Suffolk brothel cop George Trimigliozzi ignored emergency calls before prostitution arrest

The former Suffolk police officer now in jail for managing a brothel also spent overnight patrol shifts "shirking his official duties," once waiting nearly an hour to respond to a call about a missing developmentally disabled child, an arbitrator ruled.

In disciplinary charges that had sought his firing, the Suffolk police department accused George Trimigliozzi of hanging around at local fire stations and repeatedly ignoring his job. The charges were filed in September 2024, one month before a grand jury indicted the veteran officer on unrelated prostitution charges.

The ruling is the latest to shed light on how Suffolk County seeks to fire officers in high-profile misconduct cases through a lengthy process spelled out in its labor agreement with the police union.

The arbitrator’s 22-page report reveals the police department’s frustrations with Trimigliozzi's job performance and its effort to oust him weeks even before his prostitution indictment brought embarrassment to the force.

Arbitrator Daniel Brent’s ruling, issued in February and obtained recently by Newsday in a public records request, said Trimigliozzi showed a "cavalier and dismissive attitude" toward his responsibility as a police officer. Brent denied the officer’s request for back pay covering the time that he was suspended, but said the county’s disciplinary case to fire Trimigliozzi became moot when he pleaded guilty last year in the criminal case.

State law bars people who committed a felony to act as a sworn police officer.

Trimigliozzi, 57, pleaded guilty in September to promoting prostitution and misconduct charges and a Suffolk Supreme Court judge sentenced him to two years in county jail. Records show he is serving his sentence in Riverhead.

$125,000

George Trimigliozzi's pension, for which he filed paperwork one month after pleading guilty on prostitution charges.

The former officer filed paperwork to begin receiving a $125,000 pension one month following his guilty plea. That represents a reduced amount because he did not complete 20 years of police service, according to Rebecca Dangoor, a spokeswoman for the state comptroller’s office. Trimigliozzi spent 18 years with Suffolk police.

Louis Civello, president of the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association, which had argued Trimigliozzi receive a five-day unpaid suspension, said in an email, "The Arbitrator's decision was well written and based on the applicable laws and legal standards."

Asked why the union still sought back pay after Trimigliozzi pleaded guilty, Civello said, “ ... this arbitration began before and was unrelated to the criminal charges for which Mr. Trimigliozzi was rightfully fired for and therefore could not be considered in anything related to this case."

The Suffolk police department declined to comment.

Suffolk’s case to fire Trimigiliozzi made no reference to the details of prostitution that would later arise in his criminal case, instead focusing on dozens of instances when he allegedly avoided patrolling his area, delayed responding to calls and did not activate his body-worn camera.

The department cited 10 shifts during a six-month time frame when his patrol car was idle for more than 50 hours, typically at fire departments in Bay Shore, Central Islip and Islip — evidence Brent described as Trimigliozzi "repeatedly and knowingly shirking his official duties."

In one example, Suffolk said the officer spent 9 hours and 8 minutes of a 10-hour shift in October 2023 at the West Islip Fire Department. The department determined his location by tracking the GPS movements of his patrol car, the report said.

"This documented pattern of dereliction of duty likely created just cause to terminate Officer Trimigliozzi’s employment," had he not pleaded guilty, Brent wrote.

[A] documented pattern of dereliction of duty likely created just cause to terminate Officer Trimigliozzi’s employment.

— Arbitrator Daniel Brent's ruling

The arbitrator also criticized Trimigliozzi for having "intentionally delayed his departure to respond to multiple calls," which the report attributed to the department’s tracking device attached to Trimigliozzi’s car. Those records showed "exactly when his patrol vehicle moved in response to these dispatched assignments."

Suffolk detailed nine incidents in which Trimigliozzi took what officials described as far too long to respond to emergency calls, saying he waited at least 20 minutes and up to an hour.

Those included calls involving "a developmentally disabled person missing from a group home and two individuals with heart conditions experiencing distressing medical circumstances," according to the arbitrator’s report.

Read the arbitrator's report

"These extensive delays in responding to time-sensitive calls constituted a pattern of proven dereliction of duty that demonstrated [Trimigliozzi’s] cavalier and dismissive attitude to fulfilling his core duties as a Suffolk County Police Officer sworn to protect the public," Brent wrote.

Trimigliozzi’s delay responding to the calls led dispatchers to seek assistance from others, the arbitrator wrote.

Brent, reached by phone, declined to comment.

He wrote in the report that he was not aware of the nature of Trimigliozzi’s criminal proceedings as he presided over the disciplinary case, which included six hearings and lasted through January, a month after Trimigliozzi's sentencing.

To dismiss a police officer in Suffolk, the county must convince an independent arbitrator that the officer committed the misconduct and that termination is the appropriate penalty.

The county regularly avoids the process by negotiating a settlement agreement with the officer and their union on an agreed-upon level of discipline.

Mark Iris, a lecturer emeritus at Northwestern University who has studied police arbitration cases, said the arbitrator’s decision to not issue back pay "is quite reasonable given the evidence."

Still, Iris said "Suffolk County was very lucky the arbitrator ruled in its favor," noting that more than 1,000 disciplinary cases passed through the Chicago Police Board during his two decades as executive director overseeing its operations.

Studying police discipline has made him familiar with the uncertainty that comes with arbitration.

"I’ve seen many cases, from various jurisdictions across the country, where arbitrators, despite strong evidence, reversed discipline, leading to hefty back pay awards," he said. "This easily could have gone the other way."