“It’s becoming a disturbingly familiar scene in America - mentally unstable cops”

Man Arrested, Charged With Assault For Pointing Finger At Cops

Disrespecting a police officer is now a crime

A Fredericksburg man faces two counts of assault for allegedly pointing his finger at police officers, another example of how any behavior except complete subservience to law enforcement is now being treated as a crime.

David Loveless, who has no criminal record, was arrested and handcuffed last week after he allegedly made a hand gesture at police who had testified against his son in a robbery case.

He now faces two counts of assault on a law enforcement officer by way of intimidation and two counts of obstruction of justice.

Police spokesperson Natatia Bledsoe claimed Loveless made a gun gesture at police officers, but Loveless denies making any kind of gesture at all.

“I don’t see how I was pointing my finger,” Loveless told ABC7. ” If anything I was reaching into my pocket to get a pack of cigarettes. If that’s what they saw, they have a vivid imagination.”

As we have previously highlighted, almost weekly there is a new case of someone being arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer merely for speaking out, making a gesture, or attempting to protect themselves.

Indeed, in some cases a person who is brutally beaten by cops is subsequently charged with assaulting a police officer.

Last year we reported on a case in which Dayton police tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat a mentally handicapped teen and then charged him with assault because the officers took the boy’s speech impediment as “a sign of disrespect”.

17-year-old Jesse Kersey was charged with “assault on a peace officer, resisting arrest, and obstructing official business,” after he became confused when police started asking him questions. Kersey was tased and punched as cops threatened to arrest neighbors who tried to tell them the boy was mentally handicapped.

Not showing complete fealty to cops is now treated as “disrespect” and punishable by a beat down. Having your head smashed in by cops also now qualifies as you assaulting them.

Similar to how cops think filming them is against the law, many are also under the assumption that not groveling and obeying their every order is also an arrestable offense.

Last month, a city council had to pay a Nevada man $158,500 dollars after police beat him up for “resisting arrest” when in reality he was having a seizure as a result of a diabetic shock.

The Fairfax County Police Officer Jeffrey Hand Award for Creative Income Production. Fairfax County Police. Police Brutality

East Moline police officer arrested

Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.

East Moline Police arrested one of their own officers Monday on misconduct charges, Chief Victor Moreno said.

Officer Joseph DeCap, 46, was taken into custody and charged with five felony counts of official misconduct and one felony count of financial exploitation of the elderly or disabled, Moreno said.

The official misconduct charges stem from an investigation that began in September when the East Moline Police Department was notified that DeCap was possibly involved in a suspicious transaction of a sale of a vehicle, Moreno said.

The case was immediately turned over to Illinois State Police to investigate.

The one count of financial exploitation of the elderly or disabled stemmed from an unrelated investigation conducted by the Rock Island Police Department, Moreno said.

DeCap was taken to the Rock Island County Jail. His bond has been set at $45,000 for all charges.

DeCap was hired by the East Moline Police Department in 1989.

He has been on paid administrative leave since Jan. 18, Moreno said.

In addition, DeCap also could face administrative charges for violations of police department policy, Moreno said

Moreno said the arrest of DeCap is “very disappointing.”

Police officers are expected to “hold themselves to the highest moral standards in their professional and personal lives,” he said.

This Week’s Capt. Denise Hopson Screw it, it’s the public s money and not mine Award

 Bethel Park Man Sues Peters Township, Police Officer

Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.

Bethel Park man this week has filed federal suit against Peters Township and one of its police officers, alleging police misconduct.

According to federal court records, Steven Stiegel, who filed the suit Tuesday, said he was fox hunting with a friend, Nolan Majcher, on Jan. 30 on a piece of private property in North Strabane.

“The road where they parked is a dead end, several hundred yards away from any houses. Nolan Majcher was situated about 30 yards from his truck, scanning the woods, wearing hunting camouflage with his gun clearly visible,” court documents show.

Then, at about 11 p.m., they observed headlights coming down the road.

“The car was driven by Peters Township police Officer Matthew Russell Collins. Officer Collins did not identify himself as a police officer, but Nolan Majcher suspected that he might be associated with law enforcement because of his use of a spotlight.”

Majcher walked toward the car, his arms reportedly extended, “with his gun held in a vertical non-threatening position.”

That’s when a confrontation between the two men occurred, according to the records.

“Officer Collins then aggressively yelled, ‘Drop the weapon!’ and still did not identify himself as a police officer,” court records show.

