Cop Sentenced in Drug-Dealing Plot

A Baltimore police officer has been sentenced to eight years in prison on drug and weapons charges.

Thirty-six-year-old Kendell Richburg had pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm to further drug trafficking. He was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Baltimore.

Prosecutors say Richburg told a drug dealer when it was safe to sell drugs, and in return, the dealer gave information about his customers so Richburg could arrest them.

Berthoud cop accused of beating daughter, locking her in rooms

BERTHOUD - A Berthoud police officer was arrested Wednesday on four charges of child abuse and one of false imprisonment, according to Loveland Police Department.
Jeremy Yachik, 35, is free on a $1,500 cash bond after Loveland police came to his home with a warrant.

A big part of the investigation focuses on a video recorded by Yachik's ex-fiance, Ashley St. Roberts, 26. According to an arrest affidavit, the video shows officer Yachik abusing his 15-year-old daughter because she ate carrots from the refrigerator.
Yachik is accused of choking, force feeding, binding her hands with zip ties, locking her in rooms, handcuffing her and restricting her from eating. He's also accused of forcing his daughter to eat ghost peppers for lying and confining her in a dark laundry room.
According to the affidavit, Officer Yachik admits to hitting his daughter and restricting her from eating food. He's not the only officer in Berthoud who is being investigated. The town's top cop, Police Chief Glenn Johnson, is on paid administrative leave right now while Loveland Police conduct a criminal investigation on him. St. Roberts has accused Chief Johnson of covering up the video, the affidavit says.
No charges had been filed against Johnson by Wednesday, according to Larimer County District Attorney's Office. Loveland police have declined comment on the case.
Yachik if convicted could face up to 18 months in jail on each child abuse count and up to a year in jail on the false imprisonment count. He has no previous criminal counts but has had multiple financial lawsuits filed against him by creditors since about 2009, according to Colorado court records.
Yachik's arrest comes during what appears to be a contentious domestic dispute between Yachik and Saint-Roberts. Yachik and a 7-year-old with the same last name filed for a temporary restraining order against Saint-Roberts on March 25. But the hearing was apparently canceled the same day it was filed, according to Colorado court records.
Also March 25, Saint-Roberts was charged wihth domestic violence including third-degree assault and obstructing telephone service. She's pleaded not guilty and is set for trial Dec. 16. In June, Saint-Roberts was charged with violating a protection order and in that case is scheduled for a Dec. 18 trial. Both criminal cases involving her were investigated by Loveland police.
A child-custody case between Yachik and Saint-Roberts remains open and is scheduled for a telephone conference Nov. 4, state court records indicate.

Cop Resigns After Arrest For False Document

WAYNE COUNTY—A Wayne County Sheriff’s officer was arrested Monday afternoon for filing a false document.
The Sheriff’s Office says Brandon Martin, 31, of Newark, falsified his time cards and was paid a benefit that he did not earn. Martin was charged with offering a false instrument for filing in the second degree and petit larceny.
He resigned and will appear in Lyons Town Court at a later date.  10-23-13

Eagle Scout sues the city, police department for false arrest during sex sting

by Carley Dryden The Beach Reporter

A college student claiming he was wrongly arrested last year during a sting operation targeting gay men in a beach bathroom has filed a $5 million lawsuit against the city of Manhattan Beach and police officers for discrimination, false arrest and violation of civil rights. In the lawsuit, filed in federal court last week, Charles Samuel Couch said he was taking care of a disabled boy last year when he was swept up in a police sex sting and lumped together in media reports with men charged with lewd conduct.

Couch, 22, of Hawthorne, has asked for $5 million for the “great humiliation, embarrassment and mental anguish” caused by the incident.
At the time of his arrest last March, Couch was employed by Cambrian Homecare in Long Beach, providing respite care to a 13-year-old boy with Prader-Willi Syndrome, which is characterized by mental retardation and incomplete sexual development.
According to the lawsuit, during a supervised walk in Manhattan Beach, the boy told Couch he needed to use the restroom, so the two headed toward the beach bathroom at Marine Avenue and The Strand. Unbeknownst to Couch, Manhattan Beach police officers were conducting a sting operation targeting gay males who were meeting up in the bathroom, which had been publicized on the Internet as a popular meet-up for sex.

