NEW BEDFORD — A court magistrate ruled Friday that no criminal charges would result from an incident after a City Council meeting in November in which two men were accused by the police of trespassing and those men accused three public officials of making false statements to the police.
After 40 minutes of proceedings behind closed doors at Third District Court, Assistant Clerk Magistrate Frederick DeCubellis decided that no further criminal proceedings would follow from police accusations made against Carlos Felix, a freelance videographer, and Craig Ptaszenski, or from their claims against At-large Councilors Brian Gomes and Linda Morad and City Clerk Dennis Farias.
“No charges,” DeCubellis said after the proceedings that arose from an incident that took place at City Hall on Nov. 30.
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Felix and Ptaszenski were accused in a police report of going into a council chambers balcony when the area was closed to the public. They accused the councilors and Farias of giving false statements about that, and for claiming a confrontation took place outside City Hall later that night.
DeCubellis declined to say anything more about what went on in the show-cause hearing, which is normally closed to the public. As these hearings are held to determine if accusations made by the police or private parties merit full criminal proceedings, they are kept closed to protect the people involved.
In this case, though, all five of the people involved — not including the police officer who wrote the report on the Nov. 30 incident — said they wanted the hearing to be open to the public.
Clerk Magistrate Peter J. Thomas had denied a written request from the New Bedford Light and a request by phone from Felix earlier in the week. Farias said he made the request before and during his time before DeCubellis on Friday, but was told that the requests were denied.
The New Bedford Light on Thursday appealed the decision to the presiding justice of the District Court and to the state Supreme Judicial Court but the SJC appeal was not received until Thursday afternoon, and no action was taken before the Friday morning hearing.
Both Felix, a freelance videographer who covers meetings and other events for New Bedford Guide and the Fall River Reporter, and Ptaszenski said they were considering whether to pursue this further. They said they had not brought in the video or other evidence to challenge statements made by the public officials to the police officer who wrote the report on the incident that started inside City Hall and continued in the street.
Court procedure would give them the option of asking the presiding District Court judge for a “redetermination” of the magistrate’s finding.
“This is a case of local elected officials abusing their power, lying on a police report,” Ptaszenski said in a statement after the proceedings on Friday.
He and Felix claim that when councilors closed the council chamber after the Nov. 30 meeting and gathered to record their annual holiday greeting, it was an official meeting under the law and they should not have been shut out. They say they went into the chamber balcony to get pictures of the councilors meeting in chambers.
He claimed that the officer who wrote the report changed a portion of his version of events by acknowledging during the proceedings that he did not see the movable standing sign that marks the stairway to the council chambers balcony as off-limits to the public.
But in his report, Officer Timothy DaCosta does not exactly say he saw the sign posted right in the middle of the stairway. He says he got pictures from another officer of the sign at the stairway that marks third floor access for “employees only,” but it is not made clear where the sign was when the photo was taken.
Morad said she’s taking a wait-and-see approach on this, as disputes over meeting decorum, public comment during meetings and the Open Meeting Law have been going on for years, occasionally spilling into court.
“We’re told we’re all set for today,” said Morad, who was council president when the Nov. 30 meeting occurred. “We’ll see. There’s been a history of it.”
Farias said he considered the proceeding a “waste of time. Waste of court time, waste of everybody’s time.”
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
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