An off-duty Connecticut middle school resource officer was caught on video punching a motorist in the face late last year, WTIC-TV reported.
Thing is, when fellow police officers confronted Allen Ganter about the incident, their bodycam video shows him appearing to play dumb about the punch.
Then the officers told him it was caught on camera, the station reported.
WTIC said a tip came in about the Dec. 8 incident, and the station obtained video of it after filing a Freedom of Information request.
Thomas Brocuglio, 37, was driving his company vehicle with the dash camera recording when he approached a Toyota Tacoma ahead of him at a red light at the intersection of France Street and Cromwell Avenue in Rocky Hill, WTIC said.
“What are we doing?” Brocuglio asked, honking his horn, expecting the Tacoma driver to make a right turn.
“Wait all f**kin' day!” Brocuglio yelled, according to his dashcam. The station said Brocuglio soon gave the finger to the driver of the truck.
Then Ganter — a 57-year-old corporal with the Meriden police force who was off-duty at the time — exited the Tacoma and approached Brocuglio's vehicle while flashing his badge.
Ganter — who has more than 20 years of law enforcement experience, the station said — was about to make his first head-scratching mistake.
“You can’t take a right on red, you a**hole,” Ganter told Brocuglio, according to WTIC.
Problem for Ganter was that the sign doesn't communicate that — and Brocuglio picked up on Ganter's gaffe right away.
“Really? Where does it say that? It says 'stop here on red,'” Brocuglio replied. Motorists can turn right on red when a sign says stop here on red.
Ganter soon was taking photos of Brocuglio’s license plates; Brocuglio accused Ganter of being on his phone; and Ganter then threatened to ticket Broculglio and call his supervisor, WTIC reported.
“Sure. Sounds good,” Brocuglio replied. “Let me get your badge number.”
Instead, Brocuglio got a knuckle sandwich. The station said Ganter punched Brocuglio in the face. That was the cop's second mistake.
The station said Ganter cursed at Brocuglio and asked him, "Who do you think you are ...? Do you want to get arrested?”
A shocked-looking Brocuglio answered, “You are going to get arrested for assaulting a civilian.”
WTIC said Ganter drove off, and Brocuglio called 911, telling the dispatcher, “I was just assaulted by a police officer. He punched me in the face through my window."
Rocky Hill Police responded and generated an incident report saying the punch left Brocuglio “dazed and possibly concussed," the station said.
What's more, Rocky Hill Police bodycam video shows them confronting Ganter at his residence, WTIC reported.
“Is he pressing charges against me like for breach because I yelled at him and stuff?” Ganter asked one Rocky Hill officer.
“For assault because you hit him,” the Rocky Hill officer answered.
“He’s saying that I hit him?” Ganter replied.
Let's just call that mistake number three.
“Yeah," the Rocky Hill officer answered. "And he has video that you hit him."
Amazingly, Ganter asked the Rocky Hill officers if he could charge Broculgio: “There's nothing where I can press for breach for him yelling at me, whatever it is?”
Ganter — a school resource officer for Thomas Edison Middle School in Meriden — was charged with breach of peace and third-degree assault, WTIC said.
Internal affairs found Ganter violated the department's conduct rules, was suspended without pay for five days, and was required to attend de-escalation training for three consecutive years, the station said.
"At the time Corporal Ganter was placed on administrative duty, he was also removed from his assignment as a School Resource Officer, and as a result of the discipline which was rendered as a part of the IA investigation, Corporal Ganter was permanently removed from his assignment as an SRO," the department added in its statement to WTIC.
Video appears to show Meriden officer punch person in the face during road rage incident youtu.be
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Students allegedly physically attacked police officers inside a New York City high school earlier this month — the same school where, just days before, a pro-Israel teacher hid from a student mob during an anti-Semitic riot.
Three students were fighting two other students inside Hillcrest High School in Queens around noon Nov. 15, the New York Post reported, adding that school safety agents who intervened in the brawl became beatdown targets themselves.
Cellphone video that the NYPD verified captured a physical attack on one of the officers, the paper added.
— (@)
Police arrested four students — a pair of 15-year-old males and two 16-year-old males — in the aftermath and issued juvenile reports to them, the Post said, citing the NYPD.
The paper said police issue juvenile reports in lieu of misdemeanor or felony charges when the suspects are young minors.
Three NYPD school officers were injured in the attack, the Post said.
Republican NYC Councilwoman Vickie Paladino said on social media that Hillcrest's "administration tried to cover this up in the same way they tried to cover up the riot."
More from her post:
It's clear that the administration of Hillcrest is totally compromised and either unwilling or unable to do what's necessary to provide a safe environment to their students or their faculty. Furthermore, they seem more than willing to cover up crimes committed by their students in service of a political narrative, and to prevent these criminal students from facing consequences.
Were it not brought to the attention of my office, this may have remained covered up. And who knows what else they're hiding at this point.
This cannot continue. Hillcrest High School must be shut down pending a full and thorough investigation, and the administration must be held accountable. Furthermore, the students who committed these acts must be arrested immediately and face appropriate criminal charges.
This cannot continue in our schools. Order and discipline must be restored. We've tried 'progressive' educational theory for far too long, and it's gotten us absolutely nowhere. Our students and our city deserve far better than this.
The Post said an email to the NYC Department of Education was not immediately returned late Sunday.
Just six days after Hillcrest students allegedly beat on police officers, a pro-Israel teacher there reportedly was forced to lock herself in a school office after hundreds of Palestinian-supporting students caused an anti-Semitic riot.
