Springfield Police Department launches criminal investigation of four officers who beat black suspect
Published: Thursday, January 07, 2010, 8:03 PM Updated: Friday, February 26, 2010, 8:15 AM
Note: The video above is a condensed version of nearly 19-minute video submitted to The Republican. For a look at the entire, unedited video, click here.
Updated Thursday at 11 p.m. with more details
SPRINGFIELD - The Police Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the actions of four officers during a traffic stop in which 28-year-old black city man was beaten by a white officer with a flashlight, The Republican has learned.
The incident was caught on video by an anonymous bystander, and the officer shown swinging the flashlight is identified in the arrest report as patrolman Jeffrey M. Asher.
The video of the Nov. 27 arrest of Melvin Jones III, of 55 Middlesex St., who was charged with drug possession and resisting arrest, was obtained by The Republican. It has been in the hands of law enforcement and city officials for several weeks.
It shows Jones being hit at least 15 times by one officer swinging a metal flashlight while two others wrestle with him on the hood of a police car. In the police report of the incident, one of the officers states the struggle ensued when Jones became violent and grabbed one of the officer’s gun and began to pull it.
Roughly just before the 2-minute mark of the video, one officer can be heard shouting what sounds like a racial epithet as he commands Jones to put his hands behind his head. One of the witnesses standing near the camera can be heard repeating the same phrase and asks if anyone else heard it.
Afterward, Jones is shown lying motionless on the ground, and the camera operator can be heard exclaiming “He’s dead!”
Jones suffered fractures to the bones in his face that needed reconstructive surgery, according to his father, Melvin Jones Jr., who supplied the copy of the video to The Republican. His son also sustained a broken finger that required two pins and is now partially blind in one eye.
Melvin Jones Jr. said he was shocked and angry when he first saw the video and has only grown more angry since receiving it. “I counted 17 or 18 times they clubbed him with that flashlight,” Melvin Jones Jr. said. “Those officers have no regard for human life.”
Other officers named in the arrest report are patrolmen Michael J. Sedergren and Theodore Truoiolo. They were under the command of Lt. John M. Bobianski.
The four were working an extra duty detail of “hot spots” in the area of nearby Hancock and Orange streets. The detail was funded with money awarded the city under the Sen. Charles Shannon Jr. Community Safety Initiative grant program, a state program.
Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet has ordered Capt. Charles Arpin to perform “a full criminal investigation,” according to Sgt. John M. Delaney, aide to the commissioner.
Delaney said the department’s Internal Affairs Unit is also conducting a separate investigation to determine if there was any misconduct from any of the officers involved.
Police received a copy of the video and are reviewing it, according to Delaney. He said Fitchet ordered the criminal and internal investigations before the department received the video.
The department has consulted with the Hampden District Attorney’s Office about the investigation, and has also notified the office of Mayor Domenic J. Sarno, Delaney said.
District Attorney William M. Bennett on Thursday afternoon issued a statement saying, “I am aware of the internal police investigation regarding the arrest of Melvin Jones III. I will be reviewing all relevant information regarding the arrest and the internal investigation.”
Sarno, reached Thursday night, said he has been in contact with Bennett and Fitchet about the matter. He said he has seen the tape and repeatedly called it “disturbing.”
He pledged there would be a very thorough investigation. “We need to get to the bottom of this and any information of what went on,” Sarno said, expressing concern for potential fallout and adding that city is not looking to sweep anything under the rug.
“People know my reputation on public safety, and the know my reputation on race relations,” he said.
Jones, who, according to the police report was employed as a deli clerk at a supermarket in Holyoke, has pleaded innocent in District Court to charges resulting from his arrest. They include three felony counts of possession for marijuana, crack cocaine and Percocet, resisting arrest and malicious damage to a motor vehicle, a police car.
The police report states that the officers recovered 38 “rocks” of crack cocaine, 38 Percocet tablets and eight bags of marijuana. He is due back in court on Feb. 3, according to his public defender Jarod Olanoff.
Olanoff declined comment about the video or any aspects of the case. He said Jones would also not speak while his court case is pending.
Melvin Jones Jr. said his son has been arrested previously. The police report mentions he had recently been released from prison after serving 18 months for cocaine possession. He said if his son was carrying drugs on Nov. 27, he should be punished in court.
“I’m not trying to sugar coat anything for my son,” the elder Jones said, “but no human being should be treated like that.” 
While officers talked to Barnett, they noticed Jones acting unusually beside her in the front seat and asked him to step out of the car. He was described as sliding forward and putting something in his pants.
