By Karen Langley
The Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — A judge yesterday sentenced former Concord police officer Brian Longabardi to 45 days in jail for assaulting a woman outside the police station while arresting her.
Judge Graham McSwiney sentenced Longabardi, 27, to one year in the Merrimack County jail but suspended all except 45 days as long as Longabardi commits no crimes in the next two years. Longabardi was also fined $500 and ordered to attend drug and alcohol counseling.
He was sentenced to additional suspended jail time and fines for groping the victim and another woman months earlier outside Penuche’s Ale House and for dodging a bar tab another night at The Draft. He will have to pay the $20 bill.
Longabardi’s attorney, Darrin Brown, said he would appeal to have the four convictions heard by a jury at Merrimack County Superior Court. Brown declined to comment on the appeals, saying he did not want to compromise jury selection.
Before the sentencing, Brown asked the judge for an entirely suspended sentence so Longabardi could return home and begin rebuilding his life. Longabardi is from Long Island, N.Y.
“It’s hard for him to find work in this area,” Brown said.
Longabardi resigned from the Concord Police Department in September 2009. Brown said yesterday he does not know if or where Longabardi is employed, but he said his client still lives in the Concord area.
Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley, who prosecuted the case, argued that Longabardi should be jailed for assaulting the woman while he was on duty as a police officer.
“It’s an abuse of authority,” Hinckley said. “It shames the work of all those who serve in uniform.”
The case began in November 2008, when Longabardi and two acquaintances from the police academy were off duty and went to Penuche’s. Longabardi was charged with groping two women outside the bar that night.
He was charged with assaulting one of the women again in January 2009 while arresting her. According to court records, Longabardi squeezed the woman’s arm hard enough to leave a bruise and warned her not to say anything about the night at Penuche’s.
Longabardi was also accused of leaving The Draft last July without paying a $20 bar tab. A bartender testified at trial that Longabardi responded to her repeated requests to pay by saying he had paid the bill and asking her to call him.
McSwiney found him guilty of theft in April but postponed ruling on the assault charges after Brown objected to the wording of the complaints. McSwiney later rejected Brown’s claim that the complaints lacked sufficient detail, and earlier this month he found Longabardi guilty of the three assault charges.
Yesterday, McSwiney sentenced Longabardi to three fully suspended six-month sentences in the Merrimack County for the two off-duty assaults and the theft. Longabardi also received three suspended $100 fines. He would have to serve the sentences and pay the fines if he commits a crime in the next two years.
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Copyright 2010 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor