By Jeremy Walsh
The ex-police sergeant and former chief of staff for Hiram Monserrate during his City Council days has won his civil case against the city after a jury found the city had discriminated against him by excluding him from the Sanitation Department’s hiring process.
Charles Castro, 49, was awarded $73,000 — less than what the city had offered in a settlement — but Castro said he was pleased with the outcome.
“This just goes to prove that it’s not just the people’s imagination,” he said. “It wasn’t something as simple as settling out of court because I was beyond that point. I just wanted to make sure people knew what was happening out there.”
Castro, formerly a sergeant in the 115th Precinct, was fired from the NYPD over the murder of a 25-year-old woman at the hands of a transit police officer, her ex-boyfriend, in June 1997. The woman had called 911 in May of that year to report her ex’s threatening behavior. Castro took the information from the dispatcher and relayed it to the duty sergeant, who contacted the woman but did not take a report.
A month later, the ex-boyfriend shot the woman dead on a Jackson Heights street, the same day her case was finally assigned to a detective..
The duty sergeant, John Taggart, was fired for not taking a report, while Castro said he was fired for giving Taggart incomplete information regarding the call.
Castro later sued the Police Department over the firing. Then in 2005 he took the civil service examination and applied for a job at the Sanitation Department, which had hired the other sergeant involved in the 1997 incident.
Castro alleges that a Sanitation official told him he would not be picked for the job because of his dismissal from the Police Department and the lawsuit he filed.
Attorneys for the city disagreed.
“Any injuries alleged in the complaint were caused in whole or in part by the plaintiff’s culpable or negligent conduct,” they wrote in a response to the suit.
Castro has worked as a private investigator and served on Monserrate’s staff when he was a city councilman. Now he is marketing “NYPD Blue Lies,” a memoir about his encounters with racism and discrimination in the department. While he said he is focusing on his book, he is considering pressing a federal court judge to order the Sanitation Department to hire him.
“They don’t do a special screening for black people or people who used to work at Carvel’s, or ex-firemen,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jewalsh@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
