By Bruce Cadwallader
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Columbus police officer was fined and lectured by a Franklin County judge yesterday for punching a fellow officer in the parking lot of their substation.
Municipal Judge H. William Pollitt Jr. said both officers had brought disrepute to their city.
“How can you take an oath to serve and protect when you’re fighting in the parking lot?” Pollitt asked Officer Stanley Byas.
“What kind of confidence will the citizens have in their police department?”
Byas had no comment.
But the judge also blamed the other officer, Joseph Townsend, for inflaming the situation by speaking harsh words to Byas after a 6 a.m. roll call on May 2, 2007. And Pollitt knocked police supervisors for letting the men’s disagreements fester.
Testimony in the two-week trial showed that Townsend told Byas he wasn’t doing his job. Byas followed Townsend outside the substation on E. Woodrow Avenue and punched him in the face, breaking his nose, gashing his forehead and chipping two teeth.
On Friday, a jury found Byas, 47, guilty of disorderly conduct but acquitted him of assault. Jurors have confirmed that one holdout kept them from a second guilty verdict.
Assistant County Prosecutor Scott Kirschman was assigned to the case to avoid conflict of interest for the city attorney’s office, which represents the Police Division. He had asked for that juror to be removed when it was learned during the trial that the juror had once been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, but Pollitt let the juror stay.
Yesterday, Kirschman asked for jail time for Byas, saying that fellow officers were concerned about his work ethic.
Byas, a 23-year veteran, had spent three hours the day before the incident on a school-truancy case that turned out not to have happened.
“Officer Stanley Byas did not do his job on May 1. He was a criminal on May 2,” Kirschman told the judge.
Townsend, 38, also asked that Byas be punished “to the fullest extent of the law.”
“I never, ever anticipated being assaulted by a co- worker,” Townsend said.
The maximum sentence was a $250 fine and 30 days in jail, but Pollitt dismissed the request for jail time.
He ordered Byas to pay $500 to another officer whose personal vehicle was damaged in the fracas and an estimated $1,700 in court costs.
“This is not going away today, I’m sure,” Pollitt told Byas. “You’ve done more to damage your career than I could ever do.”
A police internal-affairs investigation of the incident is under way.
Copyright 2008 The Columbus Dispatch