Exposing the past: NY officers took ‘demeaning’ prisoner photo 20 years ago. Was discipline enough?

Jail mugshots are a routine part of incarceration, a custody record. Officers posing with a prisoner exposed for a “demeaning” photograph are not.

Three Baldwinsville, New York, police officers about 20 years ago abused an incarcerated person, previously hidden disciplinary records obtained by Central Current and USA TODAY Network-New York revealed. 

Officer James Cerankowski took a digital photograph as Officers Thomas Czyz and Jered Zeppetello “exposed” and posed with the prisoner in a way that was “demeaning” to the prisoner, disciplinary records show. Cerankowski and Czyz have since left the department; Zeppetello remains.

Policing expert and former New York Police Department officer Michael Alcazar condemned the reported photo, calling it “unacceptable behavior.” Alcazar, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, reviewed the case for Central Current.

“They’re already incarcerated,” Alcazar said. “There’s no need to further embarrass them. It’s a lack of professionalism on the police officers’ part. It’s unacceptable to take images of a prisoner because it’s also a right of privacy. It’s a violation of civil rights … it’s just unacceptable behavior.”

The disciplinary records have just recently become public after the 2020 repeal of New York Civil Service Law Section 50a that shielded New York officers’ police discipline from public view.

This story is part of Good Cop Bad Cop, an investigative project from the USA TODAY Network-New York, Central Current and Syracuse University. More than 30 reporting students from the Newhouse School dug into decades of New York police misconduct records to uncover policy and safety missteps among officers from Buffalo to Westchester County and to explain why these infractions matter to the public.

These records can be viewed and searched in a USA Today Network database. If you have questions about misconduct records related to your hometown police force, submit your questions to us via this online form. 

‘Great potential to bring discredit’

When reviewing the Baldwinsville case, Alcazar’s first thought was Abu Ghraib, he said. 

U.S. soldiers documented the abuse they carried out in Iraq — taking disturbing photos of detainees as soldiers posed with them. CBS aired photos of the abuse in April 2004, provoking a global condemnation of the U.S. military’s conduct and its human rights violations.

A year after the Abu Ghraib photos aired, the Baldwinsville incident happened, according to reports. Small digital cameras were more available than in a prior generation of policing and prison operation, and sharing images with people you knew was a major trend just starting in American life..

It’s not clear if any outside incidents like the abuse documentation in Iraq influenced what happened in the New York case. Were police abuses like the one outlined in our police discipline records happening frequently? Was the incident in Baldwinsville part of a trend?

Alcazar believes incidents like the Baldwinsville case are rare. He said he never saw a similar incident in his 30 years with the NYPD. Of course, he hadn’t heard about this 2005 incident until now, because police discipline records were kept from the public and this is the first time period where journalists in New York have been able to bring this kind of accountability information to readers.

Baldwinsville Police Department officials at the time acknowledged the image’s capacity to bring shame to the agency. “This photograph gave the appearance of being demeaning to the prisoner and had great potential to bring discredit to the Baldwinsville Police Department if it became public,” Cerankowski’s written reprimand reads.

When reporters asked current Baldwinsville Police Chief Michael Lefancheck to release the 2005 photo, Lefancheck replied by saying he’d provided all documentation of the incident. He did not clarify whether the department still has the photo or what it depicts.

He has not released any photo.

‘A paid vacation’

Despite being reprimanded for taking the demeaning photo, the three officers’ consequences varied.

Cerankowski’s only punishment was a written reprimand. Czyz received a paid 10-day suspension, while Zeppetello was suspended for five days. Records did not show whether Zeppetello’s suspension was paid. Czyz and Zeppetello were also sentenced to “remedial training.”

In context of the incident, the three officers received little punishment, Alcazar said.

“That’s a paid vacation — basically a paid vacation — so that’s not even a heavy hit,” Alcazar said of Czyz’s suspension. “He’s not even gonna feel that, because he’s still getting paid.”

The three officers went on to build long, successful careers.

Zeppetello remains at the Baldwinsville Police Department. Cerankowski retired in 2022.

After the abuse, Zeppetello and Cerankowski earned ever-increasing salaries. According to SeeThroughNY, a database maintained by the Empire Center for Public Policy, Cerankowski made more than $100,000 in his final year with the department — his pension now costs taxpayers just over $50,000 annually. In 2024, Zeppetello also made more than $100,000, the database shows.

Czyz eventually left the Baldwinsville Police Department for the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, where he worked through 2019. Taxpayers now contribute just over $30,000 annually to fund Czyz’s pension.

