Two Cincinnati police officers were stripped of their police powers Monday after allegations they kidnapped a convicted drug dealer early Saturday, sprayed him with chemical irritant and left him in Mount Airy Forest.

        Police officials took the guns and badges of Spec. Mike Mercer and Officer Robert Litman, District 3 officers who have histories of citizen complaints and discipline.

        The officers were assigned to desk duty, “where they can have little to no contact with the public,” department spokesman Lt. Kurt Byrd said Monday.

        The FBI, Cincinnati police and Hamilton County prosecutors are investigating the case, in which Courtney Evans of North Fairmount said the officers forcibly removed him from a house on Borden Avenue in Cumminsville, took him to the park, sprayed him and left there at 2:45 a.m.

        The incident happened just hours after Attorney General John Ashcroft visited Cincinnati to sign an agreement outlining changes to be made by Cincinnati Police.

        Many of those changes were designed to track and limit use of chemical irritant and other kinds of force.

        Police Chief Tom Streicher called the FBI to investigate, a move Lt. Byrd said was deemed necessary because of the seriousness of the allegations and the possibility that the officers violated the civil rights of Mr. Evans.

        The FBI, in turn, will notify the Justice Department's civil rights division, an FBI spokesman in Cincinnati said Monday. That division just spent nearly a year investigating Cincinnati police patterns and practices, resulting in Friday's agreement.

        Mr. Evans, 22, who sometimes lives with his mother in her North Fairmount home, was found by another officer on patrol in Mount Airy Forest Saturday.

        Mr. Evans' mother spoke about the incident Sunday at a meeting about racial profiling attended by Martin Luther King III. But Monday at her home, she said she could not talk about it and would not give her name. She said her son was not home.

        After the other officer found Mr. Evans in the park, he called a supervisor, who then reported the incident up the chain of command. Prosecutor Mike Allen said he was notified quickly.

        Police logged the report as a kidnapping, a second-degree felony.

        Mayor Charlie Luken, who invited the Justice Department to investigate Cincinnati Police after last year's riots, called the allegations against the two officers discouraging.

        But he said he was encouraged that the police department's reaction was “swift and definite.”

        “I would like to think that this kind of thing wouldn't happen, but with 1,050 police officers, sometimes it does,” Mr. Luken said. “This one is upsetting — at least the allegations are.”

        Spec. Mercer, 34, on the force 13 years, was reassigned Monday to the telephone crime reporting unit. Officer Litman, 38, a 10-year veteran, was reassigned to the impound unit. Both units are common places for officers to wait out the results of internal investigations.

        The officers both have been the subject of prior complaints and discipline, sometimes together.

        Officer Litman received a 240-hour suspension in 1995 for failure of good behavior, a 40-hour suspension in 1997 for neglect of duty and a written reprimand for missing court in 1996.

        Officer Mercer's file shows he was counseled in 1999 for flipping a coin to determine whether to arrest a suspect and in 2001 for entering a residence without a warrant.

        He was reprimanded in 2001 for running a stop sign during a pursuit, and in 2000 for playing a joke on new police recruits by sending them on fake runs.

        Both, however, were described on their most recent performance evaluations as leaders of their shifts in District 3.

        Mr. Evans has had a lot of contact with Cincinnati police officers, including Spec. Mercer, and has gotten several tickets for pedestrian violations in the same block of Borden Avenue from which he said he was forcibly removed Saturday.

        In fact, Spec. Mercer wrote the most recent ticket, in November.

        Mr. Evans spent most of last year in prison for selling crack cocaine. He was sent there in January 2001, and was released in October. He also spent six months in prison in 1999 after police found crack in his car. His other run-ins with law enforcement included misdemeanor convictions for drug abuse, public gaming and obstructing official business.

        On the Saturday incident report, Mr. Evans told police he worked for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on Colerain Avenue. Officials there said Monday afternoon that wasn't true.

       Enquirer reporters Robert Anglen and William A. Weathers contributed.

       E mail jprendergast@enquirer.com

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