freedom of Information Law request.

Those cases demonstrate Fitzpatrick’s hypocrisy and reveal the motive behind his investigation into Fowler’s son, according to Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner. “I don’t get it, other than that he’s blinded by this vendetta” against Chief Fowler, she said.

Fitzpatrick, who denies he has a vendetta, has publicly denounced Fowler over the past three months for mischaracterizing evidence, incompetence and running his department as a fiefdom.

Fitzpatrick said he’s investigating not only the Jan. 8 crash, but two others in which Fowler’s son was driving a city vehicle and whether police covered them up. Fitzpatrick said he only got the grand jury involved because Miner ordered her workers not to talk to investigators from Fitzpatrick’s office.

“Why would someone not issue a ticket?” Fitzpatrick asked. “I’ve seen people brush up against a guardrail and leave a slab of paint and get a ticket for leaving the scene.”

That wasn’t the case on Dec. 18, 2009, when Assistant District Attorney Shaun Chase crashed his car into a light pole on Interstate 81 in Syracuse. It happened at 2:30 a.m., and he knocked the pole to the ground, according to a police report.

A prosecutor’s crash

Chase drove away without contacting police, the report said. He apparently didn’t realize the crash had torn the front license plate from his car, police said. He parked his car on a side street, then got a ride home, according to Syracuse police Capt. Shannon Trice.

Seven hours later, Trice got a call from Chase’s boss, First Chief Assistant District Attorney Rick Trunfio, according to Trice. “He said, ‘One of my ADAs was involved in a car crash. He left the scene and he thinks he left his license plate there,’” Trice said.

Trunfio didn’t ask that Chase not be ticketed, Trice said. Normally, if someone knocks down a light pole then drives away, police would ticket him for leaving the scene, Trice said. But police decided not to ticket the prosecutor, and the DA’s office didn’t launch an investigation.

Trice acknowledged that he took into consideration that Chase was a prosecutor and that his boss had called, Trice said.

Trunfio said he never asked Trice for preferential treatment, that he called only to report the accident. “My assumption would be if Chase didn’t do what he was supposed to do, then Shannon would’ve handled it different,” Trunfio said.

Trunfio said he believed Chase didn’t illegally leave the scene because he reported the crash to police the following morning. “He was in my office at 8:30 a.m.,” Trunfio said. “I said, ‘You’ve got to report it.’”

Chase, a narcotics prosecutor, said he was the designated driver for people leaving a party of Syracuse narcotics officers. He’d had one or two drinks but was not intoxicated, Chase said.

Fitzpatrick said he was unaware of Chase’s crash until a reporter told him about it this week. “Under those circumstances, it sounds like somebody should’ve gotten a ticket,” Fitzpatrick said.

A son’s fender bender

In May 2010, Fitzpatrick’s then 21-year-old son Daniel Fitzpatrick backed a car into the porch stairs at 1104 Madison St., where he still lives, according to a police report. The younger Fitzpatrick backed up four or five times into the railing before he got enough room to turn around, the report said. The railing was damaged but not did not detach. Fitzpatrick drove away without stopping, the report said.

After Fitzpatrick left, a witness called the police and supplied the driver’s license plate number, the report said. Police traced the plate to the home of the district attorney, according to the report.

Police talked to the DA, who told them he would contact his son and have him go to the scene right away, the report said. When he arrived, Daniel Fitzpatrick told police he didn’t know that he’d done any damage, the report said. He was not charged with the leaving the scene.

Daniel Fitzpatrick said that when he’d left to drive two friends home, he didn’t realize he’d hit the porch. It wasn’t until he returned five or six minutes later that he saw minor damage to the porch, he said.

“I immediately called the landlord and said, ‘I hit the porch,’” the younger Fitzpatrick said.

The landlord, Bill Osuchowski, confirmed he had a call from Daniel Fitzpatrick on his answering machine. “He was up-front,” Osuchowski said. “It wasn’t four days after the fact or anything like that. If everyone did that, it would be great.”

The younger Fitzpatrick could’ve been charged with leaving the scene, Trice said. But given the same fact pattern, with the driver returning to the scene after police were called and admitting he’d caused the damage, police normally wouldn’t issue a ticket, he said. “I would use my discretion,” Trice said.

When a reporter asked William Fitzpatrick last week about his son’s accident, he said he was disgusted that city officials raised it because it wasn’t the same as Fowler’s son’s crash.

“He tapped a porch,” DA Fitzpatrick said Monday. “He didn’t leave the scene. He stopped. He examined it. He called his landlord and insurance paid for it, and it wasn’t in a city car.”

The reporter asked again whether his son had left the scene. “Absolutely not,” Fitzpatrick said.

After The Post-Standard obtained the police report Wednesday, Fitzpatrick acknowledged that his son had left the scene. But Daniel Fitzpatrick had returned within a legally allowable time so he shouldn’t have been ticketed, William Fitzpatrick said.

“Legally, in a property damage accident, you have a certain time period before it constitutes” leaving the scene, Fitzpatrick said. “He’s not trying to avoid it. He contacted the landlord, the owner of the porch. The fact that he didn’t stay there and wait for his landlord to show up is irrelevant.”

Trice said the state vehicle and traffic law has no such time requirement for returning to the scene.

“It just says that you must stop, which means immediately, and furnish your information or find someone who the property belongs to, tell them what happened and give them your license and insurance information,” Trice said. “Then if nobody’s there or can’t find someone to report it to, you’re to go to the nearest police station or a police officer and report it.”

Two standards of justice?

Trice was one of three police officers subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury investigating Fowler’s son’s crash. As supervisor of the traffic division, Trice approves all investigations into crashes.

The DA’s investigators wanted to know if Fowler had ordered Trice not to ticket Fowler’s son, Trice said. Fowler instructed his officers to handle his son’s investigation the same as any other, Trice said. Trice said he met Feb. 8 with three DA’s investigators, one of whom asked him if he knew his rights. That was a first in his 22 years as a police officer, Trice said.

Trice said it’s hypocritical of Fitzpatrick to say police should have ticketed Fowler’s son and everyone who leaves the scene of a property damage accident.

Leaving the scene of a property damage accident is a violation, not a crime, and should not be a matter for the DA, Miner said.

The grand jury investigation isn’t so much about Fowler’s son not getting ticketed as it is about the possible cover-up, Fitzpatrick said. “If you take the position that there are two standards of justice in the city of Syracuse, that’s not acceptable,” he said.

Fitzpatrick defended his investigation into Fowler’s son’s crash by saying he was only trying to help the victim, city dog control officer Earl Reese, get the city to pay the $3,500 cost of repairing his car.

Fowler’s son backed a city parks department pickup truck into Reese’s personal car. The crash was caught on videotape by a security camera. Fowler at first denied causing any damage, then admitted it when confronted with the videotape, Fitzpatrick said.

The city suspended Fowler’s son for five days without pay for failing to report the crash. Police took that penalty into account, along with his cooperation, when they decided not to ticket him, Trice said. It was not because he’s the chief’s son, Trice said.

Fitzpatrick said his office got involved after learning that the city had denied Reese’s claim to pay for the damage. “He’s indicated to us that he had a level of frustration,” Fitzpatrick said. “He felt he was getting jerked around.”

Reese’s lawyer, however, said the city never denied the claim and has given Reese every indication that it would be paid. Reese believes the city has handled the case properly, said his lawyer, Michael Spano.

Reese did not ask the DA to investigate, Spano said. Reese hired a lawyer because the grand jury had subpoenaed him, Spano said.

Contact John O’Brien at jobrien@syracuse.com or 470-2187.