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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Conservatives Party Says Cops Conspired

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (CN) - The Suffolk County Conservative Party claims the local Police Benevolent Society and Superior Officers Association enrolled cops in the party en masse in order to "subvert and destroy" it, by taking over the party though the cops do not share its goals.

County Party Chairman Edward Walsh Jr. claims the police organizations conspired to try to take over the party to defeat the incumbent sheriff in his re-election, and to try to push the cop unions' agenda to bring the county highway patrol on the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway.

Walsh says his party found both cop unions sending solicitations through Internet postings, mass emails and traditional mail.

"Defendants' motives in seeking to take control of the Conservative Party were unrelated to the principles of the party," Walsh says in the complaint in Suffolk County Court.

In January 2008, Police Benevolent Society President John Frayler announced that his organization had enrolled 2,000 officers in the Conservative Party, Walsh says: a tenfold increase in enrollment for the party.

Walsh says the part formed a subcommittee a year later to ask the whether the new enrollees sympathized with the party's principals, and 1,500 failed to attend. He says that none of the applicants represented by PBA or SOA counsel went at all.

Also named as defendants are the Suffolk County Detectives Association and five individual officers. The party seeks reimbursement of $241,000 it spent on the hearings, and punitive damages of $750,000, alleging a prima facie tort.

It is represented by Steven Leventhal with Leventhal and Sliney.

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