Unhand Piermont!: Unfinished Business With Piermont.

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Monday, September 22, 2025

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lcrisafulli@osc.ny.gov
Laura M. Crisafulli, Esq. - Assistant Counsel
State of New York, Office of the State Comptroller (OSC)
Division Of Legal Services
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli
110 State Street, 14^th Floor
Albany, New York 12236 USA

Re:

Economic Exposure Caused By The Piermont, New York Fire Department
The Ongoing OSC Audit Of Piermont And Outgoing Mayor Bruce Tucker

Dear Ms. Crisafulli, and OSC Colleagues:

I trust that you have reviewed my letter of Monday, September 8, 2025, regarding the gruesome Piermont Fire Department sex abuse case whose history spans from Year 2010 through Year 2017, right before current Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker first took office:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/audit-piermont-hose.html

Today I write with further information I have since learned about the Piermont Fire Department sex abuse matter, and to which you may not have yet gained access.

I reviewed every public-record filing posted to PACER in this related civil litigation:

Bernstein v. Village of Piermont, Bettman, Goswick, and Kropp.
1:11-cv-03677 (ER)
2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180392 (SDNY).
2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 151004 (SDNY).

While I recognize that, appurtenant to the matter are issues of tort liability, criminality, and indeed, fundamental morality, each such issue being outside of normal OSC jurisdiction and enforcement power, the key fact that I need to communicate to you today is the overwhelming amount of economic exposure caused to the Village of Piermont as a direct result of the Year 2010 horrific sex hazing of the 16-year-old boy at the Piermont Fire House. That dollar-amount was quantified as at least Three Hundred Eighty-Eight Thousand, Three Hundred Fifty-Four Dollars and Seventeen Cents (US$388.354.17) in litigation attorney’s fees alone, according to documents filed in the above-cited federal court civil litigation in the Southern District of New York:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-us38835417-piermont-fire-department.html

That US$388.354.17 dollar-amount appears to have been paid on behalf of the Village of Piermont by then-insurer American Alternative Insurance Corporation (AAIC) to multiple law firms, and it is possible that additional amounts were paid-out to the same firms or to others thereafter. Adjusted for inflation since Year 2010, this litigation-fee dollar-amount would be over half a million dollars today. As noted above, it appears that the civil litigation cluster was resolved as recently as Year 2017 – right before outgoing Mayor Bruce Tucker first took office, and right before prior Piermont Fire Chief Fagan retired. Please see:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/and-yet-now-his-lawyers-spell-it-as.html
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/thats-ex-chief-kevin-fagan-stepped-down.html

Not included in the above US$388.354.17 dollar-amount, would be any dollar-amount, if any, which may have been paid to the plaintiff or plaintiff’s family in settlement of the civil litigation. The court file does not expressly indicate any such dollar-amount, although it is possible that non-privileged or OSC-audited Village of Piermont records might.

As the Village of Piermont is apparently now insured by Travelers and CFC instead, it is possible that AAIC may have dropped Piermont from its coverage rolls at or around the time of the apparent Year 2017 resolution of the civil litigation cluster – or perhaps, AAIC raised premiums so high that Piermont was compelled to seek an alternative to American Alternative. Please see:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/you-can-almost-hear-banjo-playing.html

Moreover, it appears that Travelers, when covering Piermont on a go-forward basis, deliberately excised “molestation” from coverage. While this could have been standard Travelers practice when insuring small-town governments, it may instead have been a deliberate response to what Travelers learned regarding the sordid history of the Piermont Fire Department during the insurance-application process:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/travelers-insurance-of-hartford-awards.html

In any event, the economic issue worthy of OSC scrutiny now, is the fact that, even as of today, the names of the litigation-alleged sex abuse perpetrators still appear to be members of the Piermont Fire Department as listed on the Piermont Fire Department Internet website – listed as “Samuel Kropp”, “Michael Bettman”, and “Daniel Goswick Jr.”:
https://piermontfd13.com/members/
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/httpspiermontfd13.html

As the public-record civil litigation file indicates, Michael Bettman (also spelled “Bettmann” elsewhere in the civil litigation record), pled guilty to N.Y. Penal Law §240.20(7) in connection with the firehouse incident:

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/michael-bettman-pleads-guilty.html
On the other hand, Bettman’s firehouse pals Samuel Kropp and Daniel Goswick, Jr. beat their respective raps and had their criminal charges before the Piermont Village Court dismissed, on the technicality of apparent prosecutorial failure to effect a speedy trial:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/two-of-three-piermont-firefighters.html
The criminal files are sealed to someone like me, but then again, they may not be to you, I realize.

