Cop gets arrested at strip club.
shadowcat
Atlanta suburb
A Dallas police officer was charged with aggravated assault early Sunday morning, accused of pistol-whipping an apparently overzealous good Samaritan.
According to police reports, Officer Andrew Robert Clennell was off duty at a club[Silver City Caberet] in the 8500 block of North Stemmons Freeway when a man in the parking lot backed his car into another officer.
Clennell and the second officer tried to handcuff the man, who broke free, the reports say. Clennell ran after the man up the service road.
Police say Michael Paul Kloever, 33, intervened in the chase. The reports say Kloever saw Clennell's gun and heard him shout “Police!†but was nevertheless unsure of the officer's identity. Police did not say whether Clennell was in uniform.
Kloever tripped the fleeing suspect to the ground, then grabbed Clennell, who promptly hit Kloever with his handgun, cutting him under the eye.
Clennell arrested the suspect before he was arrested himself at 4:45 a.m.
According to police reports, Officer Andrew Robert Clennell was off duty at a club[Silver City Caberet] in the 8500 block of North Stemmons Freeway when a man in the parking lot backed his car into another officer.
Clennell and the second officer tried to handcuff the man, who broke free, the reports say. Clennell ran after the man up the service road.
Police say Michael Paul Kloever, 33, intervened in the chase. The reports say Kloever saw Clennell's gun and heard him shout “Police!†but was nevertheless unsure of the officer's identity. Police did not say whether Clennell was in uniform.
Kloever tripped the fleeing suspect to the ground, then grabbed Clennell, who promptly hit Kloever with his handgun, cutting him under the eye.
Clennell arrested the suspect before he was arrested himself at 4:45 a.m.
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8 comments
A civil case is another matter, of course, but if the victim didn't ask for more positive identification before acting against the verbally identified officer, he might be out of luck there as well. He was certainly stupid to ask, with a gun in play. If Clennell were a private citizen *pretending* to be a cop, or something worse, he might have been shot.
Unless this isn't the whole story, of course. Then, all bets are off.
I'm provisionally on the cops side on this one, at least with regard to the benefit of the doubt. I think the "victim" here was monumentally stupid and in the wrong.
Sometimes you have to face a grand jury to explain your use of force. More often than not you have to face a board selected by the department. An easily asked question is, "in your use of force classes, did anyone teach you to punch someone or use a firearm to pistol whip someone ?"
The only Officer I ever saw get a pass on that was one jumped by ten suspects. He laid them all out.
The samaritan in this case was way out of line, but a defense lawyer will easily get the charges reduced. All the defense lawyer has to do is subpoena the department's use of force instructor, and ask him if a pistol to the face is taught in any of the classes that he teaches. No PD wants that question asked in open court. Anyone with any experience with a handgun knows what can go wrong with that.
I could tell you lots of stories about fights I was in. The funniest was actually an arrest where no force at all was used. The suspect lied his ass off, to the IAD, his family, and the Judge. He didn't know that the entire event was caught on tape. Imagine his embarassment when the tape was played in court. His family, who were the only ones who hadn't seen the tape, were the most surprised. It was priceless watching him squirm.