Hillcrest students reportedly found out that the teacher took part in an Oct. 9 pro-Israel demonstration in Queens, after which students reportedly stormed the school's hallways to protest the teacher's pro-Israel viewpoint. The pre-planned protest allegedly deteriorated into a riot, during which pro-Palestinian students reportedly attempted to barge into the teacher's classroom despite school staffers guarding it.
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A suburban Chicago high school dumped its resource officer after receiving complaints about her "divisive" public defense of police and the Thin Blue Line symbol — and the chief of the Mount Prospect, Illinois, police department is concerned about the power a few people can wield over one woman's career, Fox News reported.
Officer Lisa Schaps — who has served the department for almost 15 years and was the school resource officer at Prospect High School — addressed the village board June 15 regarding concerns about local officers' Thin Blue Line shoulder patch, according to Journal & Topics, an outlet that covers Chicago's northwest suburbs.
Schaps said the Thin Blue Line — which many on the left say carries racist meanings — "was never about hate. It was never about oppression," the outlet said.
"We are good people. We are here to serve and protect, and I think that if you judge us on the actions of a few bad officers or groups that have taken our flag and used that, it is no different than judging somebody on the color of their skin on their religion or on their sexual preferences," she added, according to Journal & Topics.
"The way that we have seen people of color be treated by police officers, if you think that that doesn't enrage us and anger us, then you are wrong," Schaps also said, according to the outlet. "Because the men and women here in Mount Prospect do not treat our citizens that way."
Then Schaps appeared on "Fox & Friends" last week to make her case to a national audience about the Thin Blue Line shoulder patch.
"It's about honor. It's about pride. It's about kinship," she said during last Tuesday's segment. "You know, I even said 'love.' I've got children. I've got family … it's all of those things, and it's just really important to us."
Well, things apparently came to a head for the school — and Schaps literally was called to the principal's office for a meeting, according to Mount Prospect Police Chief John Koziol, who told Fox News Thursday that he attended the meeting with Schaps.
Koziol told the cable news network they both were "floored" that the principal said the school decided it wanted a new resource officer.
"We sat down with him, and he explained he and the district had received complaints and probably from these same people that have an objection to our patch, and I was giving him ideas on how to handle those calls; send them to the police department or the village," Koziol recalled to Fox News. "It really wasn't their fight to fight."
But it was too late, as Koziol told the cable news network that the principal said, "We're past all that; we want a new SRO. We want Lisa gone."
So, what did Schaps do that was so bad?
"They had mentioned that I compared being a police officer to being black when I really didn't say that," she explained to Fox News. "I said, 'Please don't judge us like you would judge somebody on the color of their skin or their religion or their sexual preference.' It was really about the judgment, and they just said that that was inappropriate."
Dave Berry, interim communications supervisor of Township High School District 214, told the cable news network that "we did recommend the consideration of having a different officer assigned to this school in order for our focus to remain on our students."
Berry added to Fox News that "the school does not have the authority to fire or dismiss a school resource officer, so any assertion that the school terminated the school resource officer is not correct or accurate."
Koziol told the cable news network a "small group" of complainers "somehow got this much power to affect someone's career, someone's livelihood" — which he said concerns him, just as the attitude of the principal who Koziol said "really believed in what he was doing" in reference to wanting Schaps gone.
But while the chief stressed to Fox News that Schaps will stay employed by the department, he added that being a school resource officer "has been a passion for Lisa."
"It's been a job she's always wanted," Koziol also told the cable news network. "I know how much she does for those kids. If the wolf ever came to the door at that school, she is the momma bear you wanted there."
He added that her removal from the position has "been devastating for her."
"Here is a very strong, confident woman, which we want in all our police officers," Koziol also noted, "and I saw her devastated in that meeting,"
(H/T: The Police Tribune)
A black officer with the Tampa Police Department was caught on his bodycam saying the N-word on several occasions and was fired for it, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Officer Delvin White — a school resource officer at Middleton High School — was fired Tuesday for "violations of policy that prohibit discriminatory conduct," the paper said, citing a news release.
White — an eight-year veteran of the department — used the N-word while on the phone and during a Nov. 30 arrest, the Times reported, citing a disposition letter police released.
Tampa police spokesman Eddy Durkin confirmed the officer is black, the paper said. Almost half the Middleton High School students are black compared to only one in five students across Hillsborough County Public Schools, the paper said, citing district demographic data.
White's actions during the November phone call were discovered after a random audit of bodycam video, police told the Times, which added that he admitted using the N-word during the Nov. 30 arrest.
The officer was recorded saying the slur in reference to a group of people while he was on the phone and also while he was driving home from an off-duty assignment Nov. 13, the paper said, citing the letter. Smith later uttered the N-word again while speaking to his wife, the Times said.
In addition, bodycam video showed White using the N-word twice while arresting a suspect for trespassing Nov. 30, the paper said.
The letter said when White was confronted about his actions, he told his superior he didn't use the N-word in a derogatory fashion but rather as it's "commonly used in today's society as a means of shared culture and experiences among the African American community," the Times reported.
"Derogatory statements made by police officers jeopardize the trust that our department works to establish with our community," Chief Brian Dugan in a statement, according to the paper. "Tampa Police officers are held to a higher standard, and incidents like this negatively impact the entire law enforcement profession."
In the wake of tragic school shootings like Apalachee High School in Georgia, our nation grapples with a critical question: How do we best protect our children? Sadly, too often, the debate devolves quickly into partisan talking points. The Biden-Harris administration seized on this tragedy to call for more laws that would restrict Americans’ right […]
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