Post by WaTcHeR on Apr 15, 2006 10:51:25 GMT -5
04/15/2006 - The King County Sheriff's Office, already under scrutiny -- and deeply divided -- over its handling of discipline cases, is in a new uproar over a recent case of excessive force.
After Deputy Brian Bonnar was accused of beating a handcuffed woman during an arrest in White Center last fall, one of his superiors recommended that he be fired. Instead, last month Sheriff Sue Rahr elected to suspend him without pay for 20 days.
In her recommendation to terminate Bonnar, Chief Robin Fenton said Bonnar's force against the woman was extremely serious, intentional and that Bonnar was "out of control." Fenton wrote she had serious concerns about the fact that Bonnar denied striking the cuffed woman and slamming her head into a car, despite several witness' statements that he'd done so, and that other officers tried to intervene.
"His actions are serious, and in my opinion not correctable," Fenton wrote. "Why did Deputy Bonnar read this situation completely different than all other deputies at the scene? To put Deputy Bonnar back on the street as a deputy is to take a chance that the situation could occur again. I do not feel we should take that chance."
Instead, Rahr elected to suspend him without pay for 20 days. He is appealing the discipline and has not yet served it.
Bonnar told the Seattle P-I in an interview that he is innocent and that the officers who reported him didn't describe what really happened that day. He said the 20-day suspension was unfair. He was also denied a pay raise, and was transferred from the Burien Precinct to the Maple Valley Precinct, records show.
On March 8, Rahr met with Bonnar and King County Police Officers Guild President Steve Eggert for a mandatory due-process hearing. Eggert read a prepared statement on Bonnar's behalf, stating that the internal case against Bonnar was "a gross exaggeration full of misleading information," records show.
Eggert argued that the witnessing officers' statements against Bonnar were inconsistent, claiming one of the officers was either exaggerating or outright lying. He noted Bonnar had no previous sustained internal charges against him, and the department is supposed to use a system of progressive discipline.
But Rahr found the witness statements fell "within the expected range of variation for a fast-moving scene," saying she was "satisfied" that various statements against Bonnar corroborated the excessive-use-of-force finding. Rahr wrote to Bonnar that she didn't believe his explanation that he acted in a way he was trained to act. Rahr added that Bonnar "incorrectly assessed the circumstances," and "fell short of taking full responsibility and failed to appreciate what you did was wrong."
She said he would likely be fired if he did it again.
"I gave up a very successful job to take up this career. It was to help people not hurt people," Bonnar, 40, told the P-I.
The college-educated Massachusetts native said he went from working in a Boston-area jail in the early 1990s to a high-paying software sales job in San Francisco before joining the King County Sheriff's Office in January 2003. Having a business administration degree, he left the $175,000-a-year sales job for law enforcement because of the tragedy of 9/11. He and his wife, who still works in software, have a newborn child.
Rahr is on vacation and couldn't be reached. Neither department spokesman John Urquhart nor the acting sheriff, Chief Rich Krogh, responded to a list of e-mailed questions.
During a car chase on Oct. 22, 2005, driver Irene R. Damon, 39, rammed her car into a pursuing patrol vehicle and hit a parked civilian car. Police were seeking one of her passengers on a drug warrant after another car chase three days earlier.
Damon -- a longtime criminal who admitted being under the influence of alcohol and crack cocaine at the time of the car chase -- refused to get out of the car. One deputy, Richard Ehlers, cut his hand breaking her car window.
Bonnar shot electrodes from his Taser gun, striking Damon inside the car. One witness, a reserve deputy whose last name is Wells, was dragging Damon out of the car when he felt the jolt of the Taser. He said that at the time that "she wasn't fighting or resisting."
Approximately four deputies forced Damon to the ground, and after a struggle, the 5-foot, 6-inch tall, 160-pound woman was handcuffed. The reserve deputy, who was involved in the struggle, said, "The next thing I know I feel this punch on (my) hand and I look up and it was Bonnar just punching this woman. I got my hand between her head and one of the blows to her head," he said in a statement to internal investigations Sgt. James Corey. Records show the reserve deputy's hand was injured.
Deputy Thomas Calabrese told investigators that while Damon was handcuffed, Bonnar kneed her and later slammed her onto a patrol car hood.
"Damon had stopped fighting with us and was lying down," Calabrese wrote. "Deputy Bonnar then stood up, looked around, and performed a knee strike with his right knee on the right side of Damon's head. This hit her in the right eye. He stood up again, looked around and did a second strike to the same place."
Bonnar said that just before Damon was handcuffed, he kneed her to free her hand to see if she was armed. He said he might have accidentally kneed her again seconds after she was cuffed.
