Former Middletown Teacher Suing BOE

A former language teacher with a history of run-ins with other teachers and school officials is suing the Board of Education and the police department on accusations the school board and a police officer stopped him from addressing the board during a public meeting in 2008.

Salvatore Caracoglia says in his lawsuit, filed last month, that he was attempting to address the board at when police officer William Hertler abruptly stopped him by turning off the microphone.

After he returned to his seat and attempted to speak again, Caracoglia said, Hertler pulled him out of his chair and painfully squeezed his ribs. Hertler, Caracoglia says in the lawsuit, used “excessive physical force” against him.

Caracoglia goes on to say in his legal action that Hertler arrested him on a charge of disorderly conduct, but falsified his police report by saying he stopped Caracoglia from speaking because Caracoglia was deemed to be out of order by the board’s then-chairman, Theodore Razca. Caracoglia said Razca never called him out of order.

He said Hertler later escorted him out of the building by twisting his arm behind his back and “tried to squeeze and choke the plaintiff.”

Caracoglia says in the lawsuit that a judge last year dismissed his criminal case after prosecutors watched a video of the board meeting and determined that the board never called him out of order during the meeting. That video, Caracoglia says, also confirmed that Hertler unlawfully stopped him from speaking.

Caracoglia says Hertler’s actions resulted after he attempted to tell the board that school officials were seeking to cover up a criminal investigation into allegations that a teacher slapped an African American student in school.

Caracoglia is representing himself in the case and is seeking court costs, punitive damages and attorney’s fees. He says his unlawful arrest by Hertler has made him “a prisoner of Court for the last two years.”

In 1995 Caracoglia was fired by the school district after being cited for insubordination, misconduct and harassment. Caracoglia had sued another teacher in the district, alleging that she spread false rumors about him, but he lost that lawsuit in 1998.

He was also arrested in the late 1990s after he allegedly threatened that same teacher, who was set to testify against Caracoglia’s daughter, who had been arrested on allegations she punched the teacher at a graduation party, according to a Hartford Courant report. He appealed that case and “claimed a series of injustices, including that he should not have been allowed to act as his own lawyer, that he was victimized by inflammatory evidence, that the prosecutor engaged in misconduct and that he was improperly ordered to make a $500 charitable contribution as part of his sentence,” the newspaper reported in its story.

In 2001 he was sentenced to 90 days in prison for an assault on his former union representative, the story says.