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BODYCAM: Sergeant Slaps Groin of Handcuffed Suspect

Sergeant suspended five days without pay in the incident

By Calibre Press | Sep 13, 2017

From the Evansville Courier & Press:

A former assistant police chief’s five-day suspension for excessive force has been approved by the Police Merit Commission.

Sgt. Rob Hahn was suspended five days without pay and chose not to appeal that order, but new details about the incident that led to the suspension were released to the public Monday.

Body cam video released Monday by the Evansville Police Department showed Hahn shoving a handcuffed suspect and hitting him in the groin.

According to EPD spokesman Sgt. Jason Cullum, “did a couple of things that violated (the department’s) use-of-force policy” after taking the man into custody inside a Fares Avenue motel room.

“At one point, (Hahn) pushed the individual’s head against the wall,” Cullum said. “Then he threw him down onto a bed, and as he walked by he punched the individual in the groin area.”

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Only 5 days??? Every officer on that department should be allowed to do the same to him. He just made all their / our jobs more dangerous. The potential for people to fight when being handcuffed just skyrocketed.
- Dmitri Kozlowsky
  
  You bet’ya! Comply then complain doctrine is in force. Provided you can still talk after having your kiwis crushed. Violation of UOF polices constitutes an assault. Why is this officer not under arrest?
  - LegalBeagle
    
    The arrestee apparently did comply with the arrest. This is not like the usual disputed use of force.
    - Dmitri Kozlowsky
      
      All the worse for the arresting officer. A kick in the is a show stopper in a fight. It comes with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
      When it comes to police UOF, expect no justice.
  - LegalBeagle
    
    Oh, BTW, while I cannot defend the conduct of this Sergeant, a violation of a policy is not the same as a crime. Crimes are defined in the criminal laws of the jurisdiction. UoF policies are dictates of an agency, often driven by fear, stupidity, and the misplaced analysis of risk.
- LegalBeagle
  
  I tend to think you are correct. My guess is that he only got the 5 days due to owning up to it immediately (same day confession to Lt. according to one of the articles l found following the link) and doing presentations to the rest of the department about his conduct. He is damned lucky.
  - Dmitri Kozlowsky
    
    It is not luck, it is unwillingness of the leadership and the proffesion to police itself. Unwillingness to apply discipline when it needs to be applied with maximum effect. You are without discipline, therefore out of control. You are greater danger to citizens then the criminals, which is what police force has become in USA. You are a threat and you need to be dealt with u till you are no longer a threat.
    - LegalBeagle
      
      I will not defend this Sergeant, but your assertion is simply without merit. The actual use of force of any type by LE is very rare, and not nearly on a par with the acts of violent criminals directed either at cops or private citizens. The kind of vile conduct we see (from all sorts of people, without regard to pigment, plumbing, or preference) is staggering. I sometimes have to deal with the more disgusting components of a FOIA request for my LE client because the staff who have the responsibility simply can’t stand to review the materials.
      
      From what I have seen, you are too young and sheltered to understand the nature of the conduct that infests the criminal justice system, or to apply critical thinking to the drivel coming from the Wexlers of the world, or the BLM crazies and their Bundy counterparts. My best prediction is that you are under 25, and at most an E4. You are becoming more strident in your assertions, without any basis for them, because you don’t know what you don’t know.
      
      You have no idea how many of us have put ourselves on the line to try to get bad actors and bad actions addressed in the field. I’ve been in the field as a student and practitioner for over 40 years now, and while bad actors in LE are not common, they are there. Trust me; I know, as do most of my friends. Just about 30 years ago, I was directly involved in the firing of 2 “cops” who were not even close to being of my tribe. I’ve seen stuff in published cases that is just appalling, stuff that is so far out there that the efforts to defend the officers involved were almost as dishonest as the crap from the plaintiff’s bar. It pisses me off more than I can describe, as does the conduct of shabby prosecutors, who are not dealt with as harshly as they should be.
      - Dmitri Kozlowsky
        
        We just had a cop walk who shot then planted a weapon on the suspect! A cop who shot a woman through the driver’s side window, across his partner, who was the driver. THen he complained that his dept. threw him under the bus, and clammed up, and on and on. We have you specifically, that proclaim that LE could have ‘legally’ shot 20X more suspects. Your threshhold for lethal force, i.e.being afraid, is way too low. I imagine that us non-LEO citizens have right to shoot police, when we are afraid you will open fire.
        I am a Guardsman (Illinois NG) who just got WO1 warrant. Warrant is an MOS in itself, and this is my third. First I was 13 (FA); then 31A, now Warrant (non-flying) . My intent is to qual for few Army CID training slots.
      - LegalBeagle
        
        The claim was made that Stockley planted the revolver, but evidence simply did not exist to support it. He was a tool, and created lots of bad impressions as a result of his choices, but that does not mean he committed a crime and got away with it. BTW – he is a West Point grad. Your reference to the Minneapolis shooting is pointless, as the investigation is not over.
        
