This noon police identified the Yellow Springs resident found dead in a car this morning as Dennis Peer, age 59. Peer had been a resident of the village in the past and was currently living in his car, police said. He was frequently seen in the recent past sitting on the bench outside Tom’s Market.

Police made the discovery of the body in a car parked in front of the apartment building on the corner of Winter and Elm Streets, after receiving a call at 9:19 a.m.

The death appeared to be due to natural causes and there was no evidence of contraband, according to Police Chief Dave Hale. However, an official cause of death can not be determined until the coroner’s report is received.

A Yellow Springs resident was stabbed by an unknown assailant as he was walking through Gaunt Park at about 5 a.m. this morning, Sept. 28. The victim sustained minor injuries and was treated and released from Greene Memorial Hospital within several hours. Police searched the immediate area and vicinity this morning with a K-9 unit but did not find any signs of the suspect.

According to Yellow Springs Police Chief David Hale, the victim was attacked toward the middle of the park near the portable restrooms, where a brief verbal altercation occurred before he was cut several times in the abdomen. Because it was completely dark at that time, the victim could only describe the perpetrator as a six-foot male who was unfamiliar to him. The victim is a local resident who lives on West South College Street and did not recognize the attacker, leading police to believe the suspect is likely from out of town.

Police spoke to school officials this morning for safety precautions, but Chief Hale said he had no reason to believe the suspect was still in the area.

He also cautioned residents to remain out of public parks after dark, saying that people have an easier time getting away with a crime under the cover of darkness.

“At that time in the morning, it’s dark, dark, and that’s why we routinely patrol parks and ask that people not go there after dark,” Hale said.

On Monday, Sept. 28, a local resident reported that he was attacked by a man with a knife while he was walking through Gaunt Park around 5 a.m. However, after two days of investigation and public speculation on social media, the Yellow Springs Police Department determined that the report was unfounded.

In a press release on Wednesday morning, Police Chief David Hale stated that the  stabbing incident “did not happen as the alleged victim originally reported” and that the victim was “apologetic to both YSPD and the citizens of Yellow Springs.”

The release also indicates that the victim is seeking help from mental health professionals and the YSPD now considers the case closed.

Chief Hale was not available for comment about the release on Wednesday.

According to the initial report taken from the 52-year-old victim on Monday morning, the resident was walking through the park to retrieve propellers he thought he left at the park while he was flying his drone there the previous day. The victim then stated that he “looked up and saw the suspect,” whom he described as a six-foot male he did not know. He and the suspect had a “verbal interaction” before the perpetrator reportedly stabbed him several times in the abdominal area. The suspect then reportedly fled the scene.

After taking the initial report, police searched the park and surrounding neighborhood with a K-9 unit from the Greene County Sheriff’s Department and alerted the local schools about the reported incident.

According to Chief Hale on Tuesday, the victim’s story later changed slightly.

“The story has changed somewhat — there are some inconsistencies in the story,” Hale said.

Hale declined to speculate at the time on what the inconsistencies in the story might indicate.

At approximately 11:12 a.m. this morning, a home under renovation on the Riding Centre property was ripped apart by an explosion triggered by a propane gas leak in the basement. The most likely scenario was that the gas ignited when the furnace kicked on, according to Miami Township Fire Chief Colin Altman.

No injuries were reported on the property, which is owned by the Glen Helen Nature Preserve. A contractor working on the home had just stepped outside when the explosion occurred. No passersby or Riding Centre employees were hurt. A riding lesson was in progress at the time of the explosion, but the horse was not startled and the rider was not injured.

There was no fire following the explosion because the gas dissipated after the walls of the structure opened up, said Altman. The power and gas to the house have been turned off.

The house is located adjacent to the riding stable just off of East Hyde Road, part of which is closed until further notice. The bike path is presently closed from the covered bridge to the Riding Centre in both directions. The area is deemed as unsafe due to the unstable condition of what is left of the structure, and because of debris in the area.

The property had been under renovation for the past year. The property was going to be leased as a private residence as an additional revenue stream for Glen Helen and Antioch College. A lease was to be signed next week. Shahkar Strolger, the property manager at Glen Helen, said that the property’s insurance agent will be on the scene shortly to determine if the structure can be rebuilt or will have to be demolished.

“We’re extremely blessed and lucky nobody was injured,” said Matt Desjardins, director of communication for Antioch College.

Further details will be published in next week’s issue of the Yellow Springs News.

Looking south at the caved roof of the same house.

The threatening phone calls that some villagers are receiving from a speaker who identifies himself as from the Internal Revenue Service are a scam and should be ignored, according to Yellow Springs Police Chief David Hale on Monday, November 23.

“Either hang up on the caller or just ignore the call completely,” Chief David Hale stated in an email.

The caller states that he is making the call as part of an IRS enforcement action and that ignoring the call is a federal offense. He further states that the person receiving the call should contact 352-561-2042 to remedy the situation.

Again, villagers should ignore these calls.

The Village of Yellow Springs placed longtime police officer Dennis Nipper on administrative leave on Dec. 22 pending the completion of an investigation, according to a statement from Village Manager Patti Bates issued Tuesday, Dec. 29. According to the statement, “At this time, the Village cannot comment or discuss any matters pertaining to the investigation.” The investigation is being conducted by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, an arm of the Ohio attorney general’s office.

According to the statement, Nipper’s wife, Jane, charged with disorderly conduct also on Dec. 22. The charge was referred to the Xenia Municipal Court, where it was scheduled to be heard on Dec. 30.

In an interview on Tuesday, Dec. 29, Jane Nipper stated that her husband, a 43-year veteran of the department, was told he was being placed on leave, but not why, when he reported to work on December 22. He was told to turn in his badge and his gun. According to Jane Nipper, she later went to the department to find out why her husband was placed on leave and “things escalated” when she was treated in a manner she felt was disrespectful. She was also told she would not be allowed on the police department property for a week.

“They just sent him home without a reason and I thought he deserved better than that,” she said.
Dennis Nipper declined to comment.

According to Village Solicitor Chris Conard today, it is customary for the person being investigated to not be informed of the reason until the agency conducting the investigation, in this case the BCI, decides to do so.

In an interview Wednesday, Dec. 30, Police Chief Dave Hale stated that he could not identify the reason for the investigation.

