Minnesota
Milwaukee police sue city over inadvertent gun discharges
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Milwaukee’s police union is suing the city over service weapons that officers say aren’t safe because they have inadvertently fired without anyone pulling the trigger.
It’s the latest legal action involving the P320 model firearm manufactured by SIG Sauer, including a case filed in Philadelphia in June by a U.S. Army veteran who suffered a serious leg injury when his holstered gun discharged. SIG Sauer, based in Newington, New Hampshire, has denied the P320 model is defective.
The Milwaukee Police Association says the department-issued handguns have inadvertently misfired three times in the last two years resulting in injuries to two officers.
Most recently, a 41-year-old officer was shot in the knee on Sept. 10. In July 2020, Officer Adam Maritato, who is a party in the union’s lawsuit that was filed this week, was unintentionally shot in the leg by another officer’s holstered gun.
The lawsuit alleges that when the city purchased the guns in 2019, it knew, or should have known, about the discharge and safety issues. It also says that during training for the weapons, the city “failed to disclose that the P320 had issues with discharging without a trigger pull, and the officers relied on the safety training to be accurate and complete.”
The lawsuit accuses the city of endangering the safety of its officers and the public by issuing the firearm. The union is asking a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge to force the city to pay damages for the officers’ injuries and to replace every department-issued P320 with another firearm.
“It is unacceptable that we now have hundreds of cases around the country with known unintentional discharges and the city is failing to act,” union President Andrew Wagner said in a statement Tuesday.
Wagner said the union filed the lawsuit after the latest shooting because it had not heard anything since it formally notified the city in June 2021 that it needed to replace the guns for “known safety issues.”
The Milwaukee city attorney did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
Indiana
Man convicted of shooting 2 judges in street dispute
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A man who shot and wounded two southern Indiana judges outside an Indianapolis fast food restaurant in 2019 was convicted Wednesday on seven of eight felonies and one misdemeanor after a three-day trial.
A jury convicted Brandon Kaiser of aggravated battery, multiple battery-related charges and carrying a handgun without a license. He was acquitted on one count of battery resulting in moderate bodily injury.
David Margerum, Kaiser’s attorney, told WRTV-TV that Kaiser was taken into custody after the verdict. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 21.
Clark County Circuit judges Brad Jacobs and Andrew Adams were shot during the early morning hours of May 1, 2019 in the parking lot of a downtown White Castle restaurant. Another judge, Sabrina Bell of Crawford County, was with Jacobs and Adams at the time.
Kaiser claimed he was acting in self-defense against the group of judges, who were in town for a conference, and court documents claimed Bell flipped off Kaiser and his nephew.
Adams accepted a plea agreement to plead guilty to battery resulting in bodily injury in September 2019. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to dismiss six additional charges against the judge. He received a suspended sentence of 365 days.
The Indiana Commission of Judicial Qualifications filed disciplinary charges against the three judges involved. Jacobs and Bell were reinstated to the bench in December of that year after serving 30-day suspensions. Adams was ordered to serve a 60-day suspension.
Bell resigned from the bench on July 15 after the Indiana Supreme Court suspended her when a special prosecutor filed felony charges against her related to a domestic dispute.
Georgia
4 former guards sentenced for inmate assault
MACON, Ga. (AP) — Four former correctional officers at a Georgia prison were sentenced Wednesday for their roles in the beating of a handcuffed inmate and the subsequent cover-up, federal prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge Hugh Lawson sentenced Sgt. Patrick Sharpe, 30, to four years in prison; Lt. Geary Staten, 31, to a year and two months behind bars and Deputy Correctional Officers Brian Ford, 25, and Jamal Scott, 35, each received a year and a day for the crime. Sharpe also was sentenced for beating a different inmate during a separate incident, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
“These officers’ efforts to organize, execute, and then cover up a retaliatory assault on a handcuffed, compliant inmate are an egregious abuse of power,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “These sentences make clear that no one is above the law, and that when officers violate the civil rights of people under their supervision -– through violence or obstruction -– they will be held accountable.”
According to court documents and statements made during Wednesday’s sentencing, on Dec. 29, 2018, Sharpe instructed his subordinate officers to assault the inmate in retaliation for an earlier altercation between the inmate and a female officer at Valdosta State Prison. Following the assault, Staten then took steps to hide the offense, prosecutors said.
