Daniel E. Zlotek had been an Erie County deputy for almost 12 years when he drove by his girlfriend’s house one summer night and saw a truck with out-of-state plates parked there.
At work the next day, Zlotek ran the plates, searched Google for the name that came back and learned the owner played for the Buffalo Bisons, according to Sheriff's Office documents from the internal inquiry Zlotek triggered on June 30, 2019.
By running the plates for a personal matter, Zlotek violated a Sheriff’s Office policy that says its computers and data terminals are only for “authorized use and official business,” the records show.
But Zlotek didn’t stop there. The next night, the Bisons were to play Lehigh Valley. Zlotek arrived at Sahlen Field around 2 p.m. and waited, while on duty and in uniform, in the players' parking lot, according to the documents, obtained by The Buffalo News through New York's Freedom of Information Law.
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When Zlotek saw the truck park, he pulled up to it and confronted the player, the records say.
The deputy wanted the two to talk "man to man," he later explained at his disciplinary hearing.
Not far from the giant center field scoreboard, Zlotek asked outfielder Anthony J. Alford if anything was going on with him and his girlfriend, the records show.
“No,” the player said, according to his statement to the sheriff’s internal investigators.
“He proceeded to ask me more questions,” Alford continued. Zlotek tried to get him to reveal any text messages or pictures on his cellphone, the player said. He added that Zlotek told him he had taken video of the truck and its plates and admitted running the plates to identify the owner.
“He wanted me to say something that he was picturing in his head,” Alford, who is now with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, said when reached by The News. “I just told him, whatever it is you’re thinking, that’s not what it is.”
For the infractions, Sheriff Timothy B. Howard's team suspended Zlotek for seven days.
After a concert
Alford told The News he met the woman when she asked him, through a mutual friend, to attend a charity event. She later thanked him by providing tickets for him and a friend to the rapper T.I.’s concert at a Chippewa Street nightspot. It cranked up soon after T.I.'s much larger Canalside concert on June 29, 2019. After leaving Chippewa, Alford and some of the woman's friends gathered at her house before calling it a night, he said.
The deputy was not mean or aggressive, Alford continued, but he was determined. The grounds crew told him he had waited at Sahlen Field for at least an hour.
Alford said he told the deputy he didn’t appreciate that he came to his place of work, in uniform and in his work vehicle. He said he saw it as an attempt to intimidate and told The News he feared it could happen again.
Alford reported the matter to Bisons’ management and eventually to Jonathan Dandes, who was the Rich Products director of baseball operations. Dandes is on a first-name basis with Howard, but he told The News he telephoned Mark N. Wipperman, who was then the Erie County undersheriff, Howard’s second in command.
Investigation begins
Soon after the inquiry began, an investigator with the sheriff’s Office of Professional Standards learned that Zlotek’s girlfriend – whose name was redacted in records given to The News – had a criminal record. Convicted of robbery, she had done state prison time, the records say. Associating with felons violated another tenet of the sheriff’s “code of conduct” for deputies.
In internal affairs cases reviewed by The News, the sheriff's top officials give credit to accused employees who admit their wrongdoing. The internal records show Zlotek eventually admitted running the plates on the government computer and questioning the player at the ballpark while on duty and in uniform.
Zlotek further revealed he had used his computer to learn the residence of a female friend of his girlfriend, and he went there, too, on July 1 to look into the backyard for more information about what was going on, according to the records. He said he hadn’t known about his girlfriend’s criminal record until days before the incident with Alford, and he was breaking off the relationship.
A summary of his disciplinary hearing indicates Zlotek defended himself by saying he never threatened the player, never disseminated information about him and never called up other information at his fingertips, such as whether the player had a criminal history.
The deputy apologized at the hearing. A supervisor wrote that he appeared to be emotional because he and the girlfriend had once planned a future together.
In a letter telling Zlotek of the weeklong suspension for misusing the computer, abusing his position and neglecting his duties, Wipperman warned: “Should there be any recurrence of further misconduct, you will be terminated.”
Soon after the suspension, the now former girlfriend obtained an order or protection against Zlotek, according to Sheriff’s Office records. Zlotek had been a deputy in the civil division, which serves and carries out the orders of the civil courts. He was restricted to administrative duties and had to surrender his weapon during the months the order was in effect, records show.
Zlotek did not respond to a Buffalo News telephone message left with his father.
Suspension, or firing?
The Sheriff's Office has laid down more serious penalties. For example, it once suspended a corrections officer for 60 days after a minor fight with a coworker.
Zlotek, the Sheriff's Office found, had abused his position, neglected his duties, misused his computer and, because of the protective order, forced his supervisors to reassign him. Further, Zlotek in 2018 was found to be associating with another felon, according to documents from a separate case. He told his supervisors he did not know that the man, an old acquaintance, had a criminal history. The case was closed without a penalty, but an investigator noted that Zlotek could not be exonerated.
Based on Zlotek's 2019 income, the suspension cost him about $1,700.
Alford called it a slap on the wrist.
Roger Krieger worked as an administrator for five Erie County sheriffs – from B. John Tutuska, who took office in 1959, to Thomas Higgins, who took office in 1986 – and then worked as the police chief in Crystal River, Fla.
“Seven days seems fairly light for dereliction of duty and misuse of the criminal information system,” Krieger said when asked about the case. He said Zlotek might also have violated the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which lets government agencies access license plate information for government purposes, not for "spying on a girlfriend."
But Krieger said he likely would not have fired the deputy. He would have ordered him to work with a field training officer for six months, with a warning that poor reports or new incidents would lead to termination.
“Good cops sometimes do stupid things, especially when it comes to relationships,” Krieger said. “I tend to give the benefit of the doubt but put in place processes to remove the officer if the poor decisions continue.”
There’s another factor to consider: the policy of progressive discipline. Before his retirement in July, Wipperman once told The News that the Sheriff’s Office had lost some arbitration cases when it didn’t follow the practice of imposing increasingly severe penalties for violations over time. Firing an employee, he explained, was heavy discipline for someone with a generally clean employment record.
Howard repeated that concern when asked about Zlotek’s penalty.
“Terminations or lengthy suspensions are often overturned by an arbitrator, resulting in costly reimbursement settlements against the county at taxpayers’ expense,” the sheriff told The News in a written statement. “The deputy was disciplined in accordance with the policy and procedures and the collective bargaining agreement.”
Disciplinary cases revealed
Because of a change in state law, the long-buried disciplinary records of New York’s law enforcement officers are slowly being unearthed. With the recent spotlight placed on wrongdoing by Erie County deputies and jail management personnel, County Legislature Chairwoman April Baskin, D-Buffalo, has asked the Public Safety Committee chairman to invite the sheriff to a session focused on the concerns raised by the cases exposed so far. She cited, among others, reports in The News about jail personnel "engaged in sexual or romantic relationships with female prisoners or former prisoners."
Alford, the former Buffalo Bison, is dialed into matters of social justice. He said that as a Black man, he knows what it’s like to be pulled over by a police officer and given no reason at all for the stop. While with the Toronto Blue Jays, he took a knee as the national anthem played for the 2020 season opener.
Despite those views, Alford doesn’t think Zlotek needed to have been fired for what happened between them. But he thinks a seven-day suspension was too light.
“I understand people make mistakes,” he said. “But I think that’s the kind of job where these things can’t happen.”
