Rahn Report: Mishandled homicide investigation

The attorney for suspended Greece Police Chief Merritt Rahn is calling for a public hearing to answer charges of misconduct.
John Parrinello filed a response this afternoon to an investigator's report that recommends Rahn be fired. That report accuses Rahn of breaching 46 departmental regulations involving incidents such as the handling of criminal cases against former Greece officers Nicholas Joseph and Gary Pignato and the shredding of personnel documents. Investigators also point to a five-year-old homicide case they say Rahn mishandled.
In July 2004 on a quiet street in a house tucked away, Greece Police were investigating a homicide. The homeowner had just shot his step-son who was standing just outside a garage door.
Fie years later, this scene is now part of the internal investigation into potential breaches of departmental regulations by Greece Police Chief Merritt Rahn. It is one of several incidents listed in the investigator’s report which recommends his termination. Investigators say Rahn impeded the homicide investigation at West Hill Estates when he immediately declared it a case of self-defense. According to the report, the homeowner - Richard Gangale - was an acquaintance of Rahn's.
On the day of the shooting, Rahn told News 10NBC, “It's a family problem issue. The person who shot him has an order of protection against the victim. The victim's supposed to have no contact and not supposed to be here."
Gangale was never charged but beyond calling it self defense, the report claims Rahn took other actions at the scene that hindered the investigation. One charge says he “failed to stop an employee from cleaning up blood splatter that may have been evidence at a crime scene."
According to the report, Chief Rahn had the suspect's handcuffs removed and then handed over his cell phone to the man with a defense attorney on the line. Sources tell I-Team 10 that attorney was John Parrinello. Parrinello is the very same attorney now representing Rahn in the disciplinary proceeding. He says the 166-page document, that outlines 46 charges against his client, is repetitive and baseless. “It's just a rehash of incidents that have either long passed or are currently two cases in which officers got convicted."
Gangale still lives in the house where the shooting occurred. This afternoon, he told I-Team 10 he wasn't aware that the handling of the incident was now being investigated but said, even so, he doesn't care to talk about it, as it was a point in his life that he would prefer to forget.
In the meantime, Parrinello says they will fight the internal charges. “We are going to categorically deny each and every charge, each and every specification and we are going to demand a hearing."
In his answer to the report, Parrinello says Rahn was deprived the right to counsel during the process. He also says the independent investigation by former state police deputy superintendent Joseph Loszynski was neither independent nor properly conducted and he calls it a malicious prosecution by Loszynski and the Town Supervisor John Auburger.