Druck Cop Rearends Car Sending Toddler To Hospital - No Charges - Earning The Hate

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A damning report suggests Long Island cops may have covered up drunk driving by one of their own after an off-duty officer crashed into a car carrying a man and his two children. One of the children was left with injuries that he's still recovering from two years later. The officer, David Mascarella, was never charged.

The crash took place in August 2020, when a Ram truck driven by Mascarella rear-ended a Mitsubishi car driven by Kevin Cavooris. Mascarella—who was reportedly driving at a speed of more than 50 miles per hour—crashed into the car as Cavooris slowed down to make a turn.

"A witness reported to police that Mascarella had driven erratically for approximately a mile-and-a-half before the collision," according to Newsday. "The police accident report and crime scene diagram reflected no evidence that he braked before the pickup slammed into the Mitsubishi."

Mascarella was assigned to the Fourth Precinct in Smithtown. Fellow precinct officers and a sergeant responded to the crash and handled the initial investigation. A deputy inspector later took command. Newsday determined that:

• Sgt. Lawrence McQuade and precinct officers failed at the scene to ask Mascarella to submit to a breath test that would have provided a preliminary reading of whether he was intoxicated.

• After a detective told McQuade that he wanted Mascarella to undergo a preliminary breath test, McQuade notified a Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association delegate. The delegate, Officer Joseph Russo, then drove Mascarella away from investigators, McQuade reported.

• Ordered to catch up with Mascarella, Fourth Precinct Officer Kevin Wustenhoff falsely reported to a supervisor that he had given Mascarella the breath test and that Mascarella had passed it, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case. Wustenhoff retracted the account, the source said.

• Three hours after the crash, Deputy Insp. Mark Fisher asked Mascarella to take the breath test. Mascarella refused. When a driver refuses a preliminary breath test, police typically seek a warrant to have the driver's blood drawn and tested for alcohol. Fisher only issued a traffic ticket to Mascarella.

• Police failed to notify the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office on the night of the crash that an officer had been involved in an unexplained, high-speed rear-end crash, had seriously injured a 2-year-old and had refused a breath test. The omission prevented the DA from considering whether to seek a warrant to test Mascarella's blood.

• Although five officers wrote reports stating they saw no evidence that Mascarella was intoxicated, prosecutors under then-DA Tim Sini subsequently investigated the crash with an eye toward charging Mascarella with vehicular assault. Lacking a blood test that would have revealed whether Mascarella was intoxicated, they closed the investigation without action.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney (who was not in office at the time of the crash) told Newsday that "because certain evidence was not collected by SCPD on the date of the incident, we were unable to make a determination as to whether or not a crime was committed."

Video shows Mascarella throwing something from his truck window after the crash, but there's no indication that this was investigated, either.

Cavooris, however, was asked to take a breath test for alcohol. It registered that he had not been drinking.

Mascarella is still employed by the SCPD, though he has been suspended without pay since February and a police spokesperson told Newsday that the police commissioner is moving to fire him.

Wustenhoff, the officer who falsely reported that Mascarella had been given a breathalyzer test, was suspended without pay for 45 days and then placed on administrative duties. In three years, he'll be eligible to retire with a 50 percent pension, and a source told Newday that as part of the discipline Wustenhoff agreed to retire then.

In December last year, Newsday began to publish case histories documenting that the internal affairs systems of the Nassau and Suffolk County police departments had imposed little or no discipline on officers in cases involving serious civilian injuries or deaths. This is the sixth case history.