The suit said Majcher complied with the officer’s request immediately, when the Collins again spoke up.

“’What the (expletive deleted) are you doing?’” court documents indicate the officer said.

That’s when—weaponless—Majcher reportedly held “both hands at shoulder height in order to signal his prone position.“

The man reportedly walked toward the car and office Collins so he “would no longer have to shout.”

That’s when court records show Collins again responded.

“Officer Collins yelled, again very aggressively, ‘Stay where you are or I’ll shoot you!’” the suit alleges.

That’s when Majcher explained that he and Stiegel were hunting, and that his friend was in the woods to the right of the officer.

“Officer Collins responded belligerently and inappropriately” as Majcher made his way to the officer’s vehicle, according to court records—with Collins training his gun on the man.

Stiegel walked out of the woods a little later, dropping his rifle.

But according to the suit, Collins “aggressively questioned and retained them, acted arrogantly and obnoxiously, and then left without issuing any sort of citation—because no laws were broken,” the suit indicates.

While the suit maintains that Steigel and Majcher were acting in accordance to the law, it claims Collins “was outside of the rubrics of the law. He illegally wielded a weapon against citizens and only their superior common sense prevented a catastrophe.”

The suit also alleges that Collins was in North Strabane at the time, which was out of his jurisdiction.

Stiegel said the incident caused him “physical manifestations and injury—and he had made a complaint to the Peters Township Police Department.

In a letter dated Feb. 29, Peters police Chief Harry Fruecht wrote to Stiegel:

"The investigation established that the conduct of the concerned employee was not contrary to department policy but disclosed training issues that will be addressed department wide.

"Please be assured that we desire to provide the best possible police service and are appreciative when given the opportunity to clarify such matters.

"Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. If you desire further information in regard to the investigation or disposition, please contact my office."

Metro transit police: Not quite the region’s finest

Metro transit police: Not quite the region’s finest

In unique jurisdiction, outcomes of enforcement sometimes fall short

It was just after midnight, and Isaiah N. Nichols was prowling Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast Washington looking for sex. Twenty dollars, answered a woman who was “trying to make some money.”

“That’s what’s up. I’ll meet you over there,” Mr. Nichols said.

The woman turned out to be an undercover police officer conducting a sting, and Mr. Nichols was arrested. He agreed to enroll in a “john school” class and was ordered to stay away from the Northeast strip.

But Mr. Nichols, too, was a police officer, and is still on the beat for the Metro Transit Police Department (MTPD).

While police in Maryland, Virginia and the District work to keep the region safe, also among the mix is the Metro transit system’s lesser-known 600-member force, which uniquely has law enforcement authority across all three jurisdictions. But records suggest that the agency has conducted little enforcement of the transit system’s everyday rules and that the department also counts among its ranks people who have been arrested for violent and predatory crimes.

Officer Sivi Jones, for example, has a long history of arrests in connection with violent crimes, including felony threatening to injure a person, domestic assault and simple assault, according to court records and colleagues. She was largely able to escape convictions, including a “no papered” judgment, where prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges if the defendant stayed out of trouble.

But it was not out of respect for the justice system she is tasked with upholding: Court records note that the Southeast resident also failed to appear for a court date on assault charges filed against her.

Metro’s officers carry guns and are tasked with enforcing all laws on Metro property, including its 86 rail stations and thousands of bus stops. It also enforces quality-of-life rules of the transit agency, such as a ban on eating and drinking.

“These guys are not the cream of the cop in law enforcement. They are less educated and don’t know how to assess a situation in a logical manner,” said James Bitner, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor who has represented clients who he said have been beaten and wrongly charged by Metro police. “You’re not getting a straight-A student. You’re getting a C and D student.”

In some cases, that has led to corruption.

Light penalties

Officer John V. Haile pleaded guilty to theft from a federally funded agency this month after stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Metro. The transit police officer was supposed to ensure compliance with the law as another Metro employee recovered revenue from fare machines, but instead, Haile, with the other employee, hid $500 bags of coins in bushes and bought lottery tickets with the money. Metro said it did not know exactly how much money went missing.

Mr. Nichols and Ms. Jones are just two of a number of MTPD officers who court records suggest have been arrested in connection with drug, theft and violent crimes, a comparison by The Washington Times of the MTPD roster and D.C. and Maryland criminal filings found. Metro would not confirm or deny any of the cases. Some, including Ms. Jones, talked openly about their rap sheets on the job, according to colleagues.

