Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002 | 11:08 a.m.
A panel of cops and citizens said Thursday a Boulder City police officer used appropriate force in the arrest of a 73-year-old man that left the man with three broken ribs and other injuries.
Officer Joseph "Tony" Norte, 31, assisted by another police officer, followed policy when he pushed Las Vegan Bob Parker, 73, against the hood of a patrol car and then to the ground after Parker twice refused an order to drop a cigarette, the board said.
"The claims of inappropriate force were unfounded," Boulder City Attorney Dave Olsen said this morning.
Olsen said details of the board's report are considered a personnel matter and will remain sealed. A city use-of-force board is convened when officers cause injury or death while on duty.
The FBI, called in by the police department to investigate, finished a report on the incident last week and sent it to the U.S. Attorney General's office in Las Vegas. The report, which is currently sealed, will be forwarded to the Justice Department in Washington, said Agent Daron Borst, the FBI's Las Vegas spokesman.
Parker, a retired pipe fitter, said he would file a lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada is also planning a federal lawsuit.
"I think they need it," said Parker, who said he is still recovering from injuries from the incident. "He shouldn't have jumped in it the way he did. They used force when they shouldn't have."
Parker, who was charged with resisting an officer, was the second elderly man injured by police in two months. Henderson resident Charles Grant Walker, 84, was injured by Henderson Police officers during a routine traffic stop in a casino parking lot.
"To quote from Claude Rains in Casablanca, 'I'm shocked,' shocked to hear that the Boulder City attorney and Boulder City Police have decided to exonerate themselves," said ACLU Director Gary Peck.
"Who in their right mind would have expected them to assign blame to police when it would increase their exposure to liability?"
Parker's attorney, Cal Potter, who specializes in police misconduct cases, decried the decision of the five-member board.
"There's a perception of people in authority that the badge allows them complete control and that they don't have to be accountable to anyone," Potter said. "We're seeing the same thing in Henderson, the escalation of violence."
The board, made up of three police officers and two citizens, found Norte followed procedures.
Norte, a sworn officer for less than two years, stopped Parker's Chevy Suburban Aug. 15 because the license plates matched a vehicle involved in an alleged injury hit-and-run accident near the Las Vegas Strip in July.
Norte approached the vehicle with his gun drawn, backed up by Officer Mike Daniel. When Parker got out of the passenger side of the vehicle, he refused two orders to drop a cigarette. A struggle ensued and Parker was thrown to the ground, then pinned and cuffed.
A vehicle-mounted camera on a patrol car driven by one of five responding officers had been turned off and failed to record the incident.
The police department has since said it will enforce an existing policy that prohibits officers from turning off cameras, but criticism, even from the city itself, has focused on the evidence lost without the videotape.
Bill Ferrence, manager of Boulder Credit Union, and a member of the use-of-force board, said he went into Thursday's hearing skeptical because of the turned-off camera.
"But in the hearing I heard nothing, absolutely nothing, that indicated there was excessive use of force," Ferrence said. "The two other people in the car complied with the orders of officers and nothing happened. They were cuffed, questioned and released.
"Only Parker was combative, and if you're an officer responding to a felony hit-and-run, you want to take care of that ASAP."
Parker, his friend and driver of the car, Larry Maes, Norte and other officers testified in the closed-door hearing.
Former Boulder City Police Chief David Mullin picked the five-member use-of-force board. Three officers, Lt. Bill Brown, Detective Sgt. Slade Griffin and Officer Scott Leonard, along with two residents, Ferrence and Paul Adams, sat on the board.
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