“When an allegation surfaces about an officer, I have to look at it to see what validity it may or may not have, and if the allegation is true, determine what potential harm there might be to the department or the Village,” he stated.

The BCI was called in due to the scope of the investigation and the need for impartiality, he said. Hale also stated that he doesn’t know how long the investigation will take.

Nipper, formerly a sergeant in the local department, retired several years ago and then came back as a part-time patrolman.

Update, Dec. 30, 9:30 p.m.: In Xenia Municipal Court today, Jane Nipper, who was charged by Yellow Springs police on Dec. 22 with disorderly conduct after her husband, Dennis, was put on administrative leave, was advised by the judge to procure an attorney, Jane Nipper said in an interview today. The case was continued until Jan. 6. Nipper, who pleaded not guilty, was released on her own recognizance.

According to the Yellow Springs police narrative of the Dec. 22 event, Dennis Nipper was informed that he’d been accused of misconduct when he reported to work at 5 p.m. on Dec. 22, and told that he was being put on administrative leave. He was advised to go home. His wife, Jane, returned to the Bryan Center about 20 minutes later and approached Chief Dave Hale, who was sitting in a car. According to the arresting officer, Sgt. Josh Knapp, Jane Nipper appeared to be upset and was “yelling” at Chief Hale after she asked him for the reason why her husband was put on leave and Hale responded that he couldn’t give her information because the matter was under investigation, and that she should return home. She replied with an obscenity, according to the report, after which Chief Hale exited the car and told her to leave or she’d be arrested. At that point Sgt. Knapp also told her she would be arrested unless she calmed down and Nipper repeated the obscenity, the report stated. She was then arrested for disorderly conduct and calmly entered the John Bryan Center, where she was given a citation.

According to Chief Hale in an interview on Dec. 30, Jane Nipper was cited into the Xenia court rather than the Yellow Springs Mayor’s Court because he gives officers the discretion to choose which court to use, and Sgt. Knapp chose the Xenia court.

The fact-finding investigation by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, into alleged misconduct by longtime Yellow Springs police officer Dennis Nipper has ended and the results turned over to a prosecutor, according to a spokesperson for the Ohio Attorney General’s office this week. The BCI is a part of the attorney general’s office.

The investigation, which began the end of December and was finished the end of January, was a “relatively short” one for the BCI, according to spokesperson Dan Tierney on Tuesday.

Tierney said he could not comment on the nature of the investigation.

The next step is that a prosecutor reviews the BCI report and decides whether to seek more information, to drop the case for lack of evidence or to present the case to a grand jury, according to Jill Del Greco of the attorney general’s office on Monday. If charges are not filed, the BCI report becomes a public document; however, if they are filed, the document remains confidential until all court proceedings have ended, she said.

The BCI report is being reviewed by Champaign County Prosecutor Kevin Talebi, who will make the decision as to whether to file charges, according to Greene County Prosecutor Suzanne Schmidt on Monday. The Greene County Prosecutor’s office requested that Talebi review the BCI report because the Greene County prosecutor has frequent dealings with Yellow Springs police, she said, stating that it’s common for a prosecutor’s office to decline to become involved in cases with a potential conflict of interest. She also said the Greene County prosecutor’s office has not seen the BCI findings. If Talebi of Champaign County decides to press charges, he will present the case to a Greene County jury as a special prosecutor, Talebi said.

On Tuesday Talebi affirmed that he has received the report. He emphasized that he is just beginning the process of reviewing the document and cannot speculate when it will be completed, adding that he is currently busy with other administrative work.

The Nipper investigation began on Dec. 22, when Nipper, reporting to work, was told by Chief Dave Hale that he was being investigated by the BCI and would be on unpaid leave until further notice. Nipper was most recently a part-time officer for the department, where he has been employed for 44 years. Hale said he was not able to disclose the reason for the investigation.

While the BCI has completed its fact-finding process, it did not interview Nipper, according to Nipper’s wife, Jane, this week. Investigators contacted the Nippers’ attorney, but they did not make contact with Nipper. When BCI spokesperson Tierney was asked if this was common practice, he said that he couldn’t comment on the case.

On Jan. 8, at 2:30 a.m., a motorist struck and killed a deer on Xenia Avenue. The officer who responded attended not only to the frazzled driver but also to the unfortunate deer, which was dead upon impact. The officer moved it from the shoulder to the berm, but what to do with the carcass?

Fortunately, Yellow Springs, like many jurisdictions in the state, has a plan for such circumstances: the deer-strike list, a list of people whom police dispatchers call to retrieve the deer. The retriever gets to keep the deer, and the city benefits from the removal of roadkill. The list was utilized after the collision on Jan. 8, and the deer was claimed and removed within an hour of the accident.

Yellow Springs residents Keith and Barb Swigart are on the deer-strike list. They have retrieved at least five deer through the list since moving back to Yellow Springs in 1996. Calls have come in anywhere from 4:30 p.m. to 3 a.m., Keith said, reflecting the unpredictable times of the collisions. But the couple is always happy to retrieve a deer, even in the middle of the night, he said, because of the esculent windfall such calls portend. The least they’ve ever gotten is 40 pounds of deer meat, Barb said, and the most 90. The only time they turned down a call was because they were already in their church clothes, Keith said.

“If you want the meat, it’s worth the effort to do it,” Barb said.

The list works on a rotating basis, with the person who has most recently collected a deer being moved to the bottom of the list. If a caller doesn’t answer or is already in his church clothes, dispatch will call the next person in line, and so on until the deer is collected.

Anyone in town is able to sign up to be on the list, Hale said. The list currently runs seven people.

After the Swigarts collect a deer, they bring it back to their home, where they process it in their garage. Both Keith and Barb grew up raising animals — pigs and cattle, respectively — and are very familiar with the processing process. And consuming a salvaged deer reflects the way they grew up, Keith said. They had a hands-on involvement with the food they ate, approaching it with the expectation that everything was to be used and nothing was to be wasted.

“My grandpa used every part of a pig,” Keith said. “He would’ve grabbed the squeal if he could.”