In most cases, the officers avoided formal convictions by securing entry into programs by which convictions are averted by performing community service, seeking treatment or avoiding more trouble. In other cases, they took steps to seal their records after the fact.

This sometimes allowed them run-in after run-in with the law without a mark that would mandate their exclusion from the force. When Mr. Nichols was arrested on charges of trespassing for returning to a Greenbelt Safeway from which he had been banned because of a prior incident, for example, prosecutors agreed to spare the expense of a trial and conviction if he performed 24 hours of community service. His participation in john school after the prostitution arrest garnered a similar result.

Arrest histories were most common in the MTPD’s Special Police unit, 150 commissioned officers who guard Metro facilities such as headquarters and bus depots. Mr. Nichols and Ms. Jones are both members of that unit. It was special police officers who, when a teenager who did not work for Metro drove a bus out of the Bladensburg Road station in 2010, allowed him through two identification checkpoints. He later crashed the bus into a tree and fled.

Another officer recently fired his service weapon accidentally inside Metro’s headquarters downtown, officers said.

Still, in some cases, little accountability from management was evident, according to records. Mr. Nichols received a three-day suspension for the prostitution incident, according to MTPD records.

A report by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Office of Inspector General initiated after on-the-job drug use by department employees last year, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, also said that the special police section’s supervisor, Capt. Anthony Metcaffe, did not act on information about officers sleeping on the job.

“He said that he did not recall receiving or did not receive” the complaints, the report said, but an examination by the information technology department “reflected that he received all these emails.”

Little enforcement

Some information about the department is impossible to know because the agency has failed to turn over materials under public-records requests. It recently invested in MetroStat, a crime-tracking tool that provides sophisticated analysis. But when a reporter filed a formal request for such analysis, Metro claimed the closest thing in existence was a video of MTPD Chief Michael A. Taborn announcing the tool’s arrival.

Records that Metro separately released to The Times show that in 2010, the transit police confronted a total of 50 riders about consuming food or beverages in the transit system, nine of whom were ticketed and one of whom was arrested. Forty were warned. Officials said protocol calls for warnings before ticketing.

At about 215 million trips per year, that is one contact every 4 million riders.

Eight were confronted for playing loud music, according to data recently produced by Metro in response to an open-records request filed last year.

Officers said that informal warnings for infractions are recorded as the issuance of “calling cards.” Records show 250 of those given to people on foot each year.

The force’s primary activity was making an average of 5,200 stops yearly for fare evasion, 10 percent of whose targets were arrested, 11 percent of whom were warned, and 35 percent of which had an unclear outcome, including some evaders who got away. The rest were ticketed. It also gave 1,800 tickets for alcohol violations.

In terms of serious crimes between 2008 and 2010, the transit police force reported four rapes, three of which remain unsolved. Also reported were two homicides, neither of which resulted in an arrest.

That works out to about 11 tickets and three arrests per officer yearly.

Metro police say one of their major functions is as a deterrent.

The rarity with which officers encounter serious altercations, though, has sometimes led to apparent overreactions. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is pursuing two cases against the transit police involving excessive or unnecessary use of force, one after officers knocked a wheelchair-bound man out of his chair on U Street Northwest and arrested the man’s friend who questioned their actions. Prosecutors dropped charges against the friend, Lawrence Miller, whom the ACLU is now representing in a civil case.

Metro police charged the wheelchair-bound man with assault on an officer, but those charges were also dropped.

The MTPD is set to have its numbers swell as 1,000 more positions are added within the transit agency, some going to the police.

The minimal basic enforcement has not stopped the transit police from engaging in high-profile displays of force and security, in part a result of $3 million per year in counterterrorism funds it receives as a reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The measures include periodic checkpoints, where police post at an entrance to a Metro station and check random customers’ bags for explosives.

“The ACLU believes it’s costly and ineffective and that we’d prevail in a court challenge,” said senior staff attorney Fritz Mulhuaser.

Civil liberties questions aside, critics say, the checks do not prohibit a would-be terrorist from simply using another entrance to the station

Fairfax County Police Officer Larry A. Jackson award for false arrest. Fairfax County Police. Police brutality

Father of young man cleared in armed robbery wants police to apologize

Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.

