Post by KC on Sept 12, 2006 21:26:53 GMT -5
September 12, 2006 - The Columbus police officer assigned to Mifflin High School on the day a girl reported being sexually assaulted there found two used condoms near where the attack occurred but reported it to no one, he testified yesterday."Why those condoms were still there, I don’t know," Officer Dwight Morris said during the third day of testimony in a hearing that former Mifflin Principal Regina Crenshaw hopes will win back her job with Columbus Public Schools. "It was not my responsibility."
He found the condoms probably a day or two after the March 2005 assault, which had occurred while he was out of the building for training, Morris said.
The district pays $700,000 a year, roughly half the salary of 17 police officers, to keep an officer in each high school. The agreement with the city says the officers must notify their school principals of any absences, but Morris said he didn’t remember telling anyone he wouldn’t be there that afternoon.
Morris said he left the school about 11:30 a.m. to attend a police-department training session, about an hour and 45 minutes before the assault.
Asked how he informed school officials he was leaving, Morris said: "Well, if I did it at all, I guess I would do it in person."
If he were going to be gone for a week or more, "I would have said something," Morris said. "But for training, if I said it in passing, then I said it in passing. …I think I went on a cruise and I was gone for a week, and I said something at that point," Morris added. "But just a day here, day there, no."
Mary Harrison, one of the Columbus police detectives who investigated the assault, said yesterday that Morris didn’t hamper the investigation by not informing them of finding condoms. Detectives had seen and photographed them the same day the assault was reported.
"It wasn’t something that we wanted to check," Harrison said, because the condoms were on the other side of the auditorium stage from where the 16-year-old developmentally disabled girl said she was forced to perform oral sex on two boys. Detectives did take other DNA evidence before leaving the school, Harrison said.
Crenshaw was fired by the Columbus Board of Education after a district investigation found that Mifflin school officials failed to report the assault to police or Franklin County Children Services, as required by Ohio law, despite the girl’s father telling them he wanted police immediately involved.
The father has testified that school officials urged him to come back the next morning, when Morris would be back.
Morris said he received a call on his cell phone at 4:30 p.m. on the day of the assault, from a district-employed safety officer at Mifflin, who told him, "Heads up: We had a situation at the school. We need to be on it first thing in the morning."
He said he didn’t ask the officer more about the situation.
"That could have been anything from a multiple-person fight to somebody getting shot, somebody with a gun. I don’t know what it was. I did not ask."
Had he been there the day of the assault, Morris said, "I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be sitting here right now" at a hearing over whether Crenshaw should be fired.
He suggested more school officials should be fired.
"The first thing that I obviously came to find out is that everybody who had anything to do with (that) young lady should have been on the phone calling somebody…then there’s other people that obviously should be sitting here with us."
Under questioning from Crenshaw’s attorney, Toki Clark, Morris said he did not understand that the 4:30 p.m. call to him constituted the official notification to police of suspected child abuse.
Based on that brief call, a Franklin County jury last April acquitted Crenshaw of a misdemeanor charge of failing to report the abuse.
Crenshaw’s hearing is expected to last up to a month.
www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/08/20060908-B1-00.html
He found the condoms probably a day or two after the March 2005 assault, which had occurred while he was out of the building for training, Morris said.
The district pays $700,000 a year, roughly half the salary of 17 police officers, to keep an officer in each high school. The agreement with the city says the officers must notify their school principals of any absences, but Morris said he didn’t remember telling anyone he wouldn’t be there that afternoon.
Morris said he left the school about 11:30 a.m. to attend a police-department training session, about an hour and 45 minutes before the assault.
Asked how he informed school officials he was leaving, Morris said: "Well, if I did it at all, I guess I would do it in person."
If he were going to be gone for a week or more, "I would have said something," Morris said. "But for training, if I said it in passing, then I said it in passing. …I think I went on a cruise and I was gone for a week, and I said something at that point," Morris added. "But just a day here, day there, no."
Mary Harrison, one of the Columbus police detectives who investigated the assault, said yesterday that Morris didn’t hamper the investigation by not informing them of finding condoms. Detectives had seen and photographed them the same day the assault was reported.
"It wasn’t something that we wanted to check," Harrison said, because the condoms were on the other side of the auditorium stage from where the 16-year-old developmentally disabled girl said she was forced to perform oral sex on two boys. Detectives did take other DNA evidence before leaving the school, Harrison said.
Crenshaw was fired by the Columbus Board of Education after a district investigation found that Mifflin school officials failed to report the assault to police or Franklin County Children Services, as required by Ohio law, despite the girl’s father telling them he wanted police immediately involved.
The father has testified that school officials urged him to come back the next morning, when Morris would be back.
Morris said he received a call on his cell phone at 4:30 p.m. on the day of the assault, from a district-employed safety officer at Mifflin, who told him, "Heads up: We had a situation at the school. We need to be on it first thing in the morning."
He said he didn’t ask the officer more about the situation.
"That could have been anything from a multiple-person fight to somebody getting shot, somebody with a gun. I don’t know what it was. I did not ask."
Had he been there the day of the assault, Morris said, "I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be sitting here right now" at a hearing over whether Crenshaw should be fired.
He suggested more school officials should be fired.
"The first thing that I obviously came to find out is that everybody who had anything to do with (that) young lady should have been on the phone calling somebody…then there’s other people that obviously should be sitting here with us."
Under questioning from Crenshaw’s attorney, Toki Clark, Morris said he did not understand that the 4:30 p.m. call to him constituted the official notification to police of suspected child abuse.
Based on that brief call, a Franklin County jury last April acquitted Crenshaw of a misdemeanor charge of failing to report the abuse.
Crenshaw’s hearing is expected to last up to a month.
www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/08/20060908-B1-00.html