TheAgitator.com
West Virginia Not Yet Feeling Scalia’s New Police Professionalism
Sunday, November 15th, 2009Via the comments, the Charleston Gazette documents the ease with which West Virginia police officer Matthew Leavitt was able to continue to find work in law enforcement despite a long trail of misconduct. It’s worth excerpting at length.
November 2000-June 2001:
Leavitt is employed at South Central Regional Jail.
June 25, 2001:
Leavitt is arrested for driving under the influence.
December 2001-December 2004:
Leavitt is in the U.S. Army. While there, he is disciplined for drinking on duty.
March 2005:
Leavitt is employed as a Cedar Grove Police officer.
January 2006:
Leavitt’s certificate of completion of West Virginia State Police Basic Training is signed.
April 2006:
Leavitt is charged with battery by Charleston police for a bar fight.
June 2006:
Leavitt leaves the Cedar Grove department and is hired by the Madison Police Department.
July 13, 2006:
Leavitt goes to Elsie Keffer’s house in Madison at 7:45 a.m. and harasses her, her boyfriend and her daughter, according to Madison Police records subpoenaed in the Reynolds’ civil suit.
August 2006:
Leavitt resigns the Madison Police Department.
October 2006:
Leavitt is hired by the Smithers Police Department.
Nov. 6, 2006:
Leavitt is hired by the Mount Hope Police Department.
Nov. 24, 2006:
Leavitt leaves the Mount Hope department.
Nov. 29, 2006:
Leavitt is hired by the Gauley Bridge Police Department.
In his employee file, provided to the Gazette by Reynolds’ attorney Mike Clifford, there is a paper where Gauley Bridge Chief L.S. Whipkey and Mayor Damon Runyon kept notes from interviews with Leavitt’s references.
Madison Chief C. Burgess said, “he would love to have him back” and that he “gets along well with other people.” Smithers and Cedar Grove police chiefs also recommended Leavitt to Whipkey.
December 2006:
Hutchinson is hired by Smithers.
January 2007:
Leavitt is terminated by Gauley Bridge for sleeping on duty.
January 2007:
Leavitt is hired by Montgomery.
September 2007:
Hutchinson and Leavitt allegedly assault Roderick and Lakisha White after responding to an incident at their home, according to a lawsuit filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court.
“[Leavitt] threatened to ‘blow my fat black ass away,’” Lakisha White told the Gazette. “He said, ‘Bitch, I own you. I own the streets of Montgomery.’”
December 2007:
Hutchinson receives certificate of completion of West Virginia State Police Basic Training.
February 2008:
Leavitt leaves the Smithers Police Department. (During Leavitt’s tenure at Smithers, he worked for other departments concurrently, a common practice among small-town officers.)
March 2008:
Leavitt, recently hired by Cedar Grove, along with another Cedar Grove officer and a Kanawha County sheriff’s deputy, allegedly sexually assaults Patricia O’Scha on a hill across from Riverside High School, according to a suit filed by O’Scha in Kanawha County Circuit Court.
The three allegedly told her that if she would have sex with them, she wouldn’t have to go to jail. O’Scha said that while she was alone with Leavitt at the Montgomery police station, he implied she should have sex with him or give him oral sex, according to the complaint. Just when he stopped working for Cedar Grove is unclear.
March 2008:
Hutchinson resigns from Smithers and is hired in Montgomery.
August 2008:
Leavitt allegedly handcuffs Gregory Lee Payne and drives him to a wide spot in the road just before Interstate 64 near Cabin Creek. There he chokes and hits Payne, then leaves him by the side of the road, according to a lawsuit filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court.
Aug. 23, 2008:
Leavitt allegedly assaults 17-year-old Sherkiri Terrell. She alleges that after he pushed her head against a wall, he slammed her cell phone to the ground. As the two struggled, she says she put the phone down her pants. She alleges that when it began to ring, he put his hands down her pants to get the phone, according to Terrell.
Aug. 27, 2008:
Joey Carr knocks over a soda machine in Montgomery. Leavitt stops him, takes him to the police station and assaults him. When Leavitt pepper sprays him at close range, Carr says he tries to run away.