Keith said he makes jerky out of salvaged deer and vacuum-seals and freezes other cuts of deer meat. If properly prepared and stored, the meat can last for three to four years, he said. This is not only a decent stockpile, he said, but meat that is free of all the chemicals typically found in industrially raised meat.

Ohio Revised Code anticipates deer struck by motor vehicles. According to code, a driver may take possession of the deer as long as it is reported to law enforcement within 24 hours. If the officer determines the deer died by vehicle, a certificate of ownership will be given to the person who collects it. Post-collision deer do not count towards the two deer allowed hunters annually. (And if the deer is unclaimed, the certificate may be given to a public institution or charity, according to Ohio code.)

Approximately eight deer are collected each year by the folks on the deer-strike list, said police dispatcher Ruth Peterson, who calls people to collect deer. She theorized that deer are aware of the no hunting zones in the area and gather there accordingly, which may account for the deer involved in the accident on Xenia Avenue on Jan. 8.

Overall, the prevalence of deer also depends on the time of the day and year. According to the Ohio Department of Natural resources, most deer strikes occur between October through early January, during deer breeding season, when deer are more active. And deer are generally most active along roadways at dawn and dusk, which corresponds to the occasionally unusual hours of the strike list phone calls. Seventy percent of deer–vehicle collisions occur between 5 p.m. and early morning hours, according to an advisory issued by the Ohio Department of Transportation.

According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the deer population in Ohio currently exceeds 750,000, a number that reflects encroachment on habitat and depletion of natural predators. Barb Swigart said civilization has crowded animals and they’re adapting to the circumstances.

“We’ve encroached on their area and they’re no longer afraid,” she said.

Consequently, Hale said, there are significant numbers of deer in some “seriously populated areas,” such as Xenia Avenue and along Corry Street, which can lead to deer-vehicle collisions. The Greene County Combined Health District reported that there were 11,081 deer-vehicle crashes statewide between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31, 2014, with 405 people injured and two killed.

The relatively low speed limits in the area makes for a lot of injured deer, Hale said, which can lead to what he said was a very unsavory part of the job: putting an injured deer down. Police officers are authorized to shoot the deer if it is suffering, he said, noting that he has personally attended to this task. In such cases, dispatch is alerted about the use of a firearm to let any callers know the source of the shots, with appropriate documentation filled out upon return.

Sometimes civilians are saddled with this grim task, as Keith Swigart knows. He said he could recall two instances over the years where an officer suggested he bring a firearm to take care of it.

But despite the tragedy inherent in any death and the difficulty of sussing out who is encroaching on whose land, Keith Swigart and Hale maintain that the most is being made of an unfortunate circumstance. It seems cruel to leave an animal to suffer and starve in the wild, Hale said, and it seems cruel for a deer to die in vain.

“It’s an old-school mentality,” Hale said, “to respect the wild by not letting anything go to waste.”

Yellow Springs Police Sergeant Naomi Penrod has filed a charge of employment discrimination against the Village of Yellow Springs.

The charge was filed with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, or OCRC, on February 10, according to Mary Terocy, the department’s director of public affairs, in an interview this week. However, Terocy said that because an investigation has begun, she isn’t able to comment on the specifics of the case.

This week Village Manager Patti Bates also declined to comment on the case, saying that she is not allowed to do so. Penrod did not return a phone call seeking comments. She continues to work at the department.

The OCRC seeks to protect people from discrimination based on race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin and disability. However, according to Terocy, most workplace OCRC cases involve retaliation, in which the employee sees an act of discrimination against oneself or someone else that appears to be retribution for a previous act.

The discrimination charge against the Village of Yellow Springs comes seven months after Penrod was found not guilty of charges of assault, interference with civil rights and disorderly conduct following a November 2014 incident. In that incident, in which Penrod and two other Yellow Springs officers responded to a call to the home of villager Athena Fannin, Penrod forcefully removed Fannin’s video camera while Fannin was attempting to film their interaction. Fannin, who is disabled, said that Penrod had inflicted physical harm while taking the camera away.

However, the Greene County Court of Common Pleas jury in July found Penrod not guilty of all charges after her attorney, Adrian King, asserted that the Yellow Springs Police Department lacked adequate training, so that Penrod wasn’t aware that citizens had a right to film interactions with police. During the trial, Police Chief Dave Hale, who at the time of the incident was interim chief, testified that he had instructed all officers regarding citizens’ rights to videotape interactions with police.

During the eight months between the November 2014 incident and the jury trial in July, Penrod was on paid leave from the department. She returned to her position as daytime sergeant shortly after the trial’s conclusion.

Penrod joined the Yellow Springs department in 2008 and was promoted to sergeant in 2014. In 2011 she was recognized by the Greene County Children’s Services as Child Advocate of the Year for her work with children.

According to spokesperson Terocy, the OCRC has a year to complete its case. The average case takes about 10 months, she said, although the process can be far shorter if the investigator finds no merit to the charge of discrimination.

After a charge is filed with the OCRC, the complainant provides the agency with an affadavit of the charge, after which the investigator alerts the respondent to the charge. At this point, both parties are offered the option of mediation. According to Bates, the Village has been notified of the charge and has also stated it is open to mediation. Both parties need to agree to mediation. If mediation is pursued, the process can result in a financial settlement or a non-financial settlement, Terocy said.

If mediation is declined, the investigator pursues the investigation, and the case may end up going to an administrative hearing process, presided over by an administrative law judge, for a final decision. The resolution of the case at this point will almost certainly involve a financial settlement, according to Terocy.

All documents in the case become public after the case is resolved, she said.

Yellow Springs resident Talis Gage, 32, was arrested by local police on Friday, April 8, at 8 p.m. on six felony counts, according to Chief David Hale on Monday. Arresting officers were Dave Meister, R.J. Hawley and John Whittemore, a new officer on the force. Gage was “arrested without incident” at his residence in the village, said Chief Hale.

The case has been referred to Greene County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Anthony Buckwalter. According to a spokesperson for that office, Dennis McManes, the arrest followed a grand jury indictment on Friday on two counts of burglary, one count of attempted gross sexual imposition, one count of sexual battery and two counts of trafficking marijuana. Greene County Prosecutor Stephen Haller is handling the case.

According to Chief Hale, the burglary counts are related to the sexual imposition and battery counts. The marijuana trafficking counts are separate. All alleged incidents occurred in Yellow Springs over roughly the past year, said Chief Hale.

