By Christine Byers
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Police Chief Sam Dotson, who suspended an officer caught turning off a dashboard camera in the middle of what turned out to be a controversial arrest, said Wednesday that he was mystified about why she had done it.
“Nothing on that video suggests that we were violating anyone’s rights. That’s what makes it even more perplexing to me,” Dotson said in an interview with Post-Dispatch editorial writers and reporters.
He said the officer, Kelli Swinton, was appealing the punishment for allegedly violating department policy not to shut off a camera until an incident was over. He said he had also suspended a sergeant supervising the scene, whom he did not identify, for one day.
The Post-Dispatch and KTVI Fox 2 reported Monday in a joint story that the man arrested in a traffic stop, Cortez Bufford, had filed a lawsuit against four officers he claims violated his rights.
Bufford was named on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest after the incident about 10 p.m. April 10. But the case was later dropped, according to a spokeswoman for Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, because of concerns about the truncated video.
The recording shows several officers struggling with Bufford after a traffic stop in the 1600 block of South 13th Street. They said that his car was similar to one involved in the firing of shots nearby and that he had made an illegal U-turn.
Police said Bufford refused to get out of his car, and reached for a pocket that contained a loaded gun. They subdued him with “foot strikes” and a Taser.
Joel Schwartz and Bevis Schock, lawyers who filed suit Jan. 22 on behalf of Cortez, allege that police lacked probable cause to stop Bufford and used excessive force against him.
A lawyer for the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association insisted in an interview that the video shows only a proper escalation of force against a resisting suspect who was lucky he wasn’t shot while reaching toward a gun.
The action was continuing as Swinton is seen looking toward the camera and yelling, “Hold up. Hold up, y’all. Hold up. Hold up, everybody, hold up. We’re red right now, so if you guys are worried about cameras, just wait.” The camera is then turned off.
Attorneys for Cortez said “red’ was police slang for a running camera.
Dotson said Swinton’s actions were “so far out of bounds” that he had “no sympathy for her because she knows she did something wrong.”
Swinton’s attorney, Chet Pleban, declined to discuss her conduct and said Wednesday that he was “terribly disappointed” that Dotson did. “It’s inappropriate to make such inflammatory comments when discipline has yet to be completed,” the lawyer said.
Dotson said he planned to use the video as a “case study” in training supervisors.
“The message I want to be to our officers is, ‘Don’t violate our policies or there will be consequences,’ and for supervisors, ‘If you don’t enforce our policies, there will be consequences,’?” he said.
The department has about 100 dashboard cameras, he said, which is 50 to 70 short of covering all vehicles on patrol. St. Louis police have no body cameras.
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