“He grabs me and throws me down, kicks me in the stomach and Maces me again,” Carr told the Gazette previously. “When he handcuffs me, he throws me against the car and told me to ‘Quit screaming like a little bitch.’”
Sept. 26, 2008:
Leavitt and Hutchinson assault Twan and Lauren Reynolds. Leavitt hits Twan over the head with a blackjack, kicks him in the back and sprays his eyes with pepper spray at close range.
He also uses a racial epithet and licks Lauren Reynolds on the neck during an interrogation, saying, “Little whore, you like it like that.” Their 4-year-old daughter witnesses much of the assault.
Sept. 27, 2008:
Montgomery officials suspend Leavitt and fire Hutchinson for the incident.
Sept. 29, 2008:
Montgomery police start an internal investigation into the Reynolds beating.
Oct. 1, 2008:
Hutchinson is employed as a Glasgow police officer.
Oct. 21, 2008:
Hutchinson’s last day as a Glasgow police officer.
April 2009:
Leavitt is terminated by Montgomery Police.
April 2009:
Hutchinson is employed by Chesapeake Police, where he is still an officer.
June 10, 2009:
Leavitt is indicted on federal civil rights violations for beating Twan Reynolds and falsely charging his wife, Lauren Reynolds, with a DUI.
July 6, 2009:
Leavitt pleads guilty to two misdemeanor civil rights violations in federal court. During the sentencing Oct. 22, Chief U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin said Leavitt remains defiant.
“He has stated that he only pleaded guilty because he feared that due to, quote, ‘idiots,’ unquote, on the jury, it was the, quote, ’smarter thing to plead guilty,’ unquote,” Goodwin said. “He stated he wants the Court to know, quote, ‘I stand by my actions that day.’”
The paper documents a number of other officers in the state who have been fired from the job for misconduct or physical abuse, only to find work at another department within a relatively short period of time (including Leavitt’s partner the night of the assault on Twan and Lauren Reynolds).
When they say “Fraternity of Police”, they aren’t exaggerating at all. Once you’re in, you’re a member of the team for life. Unless, of course, you turn on one of your “brothers”.
If these two were mafiosi instead of cops, their fellow mobsters would have whacked them long ago for focusing unwanted attention on The Organization. It’s pretty sad when organized crime outfits have higher standards than law enforcement agencies.
Holy swine shit! I guess he was smart enough to leave the NFL players alone and only went after the little people.
I can see the police CYA statements now:
“He is clearly a bad apple, as shown by the fact that we fired him”
“We lack the resources to investigate every applicant’s background”
“He came with good recommendations”
“Isolated incident”
“Media witch-hunt”
@3 Stephen
Er… actually…. I hate to tell you but that guy you’re probably referring to was rehired elsewhere too.
http://is.gd/3CEA2
Actually, I wonder if there is a union factor at work here. It’s difficult enough to give people bad references or let future employers know they stink because of the fear of lawsuits. We once hired someone who turned out to be terrible. After firing him, we asked his former employer who said he’d hoped we’d “read between the lines” of his recommendation.
But it’s worse when a union is involved. In many union shops, such as our public schools, to even write someone a bad evaluation can involve nasty lawsuits, complaints and appeals. I wonder if we’re going to find that past police departments agreed not to put black marks on these guys’ records just to be rid of them.
I also wonder how much the ’round-robin’ of this kind of hiring is because these departments face no actual consequences for having these horrible people on their forces. If you’ve got some rinky-dink town, what actual repercussions are there going to be if you hire Officer Douchebag? Are people going to disband the police force? No. Are locals going to sue the britches off of the police force? They can try, but even if they win, it just takes a lot of money out of the local government, which has no money to begin with. And then what? Maybe the police chief gets fired, and he goes back to what he was doing before, running the local barber shop or something.
I just don’t see what realistically would happen.
As an aside: Mayor Damon Runyon? Really? Man, you couldn’t make that one up.
“He also uses a racial epithet and licks Lauren Reynolds on the neck during an interrogation, saying, “Little whore, you like it like that.” Their 4-year-old daughter witnesses much of the assault.”