While sex offender recidivism is an extremely complicated matter, the fact is, a gang sex abuse initiation could well happen again on the front porch of the Piermont Fire Department, just as it did to the 16-year-old initiate on August 14, 2010. Aside from the horrible trauma inflicted on the young boy volunteer firefighter back in 2010, that gang sex abuse initiation cost the Village of Piermont, through an insurer, a sum approaching half a million dollars. Moreover, notwithstanding my recent written entreaties to Piermont’s current insurance carriers and to one of its Trustees running for Mayor, I have been given no assurance by anyone to date that current Piermont Fire Department initiation policies or practices have been cleaned up:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/you-can-almost-hear-banjo-playing.html
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/nate-mitchells-milquetoast-mailing.html

Specifically concerning is the impending mayoral election in Piermont. This election finds Kevin Timoney, a member of the Piermont Zoning Board of Appeals, running against current Piermont Trustee Nathan (Nate) Mitchell. Nate Mitchell is also a firefighter with the same Piermont Fire Department, and has been so since approximately Year 2005, according to his campaign materials. Therefore, through social media, I specifically posed these questions to mayoral candidate Nate Mitchell on Sunday, September 14, 2025, as follows:

“11. Fire Department Hazing, In The Past. Given that you [Nate Mitchell] became a member of the Piermont Fire Department circa 2005; given that a 16-year-old volunteer fireman alleged in court filings and via the media through his father to have been forcibly restrained and sodomized at the Piermont Fire Department firehouse in 2010 as part of a “rite of passage” initiation thereafter leading to apparent criminal charges and civil litigation brought against three other firemen; given that those three alleged sex-abusers at last check appear to be still listed as members of the Piermont Fire Department on the Piermont Fire Department Internet website; and given that at least one of them is also listed as currently employed by the Village of Piermont – what actual measures have the Village of Piermont and the Piermont Fire Department taken since the litigated incidents, if any, to eliminate violent sexual hazing of new recruits? What actual measures have you taken since then, if any, to prevent any violent sexual hazing of new Piermont Fire Department recruits?”

12. Fire Department Hazing, In The Future. As Mayor, what further measures will you [Nate Mitchell] implement to ensure the extinction of violent sexual hazing of new recruits and other misconduct by members of the Piermont Fire Department and other affiliates of Piermont village government? Why have you and the Piermont Fire Department apparently not made a clear written statement to this effect available to the public, already?” [Bold-face emphasis added].

While Mitchell replied this past Saturday to other numbered items in my same posted de facto interrogatories (please see the .jpeg immediately below), Mitchell failed to directly respond to my above inquiries about the Piermont Fire Department and violent sexual hazing (please see the URL immediately below):
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/nate-mitchells-milquetoast-mailing.html

Yet it’s now Year 2025 and Mitchell proudly touts his almost two decades of service with the Piermont Fire Department, which means that he must have been a member of the Piermont Fire Department when the 2010 molestation incident and its litigation sequelae through Year 2017 occurred. If anyone should know if the Piermont Fire Department initiation policies and practices changed, Nate Mitchell should. Yet he stays purposefully silent on the issue.

In any event, to the extent that Messrs. Kropp, Bettman, or Goswick Jr. continue to be associated with the Piermont Fire Department, I submit to you that this would create an unnecessary and unacceptable liability for the Piermont Fire Department, for Piermont village government, for Piermont’s insurers - and for the taxpaying Piermont residents, most of whom to date have been completely unsuspecting of this significant liability. Accordingly, I am respectfully reiterating my request that the Office of the New York State Comptroller please include a careful examination of the liabilities engendered by the Piermont Fire Department and, specifically, its initiation practices, in OSC’s ongoing Audit of the Village of Piermont and its outgoing Mayor Bruce Tucker. Even if OSC is compelled by its own self-imposed mandate to examine economic matters alone, OSC still has the power to resolve this long-unresolved concern.

Case citations for the civil litigation cluster relating to the Piermont Fire Department sex hazing incident, are here:

Bernstein v. Village of Piermont, Bettman, Goswick, and Kropp.
1:11-cv-03677 (ER).
2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 180392 (SDNY).
2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 151004 (SDNY).

Bernstein v. Village of Piermont.
1:12-cv-02062 (ER).

Piermont v. AAIC.
1:14-cv-05172 (ER).
2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 169475 (SDNY).

Selected documents from the civil litigation files, and other background, can be found at these links:

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/that-time-when-larry-darryl-and-darryl.html

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2025/09/travelers-insurance-of-hartford-awards.html

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