Czyz used his law enforcement career to lend credibility to his company Armoured One, a prominent U.S.-based security and safety company.

Photo by Mike Greenlar/Central Current

Offices of Armoured One, a prominent U.S.-based security and safety company that was founded by former Baldwinsville police officer Thomas Czyz.

The company touts itself as protecting schools from shootings and provides safety gear like bulletproof vests to law enforcement agencies. Zeppetello is also a tactical consultant at Armoured One, training school faculty on how to handle school shootings, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The three men, now veterans in their field, ultimately avoided severe punishment for the conduct that was deemed “unbecoming” in 2005.

Cerankowski declined to comment on the incident and directed questions to Chief Lefancheck.

“You guys aren’t fair to us at all, so don’t even bother. I got nothing to say,” Cerankowski said.

“We know how it works. You know, no matter what I say or all the good I did in my 20-plus career means nothing because that’s soft. Hence the reason why you’re publishing this.”

Cerankowski did not respond to inquiries regarding the broader context of his career.

Lefancheck denied a request by Central Current to talk to Zeppetello. Attempts to reach Czyz have been unsuccessful.

The internal investigation

Current Balwinsville Police Chief Lefancheck investigated the 2005 incident, then a lieutenant. 

“I think right there we had a breakdown. We had a breakdown in our standards and our expectations,” he told Central Current. “Something like that is certainly not tolerable. It’s not condonable. And it’s not behavior that we would teach. It’s not behavior that we would expect, and it’s not a manner in which we would want individuals that are in our care to be treated.”

Lefancheck, who began with the department in 1972, said he believes now that the three officers could have received a “harsher sentence.” But responsibility for the punishment ultimately was up to former Chief Daniel Warner, Lefancheck said. 

“I will say there were times where I might not have agreed with (Warner’s) rulings,” Lefancheck said. 

Central Current and USA TODAY Network-New York tried to reach Warner for comment but have been unsuccessful so far.

Photo by Mike Greenlar/Central Current

An entrance to the Baldwinsville Police Department.

The Baldwinsville department does not have any set standard disciplinary responses to officers’ offenses, Lefancheck said. The police chief couldn’t recall the discipline the officers received in 2005 or what was included in their remedial training. 

Lefancheck does not support the department enacting a standard policy for misconduct discipline, a typical practice in police departments. Moving forward, he said, Lefancheck remains unsupportive of Baldwinsville enacting such policies. “I wouldn’t buttonhole ourselves into saying, ‘this is the way we’re doing it,’” he said. 

Small agencies like Baldwinsville likely don’t have “as robust of checks and balances” as large forces such as NYPD or LAPD have, Alcazar said. There are several internal affairs units within the NYPD, including inspections and use of force units, he said.

Police departments like Baldwinsville don’t always have the funding to build out internal affairs units, Alcazar said. “If you don’t have a separate unit to do that, and you’re just relying on the immediate supervisors to do that, it’s probably not going to happen, or it’s not going to be done well,” he said. 

Ultimately, Alcazar pointed at the “subculture” of a department as being key to preventing similar incidents. He posited that the culture of the department could prompt officers to take pictures of a prisoner.

Incidents like the one in Baldwinsville present the opportunity to determine if abusive behavior is prevalent, Alcazar said. “If it’s not nipped in the bud, if they don’t address it, it usually festers into something worse,” Alcazar said. 

‘There was more investigation than this.’

The documents Central Current obtained from the Baldwinsville Police Department provide little information about the incident. 

They don’t reveal the name of the person arrested, what the person was arrested for or where the incident took place. 

The little information that appears in the document was edited by hand. The documents originally stated the officers “posed a prisoner” — but was later edited to “exposed a prisoner.” The photo was originally described as “demeaning,” while the hand-marked edits suggest it was a “photo that COULD be considered demeaning.”

It’s not clear who made the handwritten notes on the document. 

Lefancheck sat for a 40 minute-long interview with reporters about the incident. He said he’d consider whether reporters could talk to the lone officer involved in the incident who still works for the department, Zeppetello.

As Lefancheck pored over the documents reporters obtained, the police chief said he remembers “there was more investigation than this.” 

After the interview, he sent reporters limited unredacted documents that did not expand on the incident. “I have no further information to offer,” Lefancheck said.

About this project

This story is part of a series investigating police disciplinary records across New York State. USA TODAY Network-New York, Central Current and students from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications have teamed up to reveal records that remained hidden through 2020, when New York politicians repealed laws hiding police officers’ disciplinary records. USA TODAY Network-New York obtained the records through the Freedom of Information Law.