Julien Rosaly’s father does not accept that Baltimore police did the best investigation they could with the information they had. He wants them to apologize for arresting his son and friend and charging him with robbing a couple at gunpoint in South Baltimore.

But police and prosecutors will mostly likely not say they’re sorry, despite dropping all charges against the two men on Friday after reviewing a videotape that shows Rosaly eating in a restaurant at the time of the attack.

A police spokesman has defended the arrests as done with legal probable cause. The spokesman for the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office called the arrests “appropriate given the information police had at the time.”

Justice System Lawyers Prosecution Guilford (Baltimore, Maryland) But Rosaly and his friend, Nicholes Maultsby, and now Rosaly’s father, says police arrested them too fast, before they searched the men’s rowhouse and found nothing — no gun, no rings worth $22,300, no wallet, no cell phones, and before they checked Rosaly’s alibi.

“I’m a little upset about what when down,” the father, Anthony Rosaly, told me on Monday when he called from Brooklyn, N.Y. “It’s hard for us to deal with it. The ruined my son’s life and his friend’s. He called me from jail, ‘Daddy, you have got to get me out of here. It’s wasn’t me. I told them where I was. They didn’t check.’”

Said the elder Rosaly: “If we didn’t have a videotape, my son would still be locked up.”

Read complete story of charges being dropped and of problems with witness identifications.

Police target street robberies in weekend initiative.

Victim describes South Baltimore attack.

Police responded quickly to the armed robbery call about 1 a.m. on Saturday, March 24, at Covington and Clement streets in South Baltimore. A couple, both ex-Ravens cheerleaders, had been held up at gunpoint, forced to the pavement and robbed of jewelry, money and phones.

The victims described their attackers and said they rode away on bicycles. A police officer hearing the call go out over the radio said he had seen two young men on bikes in the area earler on his shift. He quickly stopped three men on Leadenhall Street, two neighborhoods away.

Officers took the victims to the Leadenall and shined a spotlight on each one. From the back seat of a police car, Lauren Spates, 27, identified Rosaly as the man holding the gun. She later identified Maultsby from a photo lineup back at the station.

In an interview, Spates said she would never forget the face of the man who ordered her to take off her rings, and that she carefully studied the faces of both assailants, knowing it would be her identification that would put them away.

Police did not check on Rosaly’s alibi – that he was Maria D’s pizza restaurant at the time of the robbery, until after both men had been charged and ordered held without bail. And that was after Rosaly’s aunt got the tape and pressed officials to watch it. The manager of the restaurant also vouched for Rrosaly, a regular customer.

And police charged the two men before searching their house on Leadenhall Street, finding no evidence of the robbery. Police said repeatedly in the days after that the courts can sort out conflicting claims of identification.

But to the men who were charged, the investigations falls far short of complete. The charges were based on a single victim’s identification, with no evidence to support it and an unchecked alibi that later turned to be proved true. By that time, the men’s mug shots had flashed across the nightly news and in the newspapers.

And a community in South Baltimore breathed easier that police had quickly solved a vicious attack. Now, police are starting over again and two robbers are on the loose.

The previous state’s attorney, Patricia C. Jessamy, often clashed with police and her office wrote a memo asking the cops to do better jobs investigating armed street robberies. She was criticized for giving a man a plea deal in a Guilford robbery in which a resident was attacked on the front steps of her home.

Jessamy did not want to go to trial based on the woman’s identification of the suspect from a photo array,and she worried that the police detective had inadvertently tainted the array by including a photo of a man he knew from a previous crime. The suspect served a year in jail and was then charged with attacking more people in the Guilford neighborhood.

But the recent case in South Baltimore shows what can happen with police act too fast.

The Fairfax County Police officer Walter R. Fasci/ Sean McGlone award for sober living. Fairfax County Police. Police brutality

Off-Duty Cop Arrested For DWI After Driving Wrong Way Down 2nd Ave.

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 An off-duty cop was charged with drunk driving after getting into an accident on the Upper East Side last night. Police say that Officer Raymond Dimaria, 35, drove the wrong way down Second Avenue and smashed into a Nissan Maxima on East 63rd Street around 1:20 a.m.

The 40-year-old driver of the other car was taken to Bellevue Hospital and treated for minor injuries. Dimaria, who joined the NYPD in 2005, was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated. He was also suspended from duty from the 66th Precinct in Brooklyn after his arrest.