Gage is currently being held at the Greene County jail.

A self-employed landscaper and activist in the local Black Lives Matter group, Gage, who also went by Talis X, has lived in Yellow Springs for four years, according to previous News reports. He filed to run for Village Council last year but was among three candidates disqualified for petition irregularities.

McManes said on Monday he expected Gage to be arraigned by Judge Buckwalter on the next available arraignment date, which is Friday, April 22.

On a sunny day last week, Yellow Springs Police Department’s John Whittemore cleared a few duffel bags from the front seat of the cruiser in front of the police department. The bags are part of the standard equipment that accompanies an officer while on duty, and include everything from binoculars to sheaves of paperwork to a defibrillator. He radioed in that he had a civilian passenger — this reporter — and began his amble around town on proactive patrol.

Officer Whittemore arrived at the YSPD from West Carrollton a little over three weeks ago. He is 41 years old and has been a police officer for 16 years. Whittemore was born in Xenia and grew up in Fairborn, and it’s the connection to the area where he’s lived most of his life that inspired him to become an officer.

“The area holds a special place in my heart,” he said, “I’m going to give the village the best service I can.”

While in his vehicle, a microphone is clipped to his belt that is synced to his car — anytime he uses his sirens, the camera and microphone automatically start recording. As he was driving, he held a remote control that activated the radar that gauges the speed of drivers. Just outside of town, on Dayton Street going south, he clocked a car going 40 in a 25 zone. The cruiser quickly turned around and zoomed up a hill after the speeder. The driver pulled over. He pulled up the driver’s record after collecting her license. No traffic citations since 2004, he said, and he let her off with a written warning.

The brief thrill of speeding after a speeder, the calm resolution of the encounter and his overall interest in interacting with the public speak to the reasons that prompted him to become a police officer 16 years ago, and the reasons why he has enjoyed it since.

Whittemore said going into law enforcement was something he always felt he might be interested in. A neighbor and some good family friends were police officers and firefighters, and their experiences sparked an interest in serving the community in a similar way. These avocations made sense when considering his “pretty strong sense of ethics” and his connection to the area where he’s lived most of his life. He went back and forth between the two fields, but by sophomore year of high school, he knew for sure he wanted to go into law enforcement. In fact, his interest in the career made for a pretty straight-laced teen — he didn’t take part in too many youthful shenanigans lest he jeopardize his chances of becoming an officer later in life.

After graduating from the police academy in 2000, Whittemore worked in West Carrollton and most recently Jamestown. His familiarity with the area (and the similar computer systems used among area departments) factored into his being hired in Yellow Springs to fill the space left by outgoing officer Stephanie Spurlock, said Yellow Springs Police Chief David Hale. The pool of 39 candidates for the position was steadily whittled down through aptitude and agility tests, and Whittemore came out on top.

He characterized himself as a pretty soft-spoken guy, and said that police work has helped him break out of his introverted shell and imbued him with a confidence to step up when he needs to, though he also said his calm demeanor is very helpful in de-escalating tense sitations.

Chief Hale said Whittemore’s temperament and judiciousness are also reasons why he was hired.

“[Whittemore’s] easy-going and mature,” Chief Hale said. “He’s a good fit for the village.”

Whittemore’s résumé is bolstered by technical training. Officers are required to have a minimum of 700 hours of training and often take additional coursework in an area that interests them. Whittemore said he has always been interested in the physics of auto accidents, and has completed 300 hours of crash investigation training. He was the go-to crash investigator in West Carrollton, he said, though since none of the roads in Yellow Springs are over 35 mph, there fortunately aren’t a lot of serious crashes. He also completed an evidence technician course at the Dayton crime lab.

While all of the classes and training have helped make him a well-rounded officer, he said, first and foremost an officer needs to be sensitive to people’s needs.

“If someone calls the police,” he said, “they’re having a really bad day.”

Seeing people at their most vulnerable and scared has made an indelible impression on him. The prevalence of domestic violence was a startling reality he had to face, he said, and crimes against children are especially difficult to see. Sometimes the situations he has dealt with have bothered him for weeks, he said.

“We are taught a lot at the academy,” he said, “but you don’t understand what it’s like until you’re on the street dealing with it.”

While he grew up in the area and has been to Yellow Springs numerous times over the course of his life, working as a police officer has allowed him to get to know the many sides of the village.

He appreciates the area on a professional level, he said. Officers are trusted for their experience, and he values that officers have discretion in issuing citations and determining to which court certain misdemeaner defendants are sent. YSPD jurisdiction doesn’t extend very far outside of the village, but the communication between area law enforcement agencies is great, he said, as Yellow Spring is kind of an island in Greene County surrounded by other jurisdictions.

The ease of mutual aid between departments reflects the temperament of the area, he said. Yellow Springs is an interesting melting pot of people, most of whom are truly interested in the wellbeing of their community. A number of people, from excited kids to construction workers, waved as he drove by. And while the village is not immune to crime, the level of crime here is relatively low.

“A lot of calls I get are from hikers lost in the Glen,” he said.

Sometimes the callers see the absurdity or humor of a situation in which they’ve found themselves — disputes over escaped chickens come to mind — and this allows him to inhabit a role more akin to a “peace officer.”

However, crime is going to happen, he said, and the department wants officers professionally capable of dealing with it.

“In the end, a theft is a theft is a theft,” said Chief Hale. “We need officers who are competent and can get down to business.”

It is this aspect of the job, the excitement of pursuit and the ability to resolve these problems that makes Whittemore happy to be a police officer wherever he is.

“Nothing thrills me more than solving a crime and bringing whoever’s responsible to justice,” he said.

In a letter released today to the News from Special Prosecutor Kevin Talebi of Champaign County, Talebi stated he has concluded his review of charges against a Yellow Springs police officer, and found a lack of evidence to move forward. While Talebi stated he could not cite the name of the accused since he has decided to not file charges, the case is that of longtime Officer Dennis Nipper.

“Upon review of the investigative materials and evidence collected, I have concluded that there is insufficient evidence of any criminal wrongdoing to justify a presentation to a Greene County Grand Jury.” Talebi wrote in a letter to Greene County Prosecutor Stephen Haller, which he released to the News. “I am writing you now to inform you that my investigation into this matter is concluded and that the investigative case will be closed.”