As Truoiolo attempted to pat him down to look for weapons, Jones bolted down Rifle Street, according to the report. The report says Truoiolo and Sedergren caught up to him and began wrestling to control him.
Sedergren writes that during the struggle Jones grabbed his gun and began to pull at it. He states that he yelled for officers to strike Jones “in order to disorientate him. Officer Asher struck Jones several times in the chest, shoulders and face with the flashlight.”
The report narrative said Jones then “struck violently toward Asher,” striking the car’s side mirror to break it.
The report continues that Jones at this point appeared reaching toward his waistband, and fearing he was reaching for a weapon, Sedergren again yelled for officers to strike him again.
“Officer Asher struck Jones several more times in the front of his body, causing him to become disorientated,” the report states.
The report state’s that Asher’s jacket was ripped, but does not indicate any injuries to the officers.
Jones’ father said the account of his son’s arrest does not match what is depicted in the video. “The way they wrote the report is not the way the video describes it, and it’s not the way that it was told to be by various people that were witnesses,” he said.
He said he does not see his son reaching for a weapon or even fighting back.
The woman who filmed the video and whose voice is heard throughout the taping is unknown.
Melvin Jones Jr. said he received a copy in the mail two to three weeks after his son was arrested. The letter had no return address.
The woman filming it is heard to exclaim at one point that the scene before her is “Rodney King 2010.” King was the black Los Angeles motorist whose beating at the hands of white police officers in 1991 was captured on video.
This is not Asher’s first brush with allegations of brutality. Asher’s most recent encounter with conflict came in late 2004 when he was among a group of white officers accused of beating a black school principal in his car at a South End gasoline station. While the officers were cleared in February 2005 by the Police Commission in a 3-2 vote of any wrongdoing, the city subsequently paid a $180,000 settlement in the case involving Douglas G. Greer, then principal at the New Leadership Charter School.
Greer said the officers broke the windows on his car as he suffered a diabetic attack, dragged him from the vehicle and then beat him. Asher wrote in a report to the then police chief, Paula C. Meara, that police only tried to restrain Greer as he thrashed and screamed before being taken to the hospital. Portions of the report released to The Republican showed conflicting accounts from witnesses and statements from others about Greer’s history of violent diabetic seizures.
Six months later, in August 2005, Asher was transferred from uniform patrol duty on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift to inside duty in the Records Division, where he has served ever since.
That transfer was among 17 made at the time by then acting commissioner Fitchet who did it under a new policy which, he said, sought to match an officer’s experience and interest to a position.
Asher first gained notoriety in 1997 when he was caught on videotape, kicking Roy Parker, a black man who was already cuffed and held down by other officers. It was an incident which aggravated race relations in the city.
Asher was later cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by a judge who said he had used reasonable force in making the arrest. He was, however, suspended for one year and ordered to undergo sensitivity training by the Police Commission. A labor arbitrator later reduced Asher’s suspension from 12 to six months and awarded him about $20,000 in back pay after concluding the Police Commission had punished the officer too harshly.
Asher maintained he kicked Parker, a self-confessed heroin addict with 170 arrests, after Parker slashed him in the neck with a sharp-edged object and resisted arrest.
Asher’s troubles with the department date back to as early as 1994, the year after he graduated as president of his police academy class. The city, in 2000, paid $75,000 to settle a brutality complaint against Asher and another officer, Daniel Brunton, for a 1994 incident.
The settlement was made in a case involving a Springfield man, Michael J. Cuzzone, who reported being beaten unconscious by Asher on May 26, 1994, after Cuzzone’s friend had a dispute with Asher’s father, Michael Asher, a bartender at Donnie’s Cafe on Chestnut Street.
Cuzzone, who filed suit a few months after the 1997 incident involving Parker, claimed he’d been beaten in an apartment above the bar. The city made no admission of wrongdoing in paying the settlement, and neither Asher nor Brunton was disciplined in connection with that incident.
Asher, a Marine Corps veteran of the Persian Gulf War, has not been without commendation and exemplary service. In June 1996 he rescued a child left behind in a building evacuated for a natural gas leak, for which he won a statewide bravery award from the Italian-American Police Officers Association. In January 2001, he was among a group of officers involved in subduing a suspect who was shot by another officer in an incident on Main Street which the man threatened patrolmen with a knife.
Asher and two other officers were treated at Baystate Medical Center after being kicked or kneed by the suspect, police said. In that incident, a subsequent meeting with members of the Hispanic community - the suspect was a Latino man - found the public was satisfied police acted properly to subdue a dangerous suspect, whose young daughter phoned for help.