Dimara joins an illustrious group of on-duty and off-duty cops who have been arrested for drinking, including Officer Rafael Casiano, Officer Christopher Morris, Officer Edilio Mejia, Sergeant Diego Vivar, and Officer Anthony Rodriguez.

This week’s candidates for the Brian Sonnenberg Peaceful Resolution to Conflict Center Award. Fairfax County Police. police brutality

Savannah cop fired after arrest

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- A Savannah-Chatham police sergeant has been fired following his Tuesday arrest.

Allan Clairmont, 44, is facing charges of false imprisonment, simple assault and simple battery in a Port Wentworth domestic dispute. He remains free on bond.

Savannah-Chatham police spokesman Julian Miller said Clairmont was fired Thursday for “conduct unbecoming of an officer.”

Clairmont was a Southside Precinct patrol sergeant. He’d been a violent crimes investigator for several years before being promoted to a sergeant’s rank in February.

In a police report filed early Tuesday morning, Clairmont’s wife told Port Wentworth officers Clairmont forcibly took her from a Jalapenos restaurant Monday night, flashing his badge and taking her by the arm when he led her from the table where she was dining with friends. The woman told police Clairmont said he had a gun, but she didn’t see it.

According to a police report, Clairmont made the woman drive to his mother’s house. She told police she tried several times to leave, but Clairmont pushed her to the floor, then hit her in the face and the side several times when she tried to go.

The woman said Clairmont wanted her to call her divorce lawyer and have him drop claims against him. She said Clairmont told her if she didn’t drop the claims, he’d lose everything and might as well kill her.

The woman told police she eventually convinced Clairmont to let her leave. She called 911 at 2:14 a.m. and had officers meet her at her home on Lake Shore Boulevard, the same address Clairmont listed when he was booked at the Chatham County jail Tuesday morning.

The woman refused medical treatment.

A member of the department since 2003, Clairmont was put on administrative leave with pay when he was arrested Tuesday morning and fired two days later.

In a little more than a year, Port Wentworth police have been called three times in domestic disputes involving Clairmont and two different women described as his wife.

Officers were called to Lake Shore Boulevard in February 2011 by a 12-year-old girl who said Clairmont had been arguing with her mother and had a gun. The girl told police her mother ran to her car as she was dialing 911 and wrecked the 2008 Suzuki SX4 as she was leaving, running into the garage and kitchen of the house.

Officers telephoned the woman, and she returned home. She told police she’d accidentally put her car in reverse. She said she didn’t know anything about Clairmont having a gun. Clairmont told police the 12-year-old had seen him with his gun when he came home from work. He admitted to arguing with the girl’s mother, but said he didn’t have a weapon at the time.

The woman used the last name Clairmont in the Monday night incident but used a different last name in February 2011. She told police last year she and Clairmont had been dating for six years but weren’t married.

On Nov. 9, another Mrs. Clairmont called police after an altercation with the Savannah-Chatham sergeant.

According to court documents, this woman filed divorce papers in January 2011, but the divorce has not been finalized yet.

In the November incident, the woman called police to Fox Glen Court and said she’d gotten into an argument with Clairmont, whom she said was her husband, over child support. According to a police report, the woman told police Clairmont got angry and told her to leave. She told him she needed the car seat for their baby, who was just shy of

2 years old at the time. She said Clairmont got the car seat and threw it at her car, threw her keys and threatened to hit her.

The woman told police she and Clairmont had been married for three years but that she’d filed for divorce because Clairmont had moved in with his girlfriend on Lake Shore Boulevard.

Clairmont was not arrested in either of the 2011 incidents, but Savannah-Chatham police were notified that one of their officers had been involved in a domestic dispute, according to Port Wentworth police records.

The officer Christian Chamberlain Award for “Fuck you, I’ll get away with it anyway” Fairfax County police . Police brutality

Federal Police Brutality Probe Leads To Wall In Shopping Mall

Meriden, CT, USA

The federal investigation into police brutality allegations against the son of the Meriden police chief has led authorities to a wall in a security office in the Westfield Meriden Square Mall.

Sources told The Courant this part of the investigation stems from a July 2010 case in which officer Evan Cossette arrested of 17-year-old Milan McGarrah on shoplifting charges.

McGarrah was caught by security officers at the Sears department store in the mall stealing three pairs of bluejeans, according to a police report.

Cossette was the first officer to respond to the security office, where McGarrah was being held. In an interview with The Courant this week, McGarrah said that Cossette entered the office and handcuffed him.