In an email today, Village Manager Patti Bates stated that, “It will be good for the Nippers and the Village to put this behind us and move forward.” Nipper will be released from administrative leave and put back into the police department schedule, she wrote.

A 44-year veteran of the department, Nipper had been placed on unpaid administrative leave on Dec. 22 by Chief Dave Hale, who stated that accusations of misconduct had been made against Nipper.  Hale said he was referring the case to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, to ensure fairness, and could not reveal the nature of the charges.The BCI finished its investigation in about a month, after which the investigation was reviewed by Talebi, a special prosecutor brought to the case by the Greene County prosecutor, who cited a potential conflict of interest.

According to the letter from Talebi, Nipper had been accused of sexual assault by an alleged victim, who also accused him of assaulting others. However, “there are serious evidentiary concerns” about the accusation, according to Talebi, including a lack of physical evidence, a long delay in reporting the alleged event and the fact that there were no witnesses. Also, the other women identified by the accuser as victims had denied any sexual misconduct by Nipper.

“There are significant concerns relating to [the accuser’s] credibility,” the prosecutor stated.

See the May 5 Yellow Springs News for a more detailed story.

In a letter released to the News on Tuesday from Special Prosecutor Kevin Talebi of Champaign County, Talebi stated he has concluded his review of charges against a Yellow Springs police officer, and found a lack of evidence to move forward. While Talebi stated he could not cite the name of the accused since he has decided to not file charges, the case is that of longtime Officer Dennis Nipper.

The letter brings to a close an almost five-month period during which Nipper, a 44-year veteran of the department, was on unpaid administrative leave after being accused in December of misconduct. Police Chief Dave Hale called in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, to investigate the accusation, after which Prosecutor Talebi reviewed the BCI investigation, ultimately finding a lack of evidence.

“Upon review of the investigative materials and evidence collected, I have concluded that there is insufficient evidence of any criminal wrongdoing to justify a presentation to a Greene County Grand Jury.” Talebi wrote in a letter to Greene County Prosecutor Stephen Haller, which he released to the News. “I am writing you now to inform you that my investigation into this matter is concluded and that the investigative case will be closed.”

In an email Tuesday, Village Manager Patti Bates stated that, “It will be good for the Nippers and the Village to put this behind us and move forward.” Nipper will be released from administrative leave and put back into the police department schedule, she wrote. Chief Dave Hale was out of the office for the week and not available for comment.

In an interview Tuesday, Nipper stated that he will return to working for the department.

“I want to go back. That’s what I do,” he said, stating that returning to the department “feels like going home.”

Nipper also thanked his family and the many villagers who have supported him during this time, along with the BCI investigators, Prosecutor Talebi and his attorney, Adrian King of Xenia.

Nipper had been placed on unpaid administrative leave on Dec. 22 by Chief  Hale, who stated that accusations of misconduct had been made against Nipper, but that he could not reveal the nature of the charges.The BCI finished its investigation in about a month, after which the investigation was reviewed by Talebi, a special prosecutor brought to the case by the Greene County prosecutor, who cited a potential conflict of interest.

In a January interview, spokesperson Dan Tierney of the BCI stated that the agency’s investigation into the charge, which took less than a month, was a relatively short one for that agency, which is part of the office of the Ohio Attorney General.

In contrast, Prosecutor Talebi  took about three months to review the case. In an interview on Tuesday, he stated that the review took “longer than intended,” and was sidelined because his office was also working on a case involving the murder of a child.

“Other parts of my workload were more pressing,” he said.

According to the letter from Talebi, Nipper had been accused of sexual assault by an alleged victim, who also accused him of acting inappropriately towards several others. However, “there are serious evidentiary concerns” about the accusation, according to Talebi, including a lack of physical evidence, a long delay in reporting the alleged event and the fact that there were no witnesses. Also, when interviewed, the other women identified by the accuser as victims denied any sexual misconduct by Nipper.

“There are significant concerns relating to [the accuser’s] credibility,” the prosecutor stated.

The accuser, identified in the prosecutor’s letter as “JM,” is currently in prison, according to records of the Clark County Common Pleas Court.

The News has requested a copy of the BCI investigation, which is now a public document, from the Attorney General’s office, and will publish a more detailed story of the investigation when the document is received.

Several villagers attended the June 6 Village Council meeting to express concerns about recent incidents in which they believed local police acted too aggressively.

“This was an overreaction by police that has to be acknowledged and dealt with,” Bob Baldwin said, regarding a recent incident. “Force has to be tempered to the situation.”

During that incident, a longtime local resident felt she had had too much to drink at the Gulch, so she went to her car behind the bar to wait for her daughter to give her a ride home. An officer who found her in the car requested that the woman open the door and she refused. In response, the officer shattered the car window, forced her out of the car and charged her with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and obstructing official business.

“Is this the sort of community policing that we talk about in this town?” said Alisa Meier, referring to the same incident.

The incident was not isolated, according to Chrissy Cruz, who reported another recent event when an inebriated villager walking home was “thrown to the ground” and arrested.

“These are the things making us feel unsafe in our community,” she said.

In response, several Council members said they share the villagers’ concerns.

Three citizens had spoken with Judith Hempfling about the Gulch incident, she said.

“This is a matter of grave concern to me and needs to be investigated,” Hempfling said. “We need to figure out how to prevent this from happening in the future.”

Council is in the process of establishing a new Justice System Task Force, comprised of citizens along with Council representatives Hempfling and Marianne MacQueen, which will look closely at the local justice system, including the police department, with the potential to make changes. However, Council will not wait for the task force in order to address the recent incident, according to Council President Karen Wintrow, who said that she and Council member Brian Housh had talked with Village Manager Patti Bates about the concerns.

“We’re making it clear to staff that we want things to change,” Wintrow said.

Such involvement by Council is a shift in Council behavior, according to MacQueen.

“I believe Council is beginning to take a more active role in talking to police,” she said. “In the past Council was not involved.”

It’s important that citizens recognize that police want to do a good job, Baldwin said, and Council members agreed that no one wants to demonize local officers, but rather, to help them meet community standards of policing.