At the hearing, prosecutors asked for lighter sentences for Ford and Scott noting their substantial assistance during the investigation.
“This case serves as a reminder that individuals — no matter their status — will be held accountable for their crimes,” said U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary of the Middle District of Georgia. “When sworn officers do violence against inmates, they damage society’s trust in law enforcement and tarnish the reputation of the many worthy individuals who accept the dangerous responsibility of policing our prisons.”
Washington
4th defendant pleads guilty to hate crime for beating Black DJ
SEATTLE (AP) — A fourth defendant has pleaded guilty in federal court to a hate crime for beating a Black DJ unconscious at a bar in Washington state in 2018.
Jason Stanley, of Boise, Idaho, entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday. He is one of four men from across the Pacific Northwest prosecuted for punching and kicking the DJ at a bar in Lynnwood, north of Seattle, while yelling racist slurs.
The defendants were members of white supremacist groups marking what they refer to as “Martyr’s Day,” an annual gathering honoring a white supremacist who died in a shootout with federal agents on nearby Whidbey Island in the 1980s.
They went to a bar where they made Nazi salutes on the dance floor, started a confrontation with the DJ and beat him unconscious while yelling racial slurs. They also attacked two biracial people who tried to intervene on the DJ’s behalf.
“Violent, hate-driven conduct that has no place in our society today,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a news release. “The Department of Justice will continue to use every resource at its disposal to fight white supremacist violence.”
Stanley, 46, also pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI when he initially claimed he wasn’t in the state at the time of the attack.
Daniel Dorson, of Corvallis, Oregon; Randy Smith, of Eugene, Oregon; and Jason DeSimas, of Tacoma, Washington, previously pleaded guilty to hate crime and false-statement charges. None has yet been sentenced. The hate crime charge carries up to 10 years in prison.
Stanley is due to be sentenced by Judge Richard Jones on Jan. 6.
Pennsylvania
Officer convicted of manslaughter in Black motorist’s death
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A white Philadelphia police officer was convicted Wednesday of voluntary manslaughter and a weapons charge in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black motorist shot six seconds after the officer arrived on the scene.
Officer Eric Ruch Jr. told jurors he feared for his life when he fired at Dennis Plowden Jr. as the 25-year-old sat on a sidewalk after crashing a car during a high-speed chase. He said Plowden had his left hand raised, but kept his right hand hidden despite police orders. The officer said he could not take cover and feared he would be shot.
Only later did he realize that Plowden was unarmed, the defense said.
“As soon as my client discovered it was heroin and not a gun, he was upset. He was distraught,” lawyer David Mischak said in opening statements last week.
Ruch, 34, dropped his head and cried upon hearing the verdict Wednesday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. He was soon taken into custody.
The jury rejected a more serious third-degree murder charge, but also convicted Ruch of possessing an instrument of crime. The felony manslaughter charge carries a term of up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Nov. 17.
Mischak noted that the jury did not believe that Ruch had murdered Plowden, even though “the prosecution has vigorously pursued a murder conviction” since his client’s indictment. He said his client would consider his legal options going forward.
Ruch is one of three city police officers who had been charged with murder for their on-duty actions by District Attorney Larry Krasner, a longtime civil rights lawyer who frequently sued police earlier in his career. A first-degree murder charge filed against him was dropped before trial.
Krasner had little comment after the verdict, thanking jurors for what he called their “noble and demanding” public service, but said he expected to say more at Ruch’s sentencing.
During the trial, the defense attorney asked jurors to consider the two-minute chase through a city neighborhood that preceded the shooting. Plowden was driving a car initially thought to be linked to a recent homicide. But authorities said, however, that he was not involved in that case.
“It was a tragedy,” Mischak said of the young man’s death. “To call my client a criminal really compounds that tragedy.”
In a key pretrial ruling, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Barbara McDermott barred prosecutors from telling jurors about a series of complaints filed against Ruch during his 10-year police career because he was mostly cleared of wrongdoing by internal affairs.
Prosecutors said there was no justification to shoot Plowden, noting that several other officers took cover and held their fire. The bullet from Ruch’s gun went through Plowden’s raised left hand before striking him in the head. He died the next day.
Ruch was fired from the police department 10 months later.
Plowden’s widow, Tania Bond, who briefly testified at the trial, won a $1.2 million wrongful death settlement from the city.