McGarrah admitted that he started giving Cossette some verbal abuse at which point, McGarrah said, Cossette slammed him against the wall.

"He threw me against the wall while I was handcuffed and I hit my head,'' McGarrah said. "I was saying stuff to him but nothing that merited getting my head slammed into the wall."

McGarrah said that he had no visible injuries from hitting the wall, although he was dazed. He was eventually charged with shoplifting.

The small security office at Sears contains a desk and three chairs wedged against the wall opposite the desk. On Wednesday, the head of security declined to comment on the case or on whether investigators had taken anything from the office.

The brown office wall did contain a noticeable white square - about three feet by three feet- that had been replastered but not repainted. When asked about the hole in the wall, the security director said he couldn't comment. Sources said investigators removed a piece of the wall.

The police report of McGarrah's arrest, filed by officer Donald Huston, who is listed as the arresting officer paints a different story. The report states that McGarrah was uncooperative, wouldn't sit down and constantly yelled that he would kick "both officer's ass" if they took the handcuffs off.

The police report said that McGarrah fought all the way into the police cruiser and until he was booked at the station.

Ironically Huston is one of the officers who wrote a letter to City Manager Lawrence Kendzoir months later complaining about disparate treatment within the police department and how Evan Cossette wasn't disciplined like other officers because his father, Jeffry Cossette, is the police chief.

Federal and state authorities convened a grand jury in April to investigate brutality allegations against Evan Cossette after that letter was filed and the videotape of an incident between Cossette and arrestee was released.

The grand jury investigation originally focused on a May 2010 video of Evan Cossette pushing a handcuffed inmate backward into a jail cell. The inmate, Pedro Temich, hit his head on a cement bench and passed out on the floor bleeding.

Evan Cossette is shown on the tape walking into the cell several times and moving Temich around before taking his handcuffs off just before ambulance personnel arrived. Evan Cossette was given a letter of reprimand in that case.

Two more brutality claims were later made against him. One case involved Robert Methvin, who Evan Cossette acknowledged kneeing in the face in October 2010 after police had been called to Methvin's home because of a loud argument.

Methvin filed a brutality complaint with internal affairs but Sgt. Leonard Caponigro found the allegations baseless after a six-minute interview with Evan Cossette in which he told the chief's son not to worry because he was "just going through the motions." Caponigro has since retired.

In the third case, Evan Cossette used a Taser to subdue Joseph G. Bryans in the parking lot of the Midstate Medical Center in January after Bryan had walked out of the emergency room angry that he wasn't being treated quickly.

At least two of those men, Bryan and Methvin, have appeared before the grand jury investigation into the police department. McGarrah said he didn't file an internal affairs complaint against Cossette because he just wanted the case to go away.

McGarrah said that he has not gone before the grand jury, but that he was interviewed a few months ago by FBI agents. McGarrah said he received community service.

 

Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.

Fairfax County Police Sgt. Weiss Rasool award for Terrorism Against the People…yeah, the Fairfax cops actually hired a terrorist

Court says Vermilion police brutality lawsuit can go forward

Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.

ELYRIA — An appeals court has upheld a county judge’s decision to allow a jury to decide a lawsuit accusing two Vermilion police officers of brutality.

The lawsuit centers on the Feb. 19, 2005, arrest of Jill Garvey on a charge of wrongful entrustment after she and her husband, Richard Garvey, were stopped by then-Vermilion police Officer Larry Miller, who knew Richard Garvey’s driver’s license was suspended.

The couple had been in a bar drinking and Miller smelled alcohol on Richard Garvey’s breath during the stop. Both Garveys were asked to step out of the vehicle, according to court documents.

Police said both of the Garveys were intoxicated.

Officer Craig Howell arrived after the initial stop and placed Jill Garvey in the back of his police cruiser. He reported that when she was told her vehicle would be towed from the scene, she became “agitated” and “defiant” and refused to sign the wrongful entrustment citation so she could be released.

Police then decided to arrest her and asked her to get out of the car so she could be handcuffed. Jill Garvey, who eventually pleaded the case down to disorderly conduct, refused, and Officer Richard Grassnig removed her from the vehicle, forcing her to the ground where she landed on her chest and face and was handcuffed, according to the decision from the 9th District Court of Appeals.

The impact broke the bone around her eye, fractured one of her sinuses, and caused bruising and other injuries, the appeals court wrote.