“We want our officers to de-escalate, not escalate situations,” MacQueen said.

Other June 6 items of Council business will be in next week’s News, including a request by Morris Bean leaders to connect Morris Bean to the Village sewer system, which has been a longstanding topic.

At Council’s June 6 meeting, several villagers expressed concern over two recent instances of what they perceived as aggressive behavior by a local police officer.

The officer involved in both events, John K. Whittemore, is the local department’s newest hire, having joined the force the end of March. However, he is a 16-year veteran of policing, having served most recently in West Carrollton and Jamestown until he was hired by Yellow Springs.

Since the two recent incidents, Whittemore has been taken off the road and is spending several weeks shadowing Officer Dave Meister, Chief Dave Hale said this week.

The department is currently in the midst of a use-of-force review for each of the recent incidents. Such a review is completed every time an officer uses force, Hale said, and the reviewing officers are himself, Sergeant Josh Knapp and Defensive Tactics Specialist R.J. Hawley. The three will look closely at the cases to see if the use of force and tactics involved were appropriate.

“We have a process and it takes longer than some people want,” Hale said. “We will complete the process so that the review is fair and impartial. If the officer is found to have done something wrong, it will come down to a recommendation from the Village manager and me.”

Doing the responsible thing?

The first encounter took place at about 1 a.m. on May 28, in the parking lot behind the Gulch. A longtime local resident, who asked not to be identified at this point as her case is still in the court system, had exited the bar with several friends in order to sit in her car. She had had too much to drink, she said in a recent interview, and texted her daughter to come pick her up. In the car, she tilted the driver’s side seat back so she could rest.

On foot patrol in the parking lot, Officer Whittemore, along with Officer Jessica Frazier, approached the car. It appeared that the woman inside was either asleep or passed out, according to Whittemore’s report of the event (there is no video available). However, in an attempt to make sure she was okay, the officers approached the car to ask about her welfare. According to the report, the woman cursed at them and refused to produce identification. Officer Whittemore noted that he detected a strong odor of alcohol.

The officers noted that the inebriated woman’s car keys were within her reach (a violation of the Ohio Revised Code) and requested that she produce her ID several more times. She refused, and continued to curse at them, the report says. After Whittemore warned that he would smash in her window if she didn’t comply, he grabbed his baton and struck the window four times, smashing it, according to the report. The officers ordered the woman out of the car, and used “joint manipulations” to force her out of the vehicle.

The officers threatened the woman with a Taser, after which she calmed down, according to the report, although further “joint manipulations” were necessary in order to handcuff her. She was charged with obstructing official business, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, and transported to the Greene County jail. The woman was later released after she paid bail of $12,000. A hearing is scheduled next week.

In an interview last week, the woman disputed the police report. She didn’t use profanity until the police shattered her window, she said, nor did the police threaten to Tase her. It makes no sense to her that the police were so aggressive, as she was initially lying down inside her car waiting for her daughter to provide a ride home.

“I was doing the grown-up, responsible thing,” by not driving while intoxicated, she said.

Having her car window smashed in while inside the car was frightening, and she remains infuriated by the event.

“The police escalated the situation,” she said. “This should never happen anywhere, and it shouldn’t happen in Yellow Springs.”

A commercial truck driver, the woman worries about losing her job. The incident added unwanted expense for her family, including $3,000 to procure attorney Jon Paul Rion and $250 to replace the window.

Grounds for arrest?

The secound event took place at about 9:30 p.m. on May 30. A police video of the encounter begins as villager Leonid (Lonya) Clark exits Kieth’s Alley onto Glen Street, then heads diagonally across the street to Speedway. The police car faces him, and Clark walks toward the car, then veers away. There is no interaction between Clark and the officer in the car. Next the police car turns to face Xenia Avenue, and Clark can be observed walking south down Xenia, seemingly oblivious to the
police car.

“It should be noted that [the subject] had several feet in which to walk past me but appeared to have purposely walked in close proximity of my vehicle, with a continued agitated look on his face,” Officer Whittemore wrote in his report of the incident.

Because of Clark’s agitated look, the officer “wanted to check his welfare and mental state,” the written report states. In the video, the police car exits Speedway onto Xenia Avenue heading south, lights now flashing and siren blaring. The car pulls into the parking lot beside the Mills Park Hotel, cutting off Clark as
he walks.

Stopped parallel to the hotel, the car’s video points straight ahead, so that the interaction between Clark and the officer that took place at the driver’s side of the car is not seen in the video. However, the officer’s mumbling voice can be heard on audio, along with Clark’s response, “What are you doing? I didn’t do anything. You have no right to do this.”

According to the report, the officer told Clark to stop but Clark ignored him and kept walking. At this point, the officer grabbed Clark’s wrist. He could smell alcohol on Clark, the report says.

On the audio Clark’s voice becomes increasingly agitated and scuffling sounds are heard. The officer says, “On the ground,” and Clark responds, “I’m on the ground, I surrender.” The officer can be heard threatening to use his Taser on Clark.

According to the officer’s report, he feared for his own safety. “He turned toward me in an aggressive manner and began screaming at me,” the report says. “I attempted to place [the subject] in an arm bar joint manipulation to gain compliance from him but he began to wrestle with me.” The officer describes more “joint manipulations” on Clark, who continues to struggle.

A second officer, Mark Charles, appeared on the scene and helped to subdue Clark, who remained agitated, according to the report. Officer Whittemore is heard contemplating whether to charge Clark with assaulting an officer. Finally, he charges Clark with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and he’s transported to the county jail.

Because Clark was already on probation, he remains in the Greene County Adult Detention Center until his June 24 hearing, according to Probation Officer Jason Parsons. In an interview from the detention center this week, Clark said he is “not too bad,” although he fears he will lose his job at the Mills Park Hotel. He also described the incident and its aftermath as “mentally and physically taxing.”

This week Clark agreed that he probably looked upset when he walked toward the police car, as he had just come from a dispute with two acquaintances, but he didn’t speak to the officer at that point. He still doesn’t understand why the officer stopped him and doesn’t remember anything after being forced to the ground and threatened with being Tased.

“I think it was misconduct on the officer’s part,” he said.

Clark said he had not been drinking and didn’t understand why the officer feared being assaulted.

