WARREN Report: Officers are going too far

A hearing will determine if the officers should face disciplinary charges.
By PEGGY SINKOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Two city police officers will be taken off the streets after an internal investigation concluded they were performing unwarranted searches on people stopped for traffic violations.
Officers Ed Hetmanski and Joseph Kistler will be given assignments inside the police department, said Police Chief John Mandopoulos. "They will be working in here until the completion of this."
He noted that a hearing will soon be held to determine if the officers should face disciplinary charges.
According to the internal investigation conducted by Lt. Joseph Marhulik and reviewed by Greg Hicks, city law director, the officers violated Willie Summerlin's constitutional rights when they searched him and his vehicle during a traffic stop Dec. 30.
Complaint
Summerlin, of Second Street Southwest, filed a complaint with the department stating that when police stopped him and accused him of going through a red light, they subjected him to a pat-down search in which they went through his pockets and grabbed his crotch.
He noted that officers also placed him in the back seat of a cruiser while they searched his vehicle.
"In the law director's opinion the officers went beyond the scope of searches," Marhulik's report states. Both Hicks and Jim Sanders, an assistant law director, "agreed there are problems with the officers' search of the person and the vehicle. The officers went beyond the guidelines of the law for a traffic violation. Greg [Hicks] believes that there is a violation of the constitution."
The officers could not be reached to comment.
Response
"I'm just so happy that the internal investigator found that what the officers did to me was wrong," Summerlin said Friday. "I felt so violated by this."
According to written statements submitted as part of the internal investigation, both officers said they began following Summerlin's vehicle after they saw it stopped on Front Street Southwest. Summerlin said the person he was talking to on Front Street was a man he knew from his work in a steel mill.
"This area is commonly known and proven to be a neighborhood of high drug activity," Kistler's statement reads.
The officers stated they followed the car and noticed that the driver went through the red light of Tod and West Market Southwest. They noted that they briefly lost sight of the vehicle but saw it again on the corner of Iowa and McMyler Northwest.
Stopped
The officers said when they stopped Summerlin's car on Iowa, Summerlin appeared to be "very angry." They said they thought he may have been concealing a weapon because Summerlin was moving in his seat when officers approached his vehicle.
The officers' statement also said that people who lived in the home where the traffic stop was conducted began yelling at officers.
"In an attempt to control the situation, the driver was placed in the patrol vehicle," Kistler's statement reads.
Marhulik, however, questions the police officers' motives in his report.
"If the situation was that hostile, why did not one of the officers search the vehicle and the other remain alert and watch the driver and the three other people," the report states. "Were the officers that unsafe, or did they only describe the situation that way?"
The report also states that reviews done on other traffic stops performed later Dec. 30 by Kistler and Hetmanski showed that additional illegal searches may have been conducted.
"Also upon reviewing the tape, I feel the officers are conducting illegal searches of person[s]," Marhulik's report states. "The majority involves pat downs and searches. I believe the officers are going way beyond the scope of the pat down. The officers are doing searches possibly without legal authority."
sinkovich@vindy.com