The city's Zoning Commission Tuesday passed a zoning amendment that gives Halas Farm on Route 37 permission to use land across the street from the store, provided owner Michael Halas does not allow retail sales to take place on the property.

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While Halas' original intent was to simply store mulch and farm equipment on the land across the street, Halas did acknowledge in April that some customers would be able to purchase mulch and the newly-acquired property.

That triggered safety concerns from members of the zoning commission, which is why they inserted language saying it could be used for storage and storage only.

Mr. Elpern then suggested they consider adding the phrase “but not sold or picked up by customers” after the words temporarily stored. The language would then read as follows: Products intended for retail sale, as permitted in subsection (8) above, and farm machinery used for the operation of the farm, may be temporarily stored, but not sold or picked up by customers, on a lot zoned RA-40 or RA-80 which lies adjacent to but separated from the lot containing the farm and/or retail sales operation by a public right-of-way, provided the lot is under the same ownership as the owner of the existing farm and/or retail sales operation and is no less than 40,000 square feet in area. All new structures primarily used for housing said products and farm machinery shall meet the general use regulations specified for the zoning district in which they are located; all existing nonconforming structures may be used to house said products and farm machinery. No outdoor storage of said products and machinery may be closer than (1) 40 feet from a front lot line, 15 feet from a side lot line and 5 feet from a rear lot line and (2) 50 feet from the boundary of a lot containing a dwelling(s) in existence on the date of this amendment.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, testifying under oath in a recent deposition for a civil rights lawsuit, agreed that using a traffic violation as a pretext to inquire about someone’s legal status is wrong, even though his police department rounded up a group of immigrants in 2006 on a crime they were never charged with.

That issue goes to the heart of the suit filed by a Yale Law School clinic against Danbury officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, charging that they had racially profiled 11 men in violation of their due process and unreasonable search protections when they were arrested in a sting operation in September 2006.

The suit concerns the events of Sept. 19, 2006 at Kennedy Park, when a Danbury police officer, posing as a contractor, picked up the 11 day laborers and drove them to another parking lot, where immigration officials were waiting. They were processed in Danbury by its police. Subsequently, ICE sent them to immigration facilities around the country, several as far away as Texas.

In their own depositions, Danbury police officers testified that the men were picked up for an alleged traffic violation, such as “illegal use of the highway by a pedestrian,” as they approached stopped vehicles seeking workers, but the men were never charged with any such infraction, according to the booking records.

The only charge was illegal entry into the U.S., which is a federal violation.

Boughton said he did not know about the arrests or any planning leading up to them, and was not aware that the men had been booked by Danbury police until about a year ago, something he became aware of “through this case,” referring to the civil rights suit.

He said that’s when he learned about “courtesy booking and understood that we provide courtesy booking for the FBI, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), as well as ICE or anybody else that asks for it.”

“There is no such thing,” said Hugh Keefe, a well-known criminal defense lawyer, of the term “courtesy booking.” He said he’s heard of FBI officers using a police facility to fill out their own paperwork, but not local police booking federal suspects.

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“Danbury has a lot of real crime. It seems to me they have their hands full already. This is clearly a pretext arrest. When was the last time you heard of a police department arresting someone for being an unsafe pedestrian?” Keefe asked.

In numerous news accounts at the time of the Sept. 19, 2006 arrests, Boughton said the operation was not ordered by the city, but was rather a federal operation that Danbury assisted with, based on information he received at the time from Police Chief Alan Baker.

ICE agent James Brown, according to court documents, rejected that description. “He (Boughton) said the city did not order the operation, that ICE was already on the way. That is not correct, not for this activity that we are talking about on Sept. 19,” Brown testified.

Danbury police Lt. James Fisher, in a separate deposition, testified that Danbury police initiated the action by seeking ICE assistance, which ICE approved after the third or fourth request. ICE agent Richard McCaffrey in his deposition, said Boughton was pressuring the police chief, who pressured the department’s Special Investigations Division “to do something about” the day laborers at Kennedy Park.

• Oct 10 2007 VIDEO: Boughton mislead the public about Danbury's involvement in raid.


• Yale Law Students expose Danbury involvement in raid.