NYPD Officer Joseph Gonong was under investigation when he quit and was decertified. Two other police departments, including Hempstead Village, hired him.

On Sept. 13, 2021, three days after NYPD Officer Joseph T. Gonong resigned from the force while under investigation for putting a 14-year-old Brooklyn girl in an illegal chokehold, he began training to become a New York State trooper.

He graduated from the state police training center in March 2022, and after serving two years in the state police, Village of Hempstead Mayor Waylyn Hobbs swore Gonong in as a village police officer, where he now works, making a yearly salary of $109,950.

Gonong's resignation from the city police department triggered automatic decertification as a police officer under state law, meaning he could no longer serve in law enforcement without retraining. Gonong remains an officer today because he slipped through a narrow six-week window between his resignation and decertification and the enactment of the state law.

Had he resigned a month later, after the Professional Policing Act of 2021 went into effect, that ban would have been permanent.

"The law and regulations at that time did not prevent those officers from subsequently being hired, completing basic  training again, and being recertified," Kirstan Conley, spokeswoman for the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services, told Newsday.

At least one person said the decertified officer should resign.

"I don't believe that officer should be a Hempstead police officer," former village trustee Kevin Boone, told Newsday. "You have to have a clean record because anybody else coming from off the street, if there's any type of a blemish on their record whatsoever, they would never get the job."

Boone said that Gonong's ongoing employment in the village raises questions about the state police commitment to that law and the vetting process.

"For the safety of our community, for the safety of all communities, whomever it be, Hempstead or anybody else, all officers should be vetted properly," Boone said.

Gonong did not respond to calls seeking comment. The Village of Hempstead also has not responded to emailed questions regarding Gonong’s service.

'Wandering police officer'

The state legislature introduced the 2021 law to combat a phenomenon referred to as the "wandering police officer," cops with disciplinary records who remain in law enforcement by jumping from department to department after being fired.

Records show that the problem continues despite the law.

According to the Division of Criminal Justice Services data, out of the 3,724 officers who have lost their certificates since 2016 when the process began, there are 144 decertified police officers currently still on the public payroll, but not always in law enforcement. About a third, or 60 of those officers who lost their certification before the Oct. 16 restriction went into effect still serve in law enforcement.

The New York State Department of Corrections decertified Kyren Braunskill while he was a probationary officer; he went on to work as an NYPD 911 dispatch operator before becoming a Mount Vernon police detective in Westchester County. In March, he was one of 18 gang members indicted by the Suffolk County District Attorney for gun trafficking, armed robbery and two unsolved homicides.

Newburgh police decertified Carlos J. Canario for the improper use of pepper spray and then providing false information about the incident; according to court records, he now works for the Orange County Sheriff's Office as a corrections officer.

A police officer becomes a certified law enforcement officer after successfully completing a police academy training. In Gonong’s case, he was first certified after undergoing the NYPD Police Academy.

Illegal chokehold finding

That certificate was jeopardized in July 2018, while he was assigned to Police Service Area 2, patrolling public housing developments in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Gonong responded to a call of a playground bullying incident between a group of teenage girls, according to a 2023 Civilian Complaint Review Board quarterly report.

One of the girls called the police after the other kept flicking her lighter at her sister, authorities said. Gonong, who at the time had one year on the job, intervened, standing between the two groups. One of the girls reached around the officer and slapped a girl in the rival group, the report said. In response, he grabbed the girl by the wrist, twisting it behind her back, but she broke free, according to the investigator’s account. This prompted Gonong, who was about 27 at the time, to put the 14-year-old in a chokehold for 30 seconds, the CCRB report said.

Gonong admitted grabbing the girl’s wrist to restrain her from physically assaulting the other girl, but denied putting her in a chokehold or otherwise restricting her breathing. His partner, who also responded to the incident, said he saw no physical contact between Gonong and the girl.

The CCRB cleared him of one excessive force claim that the girl’s mother had filed against him, but substantiated the chokehold and restricted breathing claim against him.

There was another complaint against him for abuse of authority in April of 2020, but he resigned before the complaint could be investigated, according to board records.

Chokeholds have been banned by the NYPD since 1993, but after the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man killed in 2014 by a police officer’s chokehold, both the city and the state in 2020 passed laws making them illegal.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the more restrictive policing law in April 2021.

Gonong remained an NYPD officer while under investigation until September, when he entered the 210th session of the state police basic school.

He was first assigned to Troop K in Salt Point, near Poughkeepsie, going from a public housing patrol officer in the city to state highway patrol. He went from making $99,169 his last year as an NYPD officer to $58,443 as a state trooper.

By the time he left the state job, he was making more than $129,000.

Struggles with retention

State Police spokesman Beau Duffy said that the state police were aware of the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau and the CCRB investigations into the chokehold when they accepted his application.

“The State Police conduct extensive background investigations on every candidate who passes initial processing to become a state trooper,” the department said in an email statement. “The background investigation on Joseph Gonong was completed, and he accepted an appointment to the academy on Aug. 16, 2021, before his decertification. His academy class began training on Sept. 13, 2021.”

Newsday reported in 2023 that the state police were struggling with a retention issue after the pandemic. There were 5,062 troopers in 2019, according to state police numbers, but by the time Gonong enrolled in the training program the numbers had dropped to 4,762.

Josh Parker, deputy director of policy at NYU Law School’s Policing Project, which promotes greater law enforcement accountability, said that Gonong’s continued work in law enforcement shows deficiencies in the system.

“I think it is frankly reckless to have knowledge of that investigation and certify an officer at the state level, despite that knowledge,” he said.

In March 2024, after about two years with the state police, he was sworn in as a Hempstead village officer and assigned shield 1329.

Because Hempstead did not respond to questions regarding Gonong’s vetting or hiring, it’s unclear what the village authorities knew before he was hired.

Parker said there are many deficiencies in the law. The state relies on each agency self-reporting disciplinary terminations. There are also no specifics about the amount of information that has to be shared.

In Gonong’s case, neither of these issues prevented his disciplinary history from being easily found.

“I'm putting this both on Hempstead Police,” he said. “I'm not sure what exactly was shared with Hempstead, but at the same time, Joseph Gonong's decertification records from his 2021 decertification records are public records. I could find it in a Google search.”

Meanwhile, Gonong may plan to move on again, this time to the Suffolk County Police Department. His name appears on an online list of people who recently scored 95 or above on the police officers' Civil Service exam.