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Union chief Cavaliere: “Appropriate.”
An internal police investigation has ended with the chief ordering two cops to undergo retraining for their handling of the response to a domestic incident involving a former city alder.
The investigation concluded that the two officers should have, but didn’t, file a supplemental report related to the June 13 incident, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman.
In that incident, police went to the first-floor lobby of the downtown Kelly House apartments at 1:41 a.m. to find the attorney and then-alder, Michael Stratton, a 48-year-old prominent attorney, bloodied and complaining that his girlfriend had attacked him. (The girlfriend, who’s 20, told police and the Independent the same story that day.) Police arrested the woman at the scene.
Two officers — not the main cops handling the arrest — subsequently went upstairs to the couple’s apartment. They allegedly saw a small amount of marijuana in the apartment. They left. They didn’t file a report about it. According to people familiar with the case, some of the officers at the scene were aware that Stratton was a lawyer as well as a city alder at the time. (He has since resigned his post, citing family issues.) At least one of the officers involved in the internal investigation was apparently unaware of Stratton’s elected position.
Word soon spread through the department and around town that the officers had seen drugs in the apartment and hadn’t acted or filed a report. Apprised of the rumors, Police Chief Dean Esserman ordered an internal investigation into the officers’ conduct.
That investigation found no major or intentional wrongdoing by the officers, according to Hartman. But it did conclude that they should have filed a report.
One of the officers has been on the force six years, the other approaching two years. Both have earned recognition for good police work.
“They didn’t follow the procedure in reporting what they saw, what they did. They conducted an independent part of an investigation. And it wasn’t documented at the time,” Hartman said Tuesday. He said the two officers were disciplined for having violated department policy. They will receive written reprimand letters and a day of retraining.
Chief Esserman declined comment.
Police union President Louis Cavaliere Jr. praised Esserman’s action as “appropriate.”
“I felt the discipline is appropriate. The officers made a minor error. There was no intent,” Cavaliere said. “Nobody wanted to hurt anybody. No favoritism was involved.
“We’ve locked up our own at times. It can’t be more severe than that. I don’t think we did favors for anybody. I think the officers were confused” about procedure.
Cavaliere said his understanding is that the marijuana viewed by the officers amounted to “less than a gram,” not “enough to be a custodial amount” to warrant an arrest.
In the course of the internal affairs probe, police said, investigators obtained surveillance video from the Kelly House that they said showed Stratton in fact hitting the woman as well as receiving blows. Based on that video, Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo approved a warrant, later signed by a judge, seeking Stratton’s arrest on charges of third-degree assault and second degree breach of peace.
Police had not yet served the warrant as of Tuesday afternoon. Stratton is believed to have been out of town since it was issued.
In text messages, Stratton has repeatedly denied that he ever hit his girlfriend, and has called both the warrant and the internal affairs probe as payback for outspoken stands he took during his almost six months as an alder from the Prospect Hill neighborhood. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Crash Victim ID’d
In other police news Tuesday, police identified the pedestrian who was killed shortly before 1 a.m. Monday on Whalley Avenue and the Boulevard when a car hit him: Ronshemu Pitman, 33, of Howe Street. Police have not arrested the driver, who according to Hartman has cooperated with the department’s Crash Investigation Unit as it looks into the incident. The fatal crash knocked Pitman out of his shoes.
How long before the police union tries to appeal this move?