# Ex MA Officer Jailed For Assault



## Portable81 (Jun 17, 2004)

*Ex-officer jailed for assault*

Saturday, December 09, 2006 By MARLA A. GOLDBERG

*[email protected]* 
SPRINGFIELD - A former Agawam police officer will serve a total of six months in jail for aggressive acts last June against another officer whom he dated. 
Barry P. Syniec, 35, was found guilty after a jury-waived trial in Hampden Superior Court on Oct. 4 of assault and battery, threatening, and malicious destruction of property, involving Agawam Police Officer Danielle L. Petrangelo. Last week, Judge Bertha D. Josephson sentenced Syniec to 2½ years at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, but she ordered six months to be served directly, and suspended the balance. 
During Syniec's trial, Petrangelo testified that he drove up to her house uninvited on June 19 at about 8:30 p.m., and threw eggs, golf balls and beer bottles, and then came onto the porch, where he twisted and broke her cell phone, grabbed and threw her, and threatened to kill them both.























Syniec, who has been granted credit for about five months of jail time already served, will serve five years on probation, during which he is barred from working in law enforcement or possessing a firearm, and must undergo substance abuse counseling and treatment, and enroll in a batterer's program. 
Thirty-seven people submitted letters to the court on Syniec's behalf seeking leniency. The group included relatives, neighbors, family friends, former colleagues, and police officers from other towns. 
"I have known him (Syniec) to be a conscientious police officer, and a solid citizen.... It is my belief that he will prosper with the strong support of family and friends," wrote John M. Spellacy, a retired state police trooper. 
Thomas J. Sullivan of East Longmeadow, a former principal of the Green Meadow School in Hampden, wrote that he knows Syniec as a friend of his daughters. 
"Knowing Barry, this behavior was very much out of character and I know that he is remorseful and ashamed," Sullivan wrote. 
A neighbor, Dorothy Wright, stated that Syniec has been "a kind, caring, courteous, well-behaved young man.... Please give him the opportunity to return to his home and his dog and let him prove to society the person he really is." 
At the trial, Petrangelo testified that she dated Syniec intermittently for 2½ years ending last March or April, but he became angry after finding out in June that she was seeing someone else. 
Josephson acquitted Syniec of witness intimidation and criminal harassment.


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