Carter No Longer Taking Southampton Village Police Chief Post; Trustees Blame the Mayor

Anthony Carter, the Southampton Village Board majority’s pick to be the village’s next chief of police starting in March, is no longer taking the position.

Village Board members Gina Arresta, Roy Stevenson, Robin Brown and Bill Manger announced Carter’s decision in a scathing press release issued on Monday morning that laid the blame for Carter’s withdrawal at the feet of Mayor Jesse Warren, who cast the sole vote against appointing Carter and has been outspoken in his disagreement with his fellow board members over the hiring.

Carter is currently a deputy police commissioner for the Suffolk County Police, part of a 29-year career in law enforcement that has also included serving as a police inspector in the New York City Police Department.

The Village Board voted, 4-1, during a special meeting in December to appoint Carter to the post. The contract was for five years with an annual salary starting at $225,000, plus an additional $45,000 each year if he did not take health insurance and retirement benefits from the village.

“Mr. Carter was selected for this position over numerous other candidates,” the trustees wrote in their press release on Monday morning. “The village trustees were able to enter into an employment agreement with Deputy Commissioner Carter on fair and reasonable terms that would have saved the village a considerable sum over the compensation of his predecessor. Such savings may not be achievable with many future candidates, since Commissioner Carter did not require expensive health or pension benefits based upon his past governmental service.”

The statement continues: “The commissioner expressed his willingness to work tirelessly to enhance the reputation of our police department and assist our officers in continuing to provide the highest level of police services. We have no doubt that he would have been a great success and served the village with distinction.”

The release also accuses the mayor of undermining the recruiting process after initially supporting Carter.

“Throughout our search, Mayor Warren expressed his intention to find a candidate who would accede to his wishes, with blind loyalty to him, irrespective of the wisdom or propriety of the mayor’s position on a given subject,” the release continues. “Apparently, to his credit, Commissioner Carter did not fit that peculiar and questionable job criterion sought by Mayor Warren.”

Carter said in an interview on Monday afternoon that turning down the position was a disappointment and working alongside the village officers would have been a dream job for him.

“I’m grateful for the support of the trustees, the village administrator and the community, and especially the men and women of the Southampton Village Police Department, who need and deserve everyone’s support,” he said.

Carter said that after consultation with his family, they decided “at this juncture and stage of my professional career, that’s its just not the right time to take the position.” He refrained from pointing fingers at Warren as the trustees had.

Warren said on Friday that at the prior afternoon’s executive session of the Village Board — a meeting that the public was excluded from — Carter appeared and expressed that he was concerned that the bar of eligibility for the civil service exam he would be required to take in March was too low. The minimum number of years of policing experience necessary to qualify to sit for the exam was only 10 years. According to Warren, Carter said he had been assured that the requirements to take the exam would be set higher, narrowing the number of people in the pool.

In order to be permanently hired as a village police chief in New York State, civil service rules dictate that the municipality’s chosen candidate has one of the three top scores on the police chief exam.

Carter said he was clear about the civil service exam requirements when he accepted the chief’s post and was confident he would pass the exam. “Based on my three decades of law enforcement experience, my higher education credentials, and my eagerness and support from my family to study, I was very confident that I would be successful,” he said, “and the village trustees clearly shared in that level of confidence.”

The trustees wrote that the news Carter would not take the job has saddened them as well as the men and women of the Village Police Department. “This outcome was the result of actions taken by Mayor Warren which reflect poorly upon him and are not representative of the feelings and actions of the Trustees or the Southampton community at large which embraced Commissioner Carter and looked forward to his leadership of our department,” their statement reads.

They further accused the mayor of making “materially false statements” about his reasons for voting against Carter’s hiring at the December special meeting.

“Notably, the mayor chose to do so in the presence of Commissioner Carter’s family, who were at the meeting to share in what should have been a joyous occasion for all of them,” they wrote. “The mayor’s poor treatment of this dedicated public servant will make it more difficult for the village to recruit for this and other positions.”

The trustees called the conduct “reprehensible” and noted that he repeated his statements in a “Viewpoint” published in The Southampton Press in early January and in an interview with the New York Post.

In his op-ed, Warren wrote that he objected to the cost of the “generous” compensation package that the trustees offered to Carter and the length of the contract. He called the contract “poorly negotiated” — after Carter had already been offered the job — and hastily approved without input from the mayor’s office, village attorney, police chief search committee, and budget and finance committee.

Warren further objected to the fact that Carter had yet to pass a civil service exam for the post, and he wrote that the police chief search committee “did not receive the candidate’s resume.” And he pointed out that the special meeting in December was held with minimal notice and no posted agenda beforehand.

He wrote that the village could have hired from within the police department or picked someone else with experience on the East End, or had its pick of NYPD chiefs, as opposed to “a person currently serving as a civilian political appointee in Suffolk County … with no ties to the local community, and who is about to take his third job in less than two years.”

In his op-ed, Warren also suggested that, under “substantial case law,” future village boards may not be bound by a police chief contract approved by the current board.

At the January 12 Village Board meeting, at which the trustees invited Carter to speak without prior notice to Warren, Stevenson forcefully rebuked Warren’s op-ed and other statements.

The trustee said the search committee had, in fact, reviewed all applications that met the standards for the position and narrowed the field with deep background checks and the assistance of a professional recruiter.

Stevenson apologized to Carter for the mayor’s statements and said the excitement of earning the job was “tarnished” by the mayor’s actions.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you said, ‘Shove it, I don’t need this BS,’” Stevenson said during the meeting. “Instead, I hope it will stiffen your resolve to show the mayor how wrong he is. I hope the mayor will make every effort to amend his behavior and rebuild the loss of trust his actions have caused.”

Carter spoke surrounded by members of the Village Police Department. He praised the department’s officers and dispatchers and recalled meeting many of them and touring the village.

“This is the Yankees of the Hamptons as far as police departments go,” Carter said.

Warren on Monday offered no response to the accusations made against him in the trustees’ press release and said that his plan is to return to Village Hall the next day and work together with his fellow Village Board members as a team.

“That’s what the community wants,” he said. “That’s what they expect from their elected officials on a local level and national level as well.”

He said he is happy and willing to put the trustees’ statements behind him and never think about them ever again.

“A lot of the things that we want to work on are universal, so I don’t see this as a 4-1 majority,” he said. “We had a very strong difference of opinion here, but on many other issues we are completely on the same page.”

On restarting the search for a police chief, the mayor said the No. 1 most important thing is to hire a candidate who has already passed the civil service exam. He said this time he will not delegate the authority to a specific trustee to lead the search, adding, “I am going to be out in front of this one.”

He said the next chief could be in the role for a decade or two and long past the tenures of the current members of the board. “So this is extremely important, to get this right,” he added.