“I’m 5´ 4˝ and weigh about 120 pounds,” he said.

Council concerns

At the June 6 Council meeting, two Council members responded to the events with their own concerns.

“We want our officers to de-escalate, not escalate situations,” Marianne MacQueen said. And Judith Hempfling stated, “This is a matter of grave concern to me and needs to be investigated.”

Council President Karen Wintrow said at the meeting that she and Brian Housh had met with Village Manager Patti Bates to communicate Council’s concerns.

This week Chrissy Cruz of the Human Relations Commission, who also spoke at the Council meeting, repeated her concerns.

“These events make me feel that all the work the community has done over the past two years is for nothing,” Cruz said, referring to the recent series of HRC-sponsored forums on the relationship between local police and the community.

During the hiring process several months ago for the police department position, Whittemore rose to the top of the 36 candidates who applied for the job, Hale said. He then had about a month of training, which mainly involved becoming familiar with Yellow Springs ordinances. New officers generally receive more training, but as a veteran of policing, he was considered ready to go out on the road quicker than most, Hale said.

In 2012 Whittemore was terminated by West Carrollton after eight years on the job following a several-year pattern of not showing up for work on time. The department investigated the situation and ultimately fired him, according to his West Carrollton personnel file. While Whittemore charged the department with discrimination and filed a suit with the State Employee Relations Board, he lost that case, according to October 2012 records of the SERB meeting.

According to Chief Hale, Whittemore was upfront about having been fired from West Carrollton, and explained that he was going through a hard period in his life at the time.

The Jamestown department hired Whittemore in 2013 and he remained there fulltime until joining the Yellow Springs department, according to Jamestown Police Chief Rodger Tyree this week. Tyree described Whittemore as an exemplary officer who still works for the department parttime.

This week Hale urged villagers who have complaints about interactions with local police to file an official complaint form at the department. While he sometimes hears anecdotes about problems between police and villagers, Hale said he rarely receives official complaints, so that it’s difficult to determine what actually happened.

Officer John Whittemore was dismissed from the YS Police Department Tuesday, ­July 5. (News archive photo by Dylan Taylor-Lehman)

Officer John K. Whittemore, who was hired by the department in March, was let go on Tuesday, July 5, according to a press release from Village Manager Patti Bates. Village Council President Karen Wintrow also announced the termination at Council’s regular meeting Tuesday evening.

“I thought that terminating employment was appropriate under the circumstances,” Manager Bates said in an email following the press release. Police Chief Dave Hale said on Wednesday that he had no comment, since the Village manager and not the police chief has the authority to terminate police department employees.

While two internal department reports found that Whittemore’s use of force was justified, the incidents themselves indicated that Whittemore was a problematic presence in the department, according to Bates.

“Officer Whittemore was dismissed because he was not a good fit for the Village, which is why he was released under his probation, and not based on the findings of the internal investigation,” she said.

Whittemore came to the department with 16 years of policing experience, having worked most recently at the Jamestown Police Department and for eight years before that with the West Carrollton Police. However, he was terminated by West Carrollton for a pattern of not arriving to work on time.

Concerns about Whittemore’s use of force was expressed by several villagers and two Council members at Village Council’s June 6 meeting.

“These are the things making us feel unsafe in our community,” said Chrissy Cruz of the Human Relations Commission.

And according to Council member Marianne MacQueen, “We want our officers to de-escalate, rather than escalate, situations.”

Recent incidents

In the first incident, which took place at 1 a.m. on May 28 in the parking lot behind the Gulch, Officer Whittemore smashed the car window of a longtime local resident who had refused his requests to provide identification and open the car door. The woman, who had had too much to drink and decided to not drive home, was waiting in her car for a ride home, according to an interview with the woman, who asked not to be identified. However, according to Whittemore’s report of the incident, the woman’s car keys were within her reach, which is a violation of the Ohio Revised Code if a vehicle’s owner is intoxicated. After breaking the window, Officer Whittemore forced the woman, who continued to resist, out of the car, threatened her with a Taser, handcuffed her and charged her with disorderly conduct, obstructing official business and resisting arrest.

According to the woman this week, she has pled not guilty to all three charges and the trial has yet to be scheduled.

Whenever force is involved, the department requires that a use-of-force report be completed, according to Chief Hale this week. In the recently completed use-of-force report of the May 28 incident, Yellow Springs Detective R.J. Hawley concluded that “based upon review, the use of force is within policy.” The review, which is based on Hawley having read the written reports of both Whittemore and Officer Jessica Frazier, who was also present, does not include any written analysis regarding how Hawley reached his decision.

In the second incident, Officer Whittemore stopped a 22-year-old local man as the young man was walking on Xenia Avenue near downtown at about 9:30 p.m. on May 30. According to Whittemore’s written report on the incident, the man looked “agitated” and also walked too near the police cruiser as Whittemore was parked in the Speedway parking lot. Whittemore followed the man down the street, then pulled in front of him at the Mills Park Hotel, where the man refused to stop. Whittemore reported that the man smelled like alcohol and pulled away when Whittemore grabbed his wrist, resulting in a struggle and the young man being forced to the ground. When the man continued to resist, he was threatened with Tasing, handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Because he was already on probation, he was required to stay in jail until his case was heard on June 20 in Xenia Municipal Court. The charge of resisting arrest was dropped and the man pled guilty to disorderly conduct.

An 18-page internal investigation of the incident, requested by Chief Hale, was performed by Yellow Springs Sergeant Josh Knapp. Knapp found that Whittemore had acted appropriately in using force to subdue the man; that there was insufficient evidence regarding whether Whittemore had probable cause to stop the man; and that Whittemore had acted improperly in not providing sufficient detail in his written report of the event. The investigation included interviews with Whittemore and with attorney Ryan Engle, although the man involved declined to be interviewed.

Regarding the use of force during the incident, the written report by Knapp notes that the man was combative once the officer grabbed him by the wrist to stop him. The man then swung at Whittemore and continued to be combative, according to the report, so that Whittemore felt physically threatened. Whittemore used arm holds, joint manipulation, a kick and the threat of a Taser before the man was subdued.

“It is acceptable that force be utilized to defend the officer’s person from physical harm,” the report concludes.