Another deputy described Damon's knee strikes as being like "wrestling moves ... His right knee came up and tagged her on the side of the head."
Calabrese said at one point he pushed Bonnar off of Damon and told him he had her under control. "He pushed me back and said, 'I've got this,' " Calabrese wrote in a statement.
Calabrese said Bonnar later slammed Damon's face into a patrol car. "To keep her from getting attacked any further I placed her in the back of the patrol car," Calabrese said.
None of the deputies reported Bonnar's actions immediately after the incident. But Bonnar's supervisor, Sgt. Lisa Pepin, noticed "discrepancies" in statements that Bonnar drafted after the incident.
After the incident, at least two officers discussed their concerns over Bonnar's behavior. One officer recalled them saying that Bonnar was wrong and his temper was out of control.
Calabrese relayed the concerns to Pepin on Oct. 24. She filed a complaint with internal investigations the next day. But Bonnar wasn't placed on administrative leave until Nov. 10, records show.
Pepin interviewed Damon in jail, noting a swollen eye and a bruise under her right eye. She took photographs of Damon's injuries and took a statement.
"Once I was in cuffs, the bald guy comes over and starts kicking and kneeing me in the head," Damon wrote. "I think I got kicked and kneed in the head and neck and shoulders about 15 times. ... I heard other deputies say 'That's enough. Stop.' "
She claimed Bonnar told her, "You're lucky you're not dead ... you almost ran a cop over."
Sources say many officers are outraged Bonnar wasn't fired or prosecuted. Others say he was treated unfairly.
Prosecutors also apparently were not consulted as to whether criminal charges should have been filed against Bonnar.
"I ran (Bonnar's) name in our system," Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, said Friday. "I don't show any case that was referred over to us."
Donohoe refused to say whether the Sheriff's Office should have consulted with prosecutors, nor did he provide what the general guidelines are for prosecutors to review such excessive-force cases.
Generally, deciding when an officer's excessive use of force should be prosecuted criminally can be difficult, said Sam Pailca, a former civil King County prosecutor who is now the civilian director of the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability, where she supervises internal investigations.
"The touchstone would be, was the physical contact made for legitimate law-enforcement-related purposes?" Pailca explained. "In general, if that's the case, even if the force is excessive, that's considered an administrative, not a criminal case."
But severity is another factor, she said. Her office consulted with prosecutors on a use-of-force incident last year when a uniformed Seattle officer directing traffic got angry at a citizen and laid his hands on that person. Though the force was used in the line of duty, Pailca said, it was done angrily and without law-enforcement related causes.
"That's what prompted us to pursue that case to the prosecutor," Pailca said. "He agreed and brought charges."
Damon has not yet been charged, or prosecuted, following the incident, said Donohoe. She was initially jailed on suspicion of felony assault, drug violations and eluding police.
Some officers in the department contrast the Bonnar case with another in 2003, where two deputies, George Alvarez and James Keller, were arrested for an assault based on another officer's statements so quickly that the victim, a career criminal, hadn't yet been interviewed. They were prosecuted, but the jury hung and cleared Keller of one allegation. After charges were dismissed, Alvarez and Keller were also suspended.
"They treated Jim and George extremely differently than they are treating this guy," said Reba Weiss, a Seattle attorney representing Keller and Alvarez in a civil lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office. "There must have been a motive."
Bonnar said Calabrese might have had a motive for reporting him for excessive force. He said the six-year veteran might have been trying to impress his supervisors, who might have been concerned about allegations of excessive force against Calabrese in the past.
"No better way to clear your name than to turn in a quote, unquote, rogue officer," Bonnar said. "The allegations made by him and (Deputy Joshua) Langdon don't match the evidence."
Calabrese received a letter of corrective counseling -- the lowest possible consequence -- for a case in February 2003 where he subdued a man who was being involuntarily committed for mental problems. A violation against him was sustained for profanity, but an allegation that he used excessive force wasn't upheld.
Bonnar didn't speculate on why Langdon would testify that he had kneed Damon after she was handcuffed, other than to say that Calabrese and Langdon are friends. He said he didn't know anything about the reserve officer, who also made a statement against him.
None of the three officers, Calabrese, Langdon or Wells, could be reached for comment.
Ehlers said he didn't see Bonnar do any of the things that Calabrese and the others alleged. He acknowledged his view of the fight was obscured by another deputy's body, but said those things he did see didn't match their story.
"I've never seen him go outside the line," he said of Bonnar.