        The number I suggest is based on the number of known assaults on officers with deadly or dangerous weapons. Any such assault justifies the use of deadly force to prevent the foreseeable risk of death or great bodily harm to the officer. You need to buy and read the 3rd edition of Urey W. Patrick and John C. Hall, “In Defense of Self and Others—Issues, Facts & Fallacies: The Realities of Law Enforcement’s Use of Deadly Force”, especially if your goal is be in CID. Likewise “In Context—understanding police killings of unarmed civilians,” by Selby, Singleton, and Flosi (2016). You should also find the youtube video of the excellent presentation to the USAWC by Lt.Col. Bolgiano – it’s about an hour long.
        
        The Graham standard for use of force is based on and generally the same as the standard for private citizens in self-defense, and goes back roughly 120 years. “In other words, the law of self-defence justifies an act done in honest and reasonable belief of immediate danger.” New Orleans & N. R. Co. v. Jopes, 142 U.S. 18, 23 (1891). The real problem, is that both with cops and private citizens, prosecutors are often too willing to prosecute cases that should not be due to their ignorance and sometimes (too often) blatant misconduct. Cops tend to have better knowledge of and access to experts and competent counsel, so they are less likely to be successfully railroaded. Private citizens ought to be killing 100,000+ offenders/year, too. (Hmm, seems I was way low): From the 2015 data on crime victimization in the US from the Bureau of Justice statistics: In 2015, 0.98% of all persons age 12 or older (2.7 million persons) experienced at least one violent victimization. ( grabbed this from a bullet point at https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5804.) As I recall, this does not include burglaries of residences, which for some reason is not included as a crime of violence; only an idiot would assert that, at least with regard to an occupied residence. In reality then, hundreds of thousands of offenders should be shot in such cases.
- Dmitri Kozlowsky
  
  Well what the fuck do you expect? There is no discipline in the ranks , becouse there is no discipline appplied. An egregious assault on a suspect by LEO, and it goes virtually unpunished. A lame ass statement from leadership, followed by a slap on the wrist. Even plain old murder of a suspect goes unpunished. You are fucking pigs, and you deserve every ounce of hate, anger , blood of payback you receive in the street. This atrocious behavior ends one way or another. You won’t police yourselves, so the citizenry have to do it for you.
Dmitri Kozlowsky

There is no justice for civilians or our society , when it comes to police brutality or unauthorized UOF. Shoot a guy, and plant a gun on him, get acquitted. Crush suspect’s testicles, get a five day vacation. What a repugnant state the LE profession has descended into. The modern LEO does deserve to be reviled and hated. You are vile douchebags, the lot of you. 5% of cops abuse citizens, and 95% watch them do it, or cover them.
Samuel Fivey

Dmitri-
I’ll get to your comments in a few but as a former NCO I’m a bit confused regarding your military service. If I may ask, why did you resign your commission togo to enter the warrant officer candidate pipeline? You said you were a 31A, a commissioned MP officer, rather than a 31B enlisted soldier with a MP occupational specialty. That leads to my wondering why you made that decision.
Additionally, Warrant Officer is not a MOS. Contrary to your statement, it is a rank – neither Sergeant nor Major is a MOS, they are both ranks. Each career field with Warrant Officers has a separate alpha-numeric code for those roles. As an example, in the SF career field the officers are 18As, the NCOs are 18B-F and Z, while the warrants are 180As.
So, why did you resign your commission or were you just lying?
If you can’t be trusted to correctly communicate your military occupational specialties, why should I or anyone else here consider anything you have to say on a field outside your realm of expertise as being even remotely correct?

Back to the video, the actions were not acceptable. The agency disciplined the supervisor. You may not agree with that discipline, but neither of us know all of the facts. I very strongly disagree with convicted private Bradley Manning being allowed to walk free; does that mean that every one in the US military is a flawed, incompetent, out of control human being? I mean it isn’t even arguable that convicted private Manning did far more damage to this country, our allies, and the people actually helping us in the current long war than that supervisor did.

Again, I won’t defend the supervisor’s actions but it doesn’t mean the whole profession is flawed. His agency took action.

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BODYCAM: Sergeant Slaps Groin of Handcuffed Suspect

Sergeant suspended five days without pay in the incident

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BODYCAM: Sergeant Slaps Groin of Handcuffed Suspect

Sergeant suspended five days without pay in the incident

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