Arresting the robbed
When NM MiniMart at Ninth and Elm streets was robbed Jan. 27, 1996, by a black male, store owner Linda Nassar called police. She wishes she had not.
Police arrived minutes later and were greeted by the owner's son, Nizar Nassar. When Mr. Nassar excitedly began explaining to a female officer what happened, he touched off a bizarre twist of events.
According to Mr. Nassar, another male officer approached and told him to be quiet and told him he had no business there. He tried to explain that he was the owner's son.
"All of a sudden, he started pushing me. He told me if I didn't get out, they were going to Mace me and take me to jail."
When the officer continued to push him, he said, he pushed back. "I saw no reason why I should leave the store. I was only trying to tell them what happened."
Then five or six officers "jumped on top of me and started hitting on me," he said. "Then they Maced me."
His scared mother grabbed one officer, pleading, "Please don't hit him again."
The officer responded: "You want to fight, too?"
Within moments, she was knocked to the floor, threatened with chemical irritant, and handcuffed.
Police never caught the man who took nearly $1,000 from the cash register. A police internal investigation concluded that the officers did nothing wrong.
The plainclothes 'cop'
In April 1995, Laura Arendall watched as her neighbor William Williams was arrested by three uniformed police officers and what appeared to be an undercover officer.
"There were four (officers), all white," she recalled in a recent interview. "One was undercover. I thought he was undercover because he had on regular clothes.
"First, I thought he was a neighbor. But I saw him out there helping with the arrest, and then I figured he was undercover."
But the "undercover" officer was not a cop. He turned out to be the relative of an officer on the scene that day.
Officer Eric Reamer had his brother, Jeffrey, along for the ride - but he may have done more than that.
Aside from Ms. Arendall's account, the girlfriend of William Williams - Sonjia Render - also told police about the involvement of a fourth officer in plain clothes.
Both women gave statements to police about four officers who jumped on the suspect to handcuff and arrest him. Mr. Williams also was sprayed with chemical irritant.
The four officers' actions were excessive and unwarranted, they said. Neither knew that the fourth officer was a civilian. In fact, Ms. Arendall did not know the truth until informed by The Enquirer earlier this month.
Police, however, told a different story, reporting that the officer's brother never left the back seat of the police car. Despite two similar accounts by eyewitnesses, the case was never investigated further.
The 'partner'
When a van driven by Kenneth Pope was pulled over by police in June 1996 for running a red light, Michael Hatter approached the vehicle, opened a side door, spotted additional occupants inside and ordered them to get out.
Mr. Hatter completed citations on one of the suspects and, during the ride in the police car back to headquarters, he shined a flashlight in one suspect's face and ordered him to "sit back and shut up," witnesses said.
The actions might have seemed reasonable had Mr. Hatter been a police officer. But he was merely a civilian observer along for the ride that day with Officer Neal Zoellner.
Internal investigators criticized Officer Zoellner, noting that he treated Mr. Hatter as if he was a partner.
"Officer Zoellner placed Mr. Hatter in a position where Mr. Hatter could have been seriously hurt," they said. "Mr. Zoellner made a traffic stop where he knew the circumstances were suspicious."
For disregarding rules, Officer Zoellner was referred to police psychiatrists. Allegations by Mr. Pope and a passenger, Dante Allen, that the officer and the observer used unnecessary force against them and treated them discourteously were dismissed.
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