Abilene, Texas: A police
officer has quit after being arrested on charges of public intoxication and
firing a gun in a public place. ow.ly/kPZkE
Jacksonville, Florida: A police officer with a history of DUI got
another one in a hit-and-run involving several vehicles. It is her third DUI.
ow.ly/kPMby
Bethel, Alaska: A police officer is being charged with being
intoxicated while on the scene of a police shooting. He was not the officer
shooting, but he was assisting at the scene. The state is charging him with
three misdemeanors: two counts of DUI and one count of misconduct involving a
weapon. ow.ly/kRN6M
Bethel police officer
charged with DUI
BETHEL, Alaska (AP) — A
Bethel police officer is fighting charges that he was drunk when he showed up
armed to assist another police officer at a crime scene.
KYUK-AM
(http://bit.ly/10vEl54) reports Samuel Symmes, now employed as a police
department dispatcher, is contesting two counts of driving under the influence
and one count of weapons misconduct.
Symmes and his attorney,
Myron Angstman, contend tests performed on blood samples taken from Symmes were
not accurate.
Symmes was off duty Oct. 2
when he responded to a call for assistance from another officer. The officer
had contacted 24-year-old Sam Alexie Jr. in a neighborhood near Brown's Slough.
Bethel police said Alexie was intoxicated and pointed a rifle at the other
officer, who fired at Alexie and killed him.
Prosecutors in charging
documents said Symmes arrived in a police car and was ordered to secure the
scene.
His behavior, prosecutors
said, at first appeared normal. However, he fell at least twice.
The first time he dropped
to his knees. He fell again and hit his head, but said he was not hurt.
However, he was later found slumped over the steering wheel of his car and
taken by ambulance to a Bethel hospital.
Police in a press release
about the shooting said conditions were slippery and that an unidentified
officer had fallen on slippery stairs and had suffered a severe concussion.
A sample of Symmes' blood
at the hospital indicated the presence of alcohol. Prosecutors said an analysis
of the blood sample at the state crime law showed an alcohol level three times
above the legal limit.
Prosecutors have requested
a DNA sample from Symmes to prove the accuracy of the blood tests.
Symmes through his attorney
wants the request rejected. In court documents, Symmes attorney said it's the
state's responsibility to prove his client's guilt and that taking a DNA sample
months after the incident would violate Symmes' privacy.
A judge has not ruled on
the request.
Symmes resigned from the
police department six days after the shooting. He was hired several months
later as dispatcher.
City Manager Lee Foley said
the community should not jump to conclusions. Symmes did not play a role in the
fatal shooting.
"And he shouldn't be
judged in the community," Foley says. "If we're going to judge
somebody, let it be done in an official capacity and then let's see how
everything falls out."
Judge: Recently arrested
Indy police officer charged in fatal 2010 crash must stay in jail
INDIANAPOLIS — A suspended
Indianapolis police officer who was arrested on drunken driving charges a few
weeks ago must remain in jail while he awaits trial on similar charges in a
fatal 2010 crash, a judge ruled Thursday.
Allen County Judge Allen
Surbeck ordered David Bisard to be held without bond during a hearing in Fort
Wayne, where the fatal crash case was moved because of extensive publicity in
central Indiana. Bisard was at the Marion County Jail since he was arrested
following an April 27 crash in Indianapolis, but was moved to Allen County Jail
last week.
"I think we showed by
convincing evidence that this latest arrest showed not only disdain for the
court, but that he is a danger to the community," Deputy Prosecutor Denise
Robinson told reporters outside the courthouse in Fort Wayne.
Bisard's attorney, John
Kautzman, had no comment. And Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry had no
official comment, spokeswoman Peg McLeish said.
Bisard, 39, is scheduled to
go to trial in October for the 2010 crash in which his patrol car hit two
stopped motorcycles, killing one man and seriously injuring two other people.
He is charged with reckless homicide, drunken driving and other charges. If
convicted on those charges, Bisard could face 20 or more years in prison.
Bisard's case has had a
three-year delay due to legal wrangling over admission of blood tests that
showed he had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit. The
Indiana Supreme Court ruled in December that the blood tests could be admitted
into evidence.
Bisard had been free on
bond and was allowed to keep his driver's license while awaiting trial. He was
arrested last month on misdemeanor drunken driving charges after a pickup truck
he was driving ran into a guard rail along a winding, narrow road through a
wooded area in the northeastern Indianapolis community of Lawrence. No one was
injured.
A blood test showed he had
a blood-alcohol level of 0.22 percent, according to court documents. The
state's legal limit to drive is 0.08 percent.
Bisard's driver's license
was suspended following the most recent crash, and prosecutors asked for
Bisard's bond to be revoked, too. Curry said a condition of Bisard remaining
free while awaiting trial was that he not be arrested again.
Bisard has been suspended
without pay from the Indianapolis Police Department since the 2010 crash.
Members of the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police had been paying Bisard's
legal bills, but they voted to stop doing it five days after Bisard's second
arrest.
The 2010 case drew intense
local media coverage as police officers' handling of the crash scene and evidence
stirred public distrust and led to disciplinary action against several
high-ranking officers, including the demotion of the police chief.
IMPD's David Bisard to remain in jail until
trial in Fort Wayne
FORT WAYNE, IND. — Louisa
Montilla-Wells squeezed the hand of Mary Mills when the decision was announced
— then their eyes welled up.
An Allen County judge had
just ordered suspended Indianapolis police officer David -Bisard to remain in
jail until his trial in October. Judge John Surbeck said a second drunken-driving
arrest made Bisard too much of a risk to let free.
“I was so happy,” Mills
said. “I didn’t really know what to expect after all the ups and downs in this
trial.”
Bisard is facing several
charges in an alcohol-related crash in 2010 that killed motorcyclist Eric
Wells, the husband of Montilla-Wells, and critically injured Mills and Kurt
Weekly, who now is Mills’ husband.
While Mills, who arrived at
the hearing on a motorcycle, and Montilla-Wells hugged, ¬Bisard’s face
registered no visible reaction at the ruling. For much of the hearing he had
sat slumped, staring down toward the orange slippers he wore with the striped
jail jumpsuit.
Marion County Deputy
Prosecutor Denise Robinson argued that the second drunken-driving arrest on
April 27 in Lawrence made him too dangerous to be released.
“The fact that the accident
happened at 2 p.m. showed significant alcohol problems that the defendant is
not able to control,” Robinson said.
Surbeck agreed, saying
Bisard “demon¬strated his instability, and this misconduct poses a risk of
safety for another person in the commu¬nity.”
“It is clear that the
conduct in the April 2013 arrest does demonstrate instability and disdain for
authority,” Surbeck said.
The case was transferred to
Allen County by Marion Supe¬rior Court Judge Grant Hawkins, who said the
pretrial publicity Bisard had received in ¬Indianapolis would make it difficult
for an impartial jury to be selected in the state capital.
More than a dozen reporters
and photographers from Indianapolis and local news outlets covered the
late-afternoon hearing in Allen Superior Court.
Bisard has been free on
$10,000 bond since the day of his arrest in August 2010, but Marion County
Prosecutor Terry Curry asked Surbeck to revoke that bond after the recent
¬arrest.