But Sgt. Tony Provenzo's investigation report said that during the fight, Bonnar "should have gathered himself and heeded the advice of his fellow deputies ... Deputy Bonnar did exceed reasonableness, and the amount of force he deployed was both excessive and unnecessary."
After Deputy Brian Bonnar was accused of beating a handcuffed woman during an arrest in White Center last fall, one of his superiors recommended that he be fired. Instead, last month Sheriff Sue Rahr elected to suspend him without pay for 20 days.
In her recommendation to terminate Bonnar, Chief Robin Fenton said Bonnar's force against the woman was extremely serious, intentional and that Bonnar was "out of control." Fenton wrote she had serious concerns about the fact that Bonnar denied striking the cuffed woman and slamming her head into a car, despite several witness' statements that he'd done so, and that other officers tried to intervene.
"His actions are serious, and in my opinion not correctable," Fenton wrote. "Why did Deputy Bonnar read this situation completely different than all other deputies at the scene? To put Deputy Bonnar back on the street as a deputy is to take a chance that the situation could occur again. I do not feel we should take that chance."
Instead, Rahr elected to suspend him without pay for 20 days. He is appealing the discipline and has not yet served it.
Bonnar told the Seattle P-I in an interview that he is innocent and that the officers who reported him didn't describe what really happened that day. He said the 20-day suspension was unfair. He was also denied a pay raise, and was transferred from the Burien Precinct to the Maple Valley Precinct, records show.
On March 8, Rahr met with Bonnar and King County Police Officers Guild President Steve Eggert for a mandatory due-process hearing. Eggert read a prepared statement on Bonnar's behalf, stating that the internal case against Bonnar was "a gross exaggeration full of misleading information," records show.
Eggert argued that the witnessing officers' statements against Bonnar were inconsistent, claiming one of the officers was either exaggerating or outright lying. He noted Bonnar had no previous sustained internal charges against him, and the department is supposed to use a system of progressive discipline.
But Rahr found the witness statements fell "within the expected range of variation for a fast-moving scene," saying she was "satisfied" that various statements against Bonnar corroborated the excessive-use-of-force finding. Rahr wrote to Bonnar that she didn't believe his explanation that he acted in a way he was trained to act. Rahr added that Bonnar "incorrectly assessed the circumstances," and "fell short of taking full responsibility and failed to appreciate what you did was wrong."
She said he would likely be fired if he did it again.
"I gave up a very successful job to take up this career. It was to help people not hurt people," Bonnar, 40, told the P-I.
The college-educated Massachusetts native said he went from working in a Boston-area jail in the early 1990s to a high-paying software sales job in San Francisco before joining the King County Sheriff's Office in January 2003. Having a business administration degree, he left the $175,000-a-year sales job for law enforcement because of the tragedy of 9/11. He and his wife, who still works in software, have a newborn child.
Rahr is on vacation and couldn't be reached. Neither department spokesman John Urquhart nor the acting sheriff, Chief Rich Krogh, responded to a list of e-mailed questions.
During a car chase on Oct. 22, 2005, driver Irene R. Damon, 39, rammed her car into a pursuing patrol vehicle and hit a parked civilian car. Police were seeking one of her passengers on a drug warrant after another car chase three days earlier.
Damon -- a longtime criminal who admitted being under the influence of alcohol and crack cocaine at the time of the car chase -- refused to get out of the car. One deputy, Richard Ehlers, cut his hand breaking her car window.
Bonnar shot electrodes from his Taser gun, striking Damon inside the car. One witness, a reserve deputy whose last name is Wells, was dragging Damon out of the car when he felt the jolt of the Taser. He said that at the time that "she wasn't fighting or resisting."
Approximately four deputies forced Damon to the ground, and after a struggle, the 5-foot, 6-inch tall, 160-pound woman was handcuffed. The reserve deputy, who was involved in the struggle, said, "The next thing I know I feel this punch on (my) hand and I look up and it was Bonnar just punching this woman. I got my hand between her head and one of the blows to her head," he said in a statement to internal investigations Sgt. James Corey. Records show the reserve deputy's hand was injured.
Deputy Thomas Calabrese told investigators that while Damon was handcuffed, Bonnar kneed her and later slammed her onto a patrol car hood.
"Damon had stopped fighting with us and was lying down," Calabrese wrote. "Deputy Bonnar then stood up, looked around, and performed a knee strike with his right knee on the right side of Damon's head. This hit her in the right eye. He stood up again, looked around and did a second strike to the same place."
Bonnar said that just before Damon was handcuffed, he kneed her to free her hand to see if she was armed. He said he might have accidentally kneed her again seconds after she was cuffed.
Another deputy described Damon's knee strikes as being like "wrestling moves ... His right knee came up and tagged her on the side of the head."