Both Howell and Grassnig have denied they used excessive force, and according to court documents, argued “they were reasonable in their actions to extract Garvey from the cruiser because she was resisting arrest.”

They contend that Garvey lunged forward as she was being taken out, something Garvey and her expert witnesses argue didn’t happen.

The officers and the city of Vermilion had argued that the case should be thrown out because Garvey’s version of events wasn’t backed up by the facts as the officers saw them, and even if the officers had been wrong they were immune from civil liability.

But the appeals court ruled that there were disputes over what happened and, since the facts were in dispute, it was enough for Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Edward Zaleski to allow the case to go to a jury.

“The facts could demonstrate that the acts were done with a malicious purpose, particularly if Officer Grassnig is found to have pulled Garvey out of the cruiser by the hair, slammed her face into the pavement and told her, ‘Now you’re going to listen to us,’” the appeals court wrote.

The appeals court also ruled that Howell’s role in Garvey’s injuries, specifically whether he assisted Grassnig in removing her from the back of the patrol car, remains in dispute.

Former Vermilion Police Chief Robert Kish previously has said the officers involved in Garvey’s arrest were cleared of wrongdoing following an internal review.

But Garvey’s lawsuit also contends that a proper investigation wasn’t done or even documented and that Grassnig had a history of using excessive force.

Garvey’s attorney contends that Grassnig had a use of force rate per number of arrests of 13.24 percent between 2004 and 2006, well above the average of the Vermilion Police Department’s average of 2.21 percent.

Grassnig also received an unsatisfactory performance evaluation in 2004 in which his superiors noted that he needed “to tone down aggression.”

The appeals court did toss out part of Garvey’s lawsuit, saying that she couldn’t sue the city over intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Mark Petroff, Garvey’s attorney, said the case will now move to trial, unless Vermilion’s attorneys appeal to the state Supreme Court.

“Our opinion is that based on the criteria the city generally uses for apprehending individuals, excessive force was used,” Petroff said Tuesday.

A call to attorneys representing Vermilion wasn’t returned Tuesday.

The Fairfax County Police Officer Jeffrey Hand Award for Creative Income Production. Fairfax County Police. Police Brutality

Atlantic City police officer calls misconduct charge retaliation

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ATLANTIC CITY — A veteran police officer says he was charged criminally because he would not help set up a case against several prominent officials, including the mayor and police chief.

Officer Michael Jones, who has worked for the Atlantic City Police Department since 2001, is charged with official misconduct and theft for allegedly violating the rules of the Live-In Police Officers Program by taking a more than 80 percent discount on rent for an apartment in Stanley Holmes Village and then subletting it for a profit.

But Jones, 39, insisted Wednesday that he did live in the apartment on Caspian Place from April 2005 until he was asked to leave last May.

Instead, he claims that Detective Jason Kangas, of the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Official Corruption Unit, told him “that if I cooperated with him and helped him build cases against several individuals ... he would make the charges against me go away.”

Mayor Lorenzo Langford, police Chief Ernest Jubilee, Atlantic City Council President William “Speedy” Marsh and Councilman Marty Small were named, he said. All four men and Jones are black.

“I think there are racial overtones in those allegations,” defense attorney James Leonard Jr. said, calling it a “racially motivated witch hunt.”

“That’s so untrue,” Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said of the race claim. “That is ... I need to find the word ... reprehensible on his part.”

Leonard earlier used the same word to describe the investigation’s alleged tactics in going after his client.

“The way that (Jones) was treated at his home, I find to be reprehensible,” he said.

Housel said he could not, under the law, comment on whether anyone from his office spoke with Jones, but stressed that the investigation was a joint one with the FBI’s Public Corruption Task Force. His office also never comments on whether an investigation exists, so could not comment further on whether the four men named are the targets of an investigation. Jones said Kangas’ questions did not lead him to believe there was any current investigation on the four he named.

Housel said the allegations against Jones are not about black and white, but green.

“This fellow, for years, received thousands of dollars from people to whom he sublet an apartment he agreed to actually live in and did not,” Housel said.

The Live-In Police Officers Program allows officers to lease public housing at a significantly discounted rate in exchange for active community policing.

According to the charges, Jones rented the $1,035-per-month apartment for $202, then collected between $39,200 and $51,000 in rent money.

