Memo from the police beat.

I’m a couple of days behind on these: I plead just sheer being busy.

Three APD officers have been indicted by a grand jury. Two of the officers were involved in a single indicident, and the third in a seperate one.

In the first incident, the two officers responded to a shooting downtown. A group of people were around a guy who’d been shot. Officers ordered everybody onto the ground. One guy walked away and ended up getting Tasered.

Manley said the officers were indicted because their written reports of the incident did not match up with what was captured on the officers’ body-worn cameras.“Specifically, the individual was described in the report as on his feet and walking away from the officers, and it is clear on the video that that is not what happened in this instant,” he said.

The third case involves a prostitution arrest: details on both of these cases are kind of vague. But:

“We have policies that allow our officers to use force when necessary to effect an arrest or to protect themselves or others,” Manley said, but in the cases revealed Thursday, “the supervisors who reviewed them had concerns and forwarded them up the chain, and they resulted in these investigations and ultimately with these indictments.”

Unrelated, because this took place in Williamson County: a former deputy with the WillCo sheriff’s department has been charged with punching a 12-year-old girl in the face.

A witness told police [Jack] Danford came to the restaurant and had a few beers on the patio after “drinking all day” and started playing with a dog, the affidavit says. A 12-year-old girl came up and started playing with it, too, and Danford “quickly jumped up from his seat and tackled” her, the document says.

Another witness said he heard the girl scream and ran up to see Danford punching her in the face and that he and others started punching and kicking Danford to get him off her, the affidavit says.

According to court documents, he told police as he was being arrested that he was drugged. Danford would not loosen his grip on an officer’s wrist until getting hit several times with a police baton and taken into custody, the documents say.

He’d previously been charged with resisting arrest and public intoxication. Now he gets to add “injury to a child” to his collection.

Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody said the unusual nature of the arrest led him to fire Danford last week.
“When you reflect negatively on our department, there’s a price to pay,” he said.

Comments are closed.