MANCHESTER — A police
officer was suspended recently after an internal investigation found he used
excessive force on a prisoner at police headquarters.
Officer Jason Wagner
was suspended without pay for five days, Police Chief Marc Montminy said
Wednesday. Montminy said he agreed with an investigation by Lt. David Ellsworth
that found Wagner's use of force was both "unnecessary and
excessive."
The unnamed prisoner
was not injured and did not file a formal complaint, Montminy said. The
investigation began after a review of video recordings in the booking area, he
said. The internal affairs report says Capt. William Darby asked Ellsworth to
launch an investigation.
Two videos from
different angles, which Montminy showed to a reporter but did not release, show
Wagner leading a prisoner into the booking area on Aug. 20 at about 5:10 p.m.
The man had been driving a car that crashed at Charter Oak and Spruce streets.
He appeared to be drunk and was arrested after failing field sobriety tests,
police said. Montminy said he redacted the man's name from the internal
investigations report because the report mentions the man's mental health and
addiction problems.
As Wagner is leading
the prisoner into the booking area, a police service aide, a non-sworn
attendant in the booking area, is heard saying, "I witnessed that,"
after the prisoner head-butted a door frame. Once at a caged area where
prisoners are fingerprinted and sign forms, the video shows the man again
knocking his own head against a steel door frame.
Wagner can be heard
yelling at the prisoner to "knock it off!" The video shows the
officer standing directly behind the handcuffed prisoner. When the man turns
his head back toward Wagner, their faces just inches apart, Wagner grabs the
man around the neck and forces him to the floor, placing a knee on the man's
chest.
The two police
service aides who were in the booking area at the time both said they did not
consider Wagner's actions to be excessive, the report says. The video does not
show Wagner hitting or kicking the prisoner, but Ellsworth found that the
officer "acted inappropriately when he brought (the unnamed prisoner) to
the ground in the manner in which he did.
"Officer Wagner
was never trained in performing take-downs in this manner," Ellsworth
wrote. "There were clearly other options available to Officer Wagner and
this method could have caused significant injury."
Wagner told
Ellsworth, according to the report, that he wanted to avoid being hurt by the
prisoner.
"I did not know
what he was going to do, the way he was acting he was banging his head,"
Wagner told Ellsworth, according to the report. "I didn't know if he was
going to spit on me if he was going to swing his head at me or what his
intentions were."
Wagner called a
superior that night about the incident, according to the report. Two
Breathalyzer tests on the man showed his blood-alcohol content at .176 and
.196, both more than twice the legal limit for drivers. The man was charged
with driving under the influence, evading responsibility and reckless driving
and taken to Manchester Memorial Hospital for treatment and mental health
evaluation.
Sgt. John Rossetti,
head of the police union, said he had no comment on Wagner's suspension.
