Update: U.S. Dept. of Justice probing prosecutor's arrest

Published Dec. 7, 2009 at 7:09 p.m.

WARWICK, R.I. -- As the Police Department continues to investigate what happened early Thanksgiving morning when a veteran federal prosecutor was arrested and charged with refusal to submit to a chemical breath test, Police Chief Stephen M. McCartney said Monday he's glad he didn't have to turn to the Rhode Island State Police -- or any other in-state agency -- for help reviewing his department's actions.

When the internal investigation in the Warwick Police Department is complete, the police will turn their results over instead to the U.S. Department of Justice, McCartney said. The federal agency is conducting its own review of what happened when Assistant U.S. Attorney Gerard B. Sullivan asked for leniency, telling the police his position and saying he knew the chief...

Warwick Police protocol would ordinarily dictate that McCartney call the state police -- where Col. Brendan P. Doherty is superintendent -- and ask that agency to conduct an external review of the Warwick investigation, McCartney said...

"But I think it would be very difficult for me to call Colonel Doherty and put him in that position, because he knows Mr. Sullivan," McCartney said. "You're looking at a gentleman who had a distinguished career before this happened here -- both with the state Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Attorney's Office. So it's hard to believe he hadn't worked with all of us at some point in his career.

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"Does that just make this quantifiably more difficult? Of course it does...

"I just think it would be very difficult to have any outside agency in the state of Rhode Island review this case, so I'm glad the Department of Justice is reviewing."

Doherty has not returned a call placed to him just after 11 a.m. Monday...

Sullivan has been an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island since 1991 and worked before that in the Rhode Island Department of the Attorney General, where he rose to chief prosecutor for organized-crime matters. He was the only one of eight drivers arrested in Warwick through the Thanksgiving weekend who was charged with refusal to take a chemical breath test, but not also with driving under the influence...

McCartney has said he knows Sullivan only professionally, but their relationship dates back to the years when McCartney worked in the Providence Police Department, where he worked for a little more than 25 years before retiring on a Friday in 1999 and taking the new job as chief of police in Warwick the next Monday...

Refusal to take the chemical breath test is a motor-vehicle violation, while driving under the influence is a criminal charge.

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