Wednesday, April 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
The defense finally got its turn at bat today in the trial of three former Metro Police bicycle officers charged with brutalizing a coin thief and then trying to cover it up.
It took prosecutors a week and a half to present their case that centered around a videotape of a portion of the incident in the Fremont hotel-casino security office shortly before midnight on June 11.
In the video, officer Robert Phelan, 26, is seen slamming his fist into the chest of Andrew Dersch when he refused to give his true name to the officers.
Dersch, 39, then is thrown into an adjoining room -- where the video camera could not see but where its microphone picked up threats from the officers and cries of pain from Dersch.
Security officers who witnessed the incident told of seeing officer Brian Nicholson standing over Dersch -- whose pants had been pulled down -- with a PR24 police baton that had a rubber glove pulled over it.
The video recorded Nicholson, 26, threatening to sodomize Dersch with the baton and Sgt. James Campbell, 48, joking about the interrogation that focused on getting Dersch to reveal his true name -- although the officers already had it from Fremont security records.
Sheriff Jerry Keller fired the three officers and the district attorney's office filed charges of oppression under the color of law, conspiracy and filing false police reports.
The question not answered in the state's case was who squealed to Metro's Internal Affairs Bureau about the Fremont incident and the existence of the videotape.
Sgt. Robert Roshak, who investigated the incident as an IAB detective, testified Tuesday that the man who reported the event in an anonymous telephone call gave both general and specific information.
Roshak said the voice on the telephone did not match that of Dersch or the state's star witness, Fremont security officer Robert Harsha, or anyone else interviewed during the investigation.
Other testimony Tuesday focused on the stories Metro administrators were told about the incident from two reports and a telephone call from Campbell and Phelan.
The reports alleged that Dersch attempted to flee from the officers as they attempted to arrest him and was injured while being subdued.
Dersch suffered a gash over an eye when he was tossed onto the desk that necessitated stitches at University Medical Center and a "use of force" report by the officers.
Phelan's and Campbell's names appear on that report. Phelan also authored the official police report on the incident.
But the statements that Dersch was injured while fleeing were contradicted by the videotape, which showed him sitting passively before and during the questioning.
He politely answered questions from the officers, although he gave false information, before being punched and hauled into an adjoining room.
Lt. Anthony Lozich testified Tuesday that on the night of the incident, Campbell called him on a cellular telephone to explain that a suspect had been injured in a struggle while fleeing from officers.
The call, Lozich said, was to explain the officers' absence from a debriefing session at Metro.
archive