Calabrese said at one point he pushed Bonnar off of Damon and told him he had her under control. "He pushed me back and said, 'I've got this,' " Calabrese wrote in a statement.
Calabrese said Bonnar later slammed Damon's face into a patrol car. "To keep her from getting attacked any further I placed her in the back of the patrol car," Calabrese said.
None of the deputies reported Bonnar's actions immediately after the incident. But Bonnar's supervisor, Sgt. Lisa Pepin, noticed "discrepancies" in statements that Bonnar drafted after the incident.
After the incident, at least two officers discussed their concerns over Bonnar's behavior. One officer recalled them saying that Bonnar was wrong and his temper was out of control.
Calabrese relayed the concerns to Pepin on Oct. 24. She filed a complaint with internal investigations the next day. But Bonnar wasn't placed on administrative leave until Nov. 10, records show.
Pepin interviewed Damon in jail, noting a swollen eye and a bruise under her right eye. She took photographs of Damon's injuries and took a statement.
"Once I was in cuffs, the bald guy comes over and starts kicking and kneeing me in the head," Damon wrote. "I think I got kicked and kneed in the head and neck and shoulders about 15 times. ... I heard other deputies say 'That's enough. Stop.' "
She claimed Bonnar told her, "You're lucky you're not dead ... you almost ran a cop over."
Sources say many officers are outraged Bonnar wasn't fired or prosecuted. Others say he was treated unfairly.
Prosecutors also apparently were not consulted as to whether criminal charges should have been filed against Bonnar.
"I ran (Bonnar's) name in our system," Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, said Friday. "I don't show any case that was referred over to us."
Donohoe refused to say whether the Sheriff's Office should have consulted with prosecutors, nor did he provide what the general guidelines are for prosecutors to review such excessive-force cases.
Generally, deciding when an officer's excessive use of force should be prosecuted criminally can be difficult, said Sam Pailca, a former civil King County prosecutor who is now the civilian director of the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability, where she supervises internal investigations.
"The touchstone would be, was the physical contact made for legitimate law-enforcement-related purposes?" Pailca explained. "In general, if that's the case, even if the force is excessive, that's considered an administrative, not a criminal case."
But severity is another factor, she said. Her office consulted with prosecutors on a use-of-force incident last year when a uniformed Seattle officer directing traffic got angry at a citizen and laid his hands on that person. Though the force was used in the line of duty, Pailca said, it was done angrily and without law-enforcement related causes.
"That's what prompted us to pursue that case to the prosecutor," Pailca said. "He agreed and brought charges."
Damon has not yet been charged, or prosecuted, following the incident, said Donohoe. She was initially jailed on suspicion of felony assault, drug violations and eluding police.
Some officers in the department contrast the Bonnar case with another in 2003, where two deputies, George Alvarez and James Keller, were arrested for an assault based on another officer's statements so quickly that the victim, a career criminal, hadn't yet been interviewed. They were prosecuted, but the jury hung and cleared Keller of one allegation. After charges were dismissed, Alvarez and Keller were also suspended.
"They treated Jim and George extremely differently than they are treating this guy," said Reba Weiss, a Seattle attorney representing Keller and Alvarez in a civil lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office. "There must have been a motive."
Bonnar said Calabrese might have had a motive for reporting him for excessive force. He said the six-year veteran might have been trying to impress his supervisors, who might have been concerned about allegations of excessive force against Calabrese in the past.
"No better way to clear your name than to turn in a quote, unquote, rogue officer," Bonnar said. "The allegations made by him and (Deputy Joshua) Langdon don't match the evidence."
Calabrese received a letter of corrective counseling -- the lowest possible consequence -- for a case in February 2003 where he subdued a man who was being involuntarily committed for mental problems. A violation against him was sustained for profanity, but an allegation that he used excessive force wasn't upheld.
Bonnar didn't speculate on why Langdon would testify that he had kneed Damon after she was handcuffed, other than to say that Calabrese and Langdon are friends. He said he didn't know anything about the reserve officer, who also made a statement against him.
None of the three officers, Calabrese, Langdon or Wells, could be reached for comment.
Ehlers said he didn't see Bonnar do any of the things that Calabrese and the others alleged. He acknowledged his view of the fight was obscured by another deputy's body, but said those things he did see didn't match their story.
"I've never seen him go outside the line," he said of Bonnar.
But Sgt. Tony Provenzo's investigation report said that during the fight, Bonnar "should have gathered himself and heeded the advice of his fellow deputies ... Deputy Bonnar did exceed reasonableness, and the amount of force he deployed was both excessive and unnecessary."