How someone can do things like this repeatedly and not have one of his victims, or a victim’s family member, snap and take him out is mind boggling. In a state where so many people hunt, you’d think he’d violate the law of averages sooner or later.
#3 #5 Does not surprise me. WV LE hiring standards are the worst in the nation. Considering the crap pay scale, this is the best they can do. It’s either that or hire retired officers that move here.
#9 It has happened before, but if you think other departments get rabid when one of theirs gets what’s coming to him, you haven’t seen a WV police department go absolutely bugfuck on a community.
I thought we needed a “stimulus” ( cop welfare program) because there are too many officers/academy grads and not enough jobs? At least that’s what they tell me all the time on the news. We need tax hikes and stimuli so good veteran cops don’t get laidoff and young cops can get work..and all that big government bs. But apparently a cop can be fired multiple times and accused of several violent crimes and just ride into town and get a job.
Man, I know several people with no criminal history ( I haven’t even been accused of a single sexual assault!), solid work histories, never been fired/terminated other than a company going under and mass layoffs, that can’t get hired to do anything anywhere. And many other people make “one mistake” and are pretty much shunned, but a fucking cop can murder someone and get an award. Or just assault multiple people and get fired for laziness and doing a bad job multiple times but get glowing recommendations.
Maybe I should look into this career.
#9, it’s called “conditioning to make you fear all authoritah, regardless of what they do to you”. Nice to have a system that protects its own existence with the monopoly on force and rules set up and maintained by its own members.
Sometimes private justice is justified and necessary.
I got tired and numb reading this. Holy shit. If I’d read this in a novel, I’d have said they’d gone on too long. No fuckup could fuck up that long without ever getting pulled up short. Can you nail this Scalia’s door like an angry Martin Luther?
@ #2,
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I just listened to more or less the same story though not quite so long, this morning, but here in the southwest.
This whole sequence of events is just proof of all the crap that cops have to take at the hands of the public. Clearly, the departments that hired these cops were too spineless to stand up for their officers in the face of a few trivial complaints by a bunch of whiny-ass trouble makers. I’m sure if you carefully analyzed each event, you would find that these officers were simply following departmental procedure and behaving in the best traditions of all law enforcement organizations. You should be ashamed for raking up this kind of nonsense. Just wait. Someday you’ll need a cop and this will come back to haunt you.
In my next life I want to have a union as strong as the Police Union protecting me…and a job where I can crap all over my fellow humans as much as cops crap on the peasants.
West Virginia,
Love it or Leav itt.
It sounds like this guy needs 2 weeks of paid leave.
Matt Leavitt pleads guilty to two misdemeanor civil rights violations in federal court. During the sentencing Oct. 22, Chief U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin said Leavitt remains defiant.He has stated that he only pleaded guilty because he feared that due to, quote, ‘idiots,’ unquote, on the jury, it was the, quote, ’smarter thing to plead guilty,’ unquote,” Goodwin said. “He stated he wants the Court to know, quote, ‘I stand by my actions that day.’”.
Leavitt was in a catch 22 situation but he stood his ground. The federal prosocuter Goodwin breath a sigh of relief when Leavitt accepted the two year sentence, Goodwin was afraid he would get a backlash from organizations that represents the plaintiff if Leavitt who have taken this case to a jury trial and be found innocent.
Goodwin knew that Leavitt had evidence that was in his favor. Leavitts problem was he could not afford an attorney that was educated in civil rights law. Leavitt’s hired attorney was on a ambulance chaser status.
Matt Leavitt was sentence two years in a federal insitution ( not prison) in the state of Texas. he will stand on his head to do this kind of time.
The libility insurance company that insured the city of Montgomery and paid the plantiff $500.000 in out of court settlement knowing that leavitt had evidence to support his police officer actions in this case.
This out of court settlement was a surprise to plaintiff and others since the plaintiffs attorney claimed he would take this case all the way to get both Montgomery police officer the maximun sentence and the million dollars that the city had libillity insurance coverage.
Yes its over, but those that know the truth that includes certain federal employees knows Leavitt got the shaft and the plaintiff got the gold mine, which most believe the plantiff laughed all the way to the Montgomery bank.
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