The Trentonian's Strange But True Page

Friday, February 8, 2008

Naughty, naughty

ELKHART, Ind. - Investigators have decided not to pursue criminal charges against Elkhart police employees involved in the photographing of a woman who climbed on a police station information desk and posed provocatively.
Police said they released security camera video of the November incident since it was no longer needed as evidence.
The woman arrived around 3 a.m. at the Elkhart Police Department in northern Indiana on Nov. 22 after state police arrested the man she was riding with on suspicion of drunken driving. Part of the video released Thursday shows her placing one leg on the desk and then kneeling on it, as a civilian police employee walks around behind her to snap a picture with what appears to be a cell phone camera.
The employee was fired.
No charges were filed, but a corporal resigned, and the department suspended six officers without pay.
Midnight shift supervisors also had to go through ethics training, said Assistant Police Chief Timothy Balyeat.
"It's humiliating, it's embarrassing," he said. "The police station is a secure facility where there's cameras all over the place, and they let their guard down, and they got caught up in the moment and forgot they were working."
Balyeat said the woman was just as much at fault as the officers, but people hold law enforcement personnel to a higher standard.
"When they make mistakes, it has a tendency to impact a little bit more on the community because people are disappointed because they expect more out of their police officers," he said

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