Matter of Alvarez v Kelly
2003 NY Slip Op 19403 [2 AD3d 219]
December 11, 2003
Appellate Division, First Department
As corrected through
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
As corrected through Wednesday, February 25, 2004


In the Matter of Arnaldo Alvarez, Petitioner,
v
Raymond Kelly, as Police Commissioner of the City of New York, et al., Respondents.

Determination of respondent Police Commissioner, dated January 31, 2002, dismissing petitioner from his position as a police officer upon findings that he made a false 911 call of a burglary in progress while off duty and made false statements concerning the call in his departmental interview, unanimously confirmed, the petition denied and the proceeding brought pursuant to CPLR article 78 (transferred to this Court by order of the Supreme Court, New York County [James Yates, J.], entered November 21, 2002) dismissed, without costs.

Substantial evidence, including the unchallenged testimony of telephone technology experts, establishes that the 911 call that petitioner made concerning a burglary in progress at a public school in Brooklyn was made from a pay phone in upper Manhattan, and not, as petitioner claims, from his cell phone as he drove past the school on his way home from his Brooklyn station house. No basis exists to disturb respondent's findings of credibility (see Matter of Berenhaus v Ward, 70 NY2d 436, 443-444 [1987]). The penalty of dismissal does not shock our sense of fairness (see Matter of Kelly v Safir, 96 NY2d 32, 38 [2001]). Concur—Nardelli, J.P., Tom, Mazzarelli and Ellerin, JJ.