“There is absolutely nothing to the allegations,” Leonard said. “Officer Jones never earned $1 from any illicit activity. He never charged anyone rent at 1522 Caspian Place.”

Jones said he was asked to leave the program in May 2011. That was, according to the charges, because Jones was violating his agreement.

“The Housing Authority provides housing for many, many minorities, and we are acting after being informed by them about an offense about which they are the victim,” Housel said. “Shame on (Leonard) for bringing race into what is simply alleged official misconduct. That’s just offensive to me.”

The authority and taxpayers lost $61,642 in potential rent during the time Jones was in the program, the charges claim.

Local PBA President Dave Davidson said Jones is in good standing with the union and that they will stand by him throughout the process.

“We are all protected by the same Constitution, where a person is presumed innocent,” Davidson said. “We are going to make sure he’s given his rights, and that his rights are protected.”

Housel took issue with previous statements Leonard made that were published in The Press of Atlantic City, saying the allegations were disheartening not only to Jones but to all the officers of the department.

“He is using this to try to put a wedge between my office and the hardworking and honest officers of the Atlantic City Police Department,” he said. “They do put their lives on the line every day. However, we do not allege that they steal thousands of dollars by taking advantage of a program for police officers to live in Housing Authority apartments.”

Leonard and Jones insist this officer hasn’t either.

“I am 100 percent innocent of these charges and the allegations against me are completely false,” Jones said.

Leonard said there will be no plea deal in the case, and is adamant that it will be taken to trial.

“We will establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he lived in that apartment the entire time he was involved in the program,” Leonard said.

This week’s candidates for the Brian Sonnenberg Peaceful Resolution to Conflict Center Award. Fairfax County Police. police brutality

Former Brooksville lawman arrested again

Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.

He told her he still loved her, but his object of affection had filed an injunction against him, according to an arrest warrant.

Bryan Drinkard's message to his ex-girlfriend landed him in jail for the third time in less than three weeks, deputies said.

The Hernando County Sheriff's Office arrested Drinkard shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday on a charge of violating a dating violence injunction.

Drinkard, 44, a former Brooksville police detective and corrections officer at the Hernando County Jail, was scheduled to be transferred Wednesday to a facility in Sumter County, said Lt. Cinda Moore, a sheriff's spokeswoman. He is being held without bail.

Deputies said a woman received a letter in the mail Saturday without a return label. Inside the envelope was one of the accuser's personal stationary cards, which she keeps in a drawer next to her bed, according to the warrant.

The inside of the card included the words, "I love you" and a pet name Drinkard had used for her during their relationship, deputies said.

The woman also gave a sworn statement alleging the card contained Drinkard's handwriting.

The warrant for Drinkard's arrest was issued Saturday, but Drinkard was not located until Tuesday night. He was arrested at a house off Preston Road near Brooksville, according to jail records.

On March 9, deputies arrested Drinkard on charges of burglary, grand theft and stalking. Those charges were linked to allegations made by Tiffany Still, a former girlfriend.

The sheriff's office has not released details because the investigation remains open.

Five days after his Hernando arrest, Drinkard was jailed on a count of forgery. The charge was filed by his former employer, the Brooksville Police Department.

The forgery case was related to allegations Drinkard took business envelopes and letterhead from the Law Offices of James Martin Brown. He was accused of signing the letters and using a signatory stamp belonging to Brown, who had been representing him.

Drinkard did not have permission to use the letters or stamp, authorities said.

Police said Drinkard used the forged letters to make a public records request. He had been seeking information about Still, who works as an administrative assistant at the police department, according to reports.

Drinkard was fired Feb. 29 after turning in his agency-issued .45-cal. Glock handgun in the lobby of the police station. Video surveillance showed him walking into the building holding the gun in his right hand with his finger on the trigger.

He laid down the weapon on a counter in the lobby. The counter was close to Still's work station. She sat at her desk minutes after Drinkard turned in his weapon and left. She and another administrator immediately notified the chief about the abandoned gun, according to an agency inquiry.

Chief George Turner told Drinkard earlier that week he had been suspended with pay after an internal affairs investigation was opened against him.

Drinkard had been investigated and disciplined numerous times in the four years he was employed at the police department.

He previously worked more than a decade at the Manatee County Sheriff's office, at which time he was investigated 44 times. He was forced to retire in 2003 after being arrested on a stalking charge, according to public records.

He was acquitted a year later. His accuser was a former girlfriend.