Because of his condition, the boy in Couch’s care frequently spent an abnormally long time using the restroom. While the boy was in the stall farthest from the entrance, Couch sat down on a bench in the changing area of the restroom to wait for him.
Detective John Nasori entered the restroom, according to the lawsuit, and said, “Hello,” before entering the middle stall. A few minutes later, the child bolted from the stall, telling Couch, “There is a man looking at me in the stall.” Horrified, Couch told the boy, “Ignore him. Just keep walking.”
As the two walked out of the bathroom, Couch was confronted by five detectives in plain clothes “resembling thugs.” Presuming that they wanted to kidnap the boy, Couch grabbed the boy to protect him.
He was then tackled, choked and handcuffed, according to the lawsuit, and did not realize the men were actually police officers until he was taken to jail.
What followed was months of irreparable damage to Couch’s reputation and future, his attorney, Bruce Nickerson, said.
During hours of interrogation, Couch gave officers permission to retrieve the boy’s backpack from his car. Once inside the car, however, the police ransacked it without a warrant and took Couch’s backpack containing his laptop, Nickerson said.
Although Couch was given a detention certificate, stating that he was detained, not arrested, and there was insufficient evidence to file a criminal complaint, the lawsuit states, the police kept his laptop for several months, forcing him to withdraw from El Camino College because all of his schoolwork was on the computer. No evidence of child pornography or any other crime was ever found on Couch’s laptop.
A month after his arrest, Couch discovered that his photo had been posted on a local newspaper’s website and published nationwide, with headlines stating he had been arrested in a sex sting operation along with 17 other men.
Even though Couch earned almost straight A’s in high school and at El Camino, Nickerson said, when he applied for top four-year colleges, he hit a snag with the applications.
“They ask, ‘Have you been arrested?’ And he has to state this outrageous arrest,” he said.
His grades easily qualified him for the top schools in the country, but he is now at a lesser-ranked school in Philadelphia, according to Nickerson.
Couch planned to follow in the footsteps of his father — a defense contractor — and apply for internships in the industry.
“This is how kids get ahead in the world. After college, those internships morph into a full-time job,” Nickerson said. “He hasn’t been able to make one application. Once they get wind that he was arrested for lewd conduct and child endangerment, he’s history.”
Nickerson said he’s filed scores of lawsuits related to police sting operations and lewd conduct arrests, but Couch’s case is unique.
“All of my clients were gay men or perceived to be gay who went down to the bathroom to do some sort of cruising,” Nickerson said. “Now here is a case where my client is totally above reproach. … This is the first time a client didn’t do anything at all.”
In fact, Couch is an Eagle Scout, whose Eagle project was developing a respite program for families with children with genetic disorders, Nickerson said.
“Children with Prader-Willi Syndrome need exercise or they get overweight, get diabetes and will die. (Couch’s) program was to get them out of the house, walking and exercising. But they have to be supervised or they get lost,” he said.
Couch’s project turned into a full-time job with Cambrian Homecare, which he later lost because of the incident.
Nickerson is confident in his case.
The parents of the boy in Couch’s care immediately vouched for Couch and explained the details of their son’s syndrome.
In the police report, Nickerson said, the detective insinuated that the boy had been taken to the restroom, knowing about the lewd conduct going on inside.
“The innuendo is that the boy told my client that the cop did not do something sexual through the hole as the little boy was told would happen. That will not pass the smell test. That presumes the boy has a sex drive. The pediatrician has testified that (that’s not the case). Children with Prader-Willi Syndrome have shrunken testicles. There’s no sex drive possible for this little kid,” Nickerson said.
Nickerson said although it was not in the lawsuit, he will present another facet of the incident to the jury.
“When the cops saw my client and the little boy approaching the bathroom, they see a white college kid and a black 13-year-old, and they can think of no reason those two are approaching the bathroom except for sexual purposes,” he said. “They thought he was there to prostitute the kid.”
Eleven months after his detainment, Couch was charged with two counts of resisting arrest related to attempting to protect the boy during the incident, Nickerson said. All criminal charges were dismissed in August.
But the incident left an indelible mark on Couch — a soiled reputation, lost job, compromised future.
“This is a brilliant kid. He was once a happy-go-lucky college kid. Now he’s withdrawn, fearful; he keeps his nose to the grindstone. He doesn’t know who to trust and he’s leery about meeting new people in strange situations because look what happened to him,” Nickerson said. “It’s just appalling.”
Nickerson sent the city a demand letter three weeks before filing the lawsuit, asking them to file a motion with the court for a factual finding of innocence to start “my client’s rehabilitation of his reputation.”
“If the court grants the motion, they destroy all records and order the purging of files all over the place so my client can say truthfully that he was not arrested. (The city has) refused to do this,” he said.
The lawsuit also seeks punitive damages against Nasori for perjury and maliciousness.
The detective authorized the release of Couch’s photo and its posting on the Manhattan Beach police website indicating an arrest for lewd conduct after authorizing a certificate of detention, which states there was not sufficient evidence for an arrest for lewd conduct or child endangerment.
After issuing the certificate, Nasori swore under penalty of perjury that Couch’s laptop had to be searched because “it was used as the means of committing a felony,” the lawsuit read.
City officials directed questions to Eugene Ramirez, the special counsel hired to represent the city in the case.
Because the suit was recently filed, Ramirez said, he still has not talked to anyone involved in the incident, and he must gather relevant reports and begin the discovery process.
“We have to determine if there was any misconduct whatsoever,” he said. “Pending that, there’s no reason to believe anyone did anything inappropriate.”
The city has 20 days to respond to the lawsuit. Since the suit was filed in federal court, all parties will be required to undergo a settlement conference, Ramirez said. If the parties don’t settle, the case could go to a jury trial.

Gutless coward

In November 2012, police officers in Commerce City, Colorado, received a call about a large dog roaming free in a subdivision. Unbeknownst to the police or the caller, Chloe, a large, three-year-old mixed breed, was not an intruder. A woman in the neighborhood was dog-sitting for a friend, and Chloe had flown the coup.

Eventually, police and an animal control officer cornered the anxious dog in an open garage. A cell phone video shows them debating what to do as Chloe sat and watched. Eventually, one of the officers tasered Chloe. She fell over, then began to run away. As Chloe attempted to flee, an animal control employee snagged her with a catch pole. That should have been the end of the story, except Commerce City Police Officer Robert Price proceeded to shoot Chloe four times with his service weapon, alarming the animal control worker and killing the dog.