An attorney for New Hyde Park Fire Commissioner Michael Dolan and his son, Michael J. Dolan, issued a statement on Wednesday disavowing any profit-making or criminal intent in removing smoke detectors stored at the New Hyde Park Fire Department last summer.
Attorney Michael Cornacchia issued the statement days before the Dolans face a departmental hearing on charges that they had improperly taken the smoke detectors. Grand felony charges against the two men were dropped by the Nassau County District Attorney’s office in October. They were arrested in mid-July after the alleged theft of the fire detectors early on the morning of June 21.
“The Dolans did not profit from the removal of the detectors, and did not remove them with any criminal or bad intent, but, in fact, returned them to the original donor of the detectors, the Nassau County Fire Museum,” Cornacchia’s statement said.
The elder Dolan had originally picked up the smoke detectors and brought them to the department headquarters as donations to the New Hyde Park Fire Department.
Attempts to reach administrators at the Nassau County Firefighters Museum were unavailing.
Cornacchia said the case was dropped by the Nassau County DA’s office because of “insufficient evidence” against the two men. The county District Attorney’s office declined to comment on the case this week beyond again confirming that the charges against the men had been dropped.
Both men have remained suspended from duty as firefighters in the New Hyde Park department since the time of their arrest. The senior Dolan has served the department for 45 years his son 12 years.
“I don’t know why the district is devoting monetary resources and creating adverse publicity to prosecute these two men who are military veterans suffering from the effects of their service and who have long served the department,” Cornacchia said in a telephone interview. “In this day and age, to prosecute two veterans who served their country is beyond my understanding and belief.”
The elder Dolan, 68, served during the Vietnam War and earned a Purple Heart. The younger Dolan did two tours of duty in Iraq as a U.S. Marine.
Cornacchia said the Dolans “look forward to their day in court” and expect a fair hearing from Walter Wagner, an attorney has been retained by the New Hyde Park fire commissioners as an arbitrator to hear the case on Jan. 7.
Outgoing New Hyde Park Fire Commissioner John Brown has said the elder Dolan was given 200 smoke detectors by the Nassau County Firefighters Museum. Brown said Dolan delivered 100 detectors to the department, Brown said, then he and his son removed 82 of them from department headquarters several days later. A surveillance tape showed the Dolans removing the detectors from a secured area in the department headquarters, department officials said.
“He did admit before every member of the board that he took them. But he wouldn’t say why he took them,” Brown said in a recent interview about the elder Dolan.
“They weren’t New Hyde Park Fire Department property,” Dolan said in a recent telephone conversation, declining further comment.
Brown said the Dolans initially returned the smoke detectors after the other fire commissioners told them to do so, but then took them again.
Brown said after the fire commissioners notified Nassau County Police Department about the alleged theft, a detective assigned to the case gave Dolan a chance to return the smoke detectors without facing criminal charges.
Brown said Dolan told the detective he would return the smoke detectors, but failed to return them.
“He was warned repeatedly to return the detectors and he ignored us,” Brown said. “He was given 15 different opportunities to return the stuff before the police were called and after the police were called.”
Thomas Stock, an attorney representing the New Hyde Park fire commissioners, has declined to comment on the case.