Regarding the issue of probable cause, Knapp’s report noted that Whittemore provided more details in his oral interview than he had in his written report regarding why he stopped the man on the street. Along with feeling that the man appeared “agitated,” the officer observed that he was breathing heavily, his fists were clenched and he was walking quickly. Because of this, Whittemore worried about the man’s mental state and whether there was a potential for danger to others who might encounter him, according to Knapp’s report. It seemed reasonable for Whittemore to stop the man to check on his well-being given these factors, Knapp concluded, and once he was stopped and the smell of alcohol was evident, it was reasonable to keep him detained. Once the man became combative, it was also reasonable to arrest him, the report states.

However, Knapp noted that perhaps additional case law should be consulted, so that he ultimately determined that there was inconclusive evidence regarding probable cause.

JUSTICE FOR JOHN CRAWFORD?
This is the first in a series of articles focused on the 2014 police shooting of John Crawford III and its aftermath.

• Read the next article in this series
• Read the previous article in this series
• Read all the articles in this series

From Beavercreek to Baton Rouge, high-profile police shootings of unarmed African-American men over the past two years have roiled, and rallied, people nationwide. To many Americans, these shootings reveal dramatic disparities in how white and black citizens are perceived and treated by police — and how and why, in certain instances, they die at the hands of police.

In the summer of 2014, the police shooting death of John Crawford III in Beavercreek brought this story home to many in Yellow Springs. Outraged at the death and the circumstances that led up to it, some villagers spoke out, organizing protests and other actions. These activists saw, and continue to see, Crawford’s race as a key factor in his death.

“He was killed because he was black and the guy who called 911 figured he didn’t have the right to walk around with a gun. In his mind ‘open carry’ doesn’t apply to black people,” villager Bomani Moyenda said recently, referring to Ohio’s “open carry” law, which makes it legal for licensed gun owners to carry their weapons in public with or without a conceal carry permit. (Crawford did not have an actual firearm, but rather was carrying a pellet gun he had picked up from the store’s shelves.) In addition to organizing protests and vigils in the aftermath of Crawford’s death, Moyenda led a citizen affidavit filing effort to seek charges against the 911 caller, Ronald Ritchie, whose report of an active shooter-type scenario brought police to the Beavercreek Walmart on the night of Aug. 5, 2014.

“I couldn’t really fathom someone being shot for not doing anything wrong or aggressive,” villager Jessica Thomas, another affidavit filer, said last week. Thomas said she, too, believes racial bias motivated the initial 911 report and shaped the police’s lethal response.

Earlier this spring, villager M.J. Gentile said she believed Ritchie told “a series of lies” based on racist perceptions of Crawford. This belief, coupled with the video evidence that clearly showed, she said, that “John Crawford was innocent,” prompted her to join Moyenda and others in seeking charges against Ritchie.

It may be impossible to know exactly how race and racial bias played into Crawford’s death. But as these local views and nationwide reactions to police killings powerfully attest, race is part of the context in America, and perhaps especially so in policing contexts. In the third and fourth articles in our series, the News will examine Crawford’s shooting in light of national data on police shootings, evolving understandings about racial bias and the intersection of bias with the complex work of policing. This third article will focus on the 911 call; the fourth article, next week, will take a closer look at the police response.

What the figures show

The data is very clear: blacks, and specifically black men, are far more likely than whites to die at the hands of police.

In an Oct. 15, 2015, analysis in the New York Times, for example, an economist who studies racial discrimination found that blacks were two-and-a-half times more likely to be the victims of police shootings than whites. Just under one-third, or 31.8 percent, of shooting-death victims nationwide were African-American, according to the article, although blacks make up just 13 percent of the population.

Historically, police killings of civilians have not been reliably tracked by the FBI or other federal agencies. The Washington Post is among news organizations that have stepped into the breach. For the past two years, the Post has tracked fatal police shootings nationwide. The Post data shows that 990 people of all races (the vast majority men) were killed by police last year, and 537 have been killed so far in 2016. About a quarter of those killed each year were African-American, significantly higher than their share of the population, while about half were white, substantially lower than their population share of 72 percent.

The majority of these deaths involved civilians armed with lethal weapons, according to the Post’s data. But in 2015, the Post counted 93 deaths of unarmed civilians and 34 deaths involving toy weapons. This year so far, there have been 35 unarmed deaths and 23 involving toy weapons.

Drilling down further, the Post numbers show that two-and-a-half times as many unarmed blacks were shot dead by police in 2015, as compared to unarmed whites. Almost 15 percent of blacks killed by police were unarmed, versus six percent of whites. In 2016 so far, 12 percent of blacks shot dead by police were unarmed, versus seven percent of whites.

While many studies reveal such racial disparities, one recent analysis sought to address the question of racial bias by analyzing the likelihood of blacks and whites being killed by police in comparable kinds of encounters with police. Researchers looked at data from Houston, and found that blacks in that city were actually slightly less likely to be killed by police than whites in similar types of incidents. Blacks were, however, significantly more likely to be subject to all other uses of force — such as being touched by police, pushed or sprayed with pepper spray — as compared to whites during equivalent encounters with police in Houston and nine other cities and counties nationwide.

Despite well-documented racial disparities in police shootings, the role of racial bias in any individual incident is exceedingly hard to prove.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s 2015 findings on the Ferguson shooting make this clear. While the Justice Department found a pattern and practice of civil rights violations, including racial bias, in the Ferguson police department and municipal court, it did not find Officer Darren Wilson guilty of violating the federal criminal civil rights statute by “willfully” using unreasonable force.

The Justice Department is currently reviewing the Crawford shooting.

Implicit bias and feeling ‘unsafe’

One unique — and to some observers, uniquely troubling — aspect of the Crawford case is the role of Ronald Ritchie, the 911 caller. At a press conference following the grand jury decision not to indict the two officers involved, Special Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier acknowledged the pivotal importance of Ritchie’s eyewitness account, saying, “If he’s not here, we may not be here.”

Unlike other high-profile shootings, police did not encounter Crawford at a traffic stop, or in the course of investigating a crime. Rather, police entered the Beavercreek Walmart specifically looking to eliminate an active shooter threat described by a single 911 caller.

Before Ritchie called dispatch, however, it was his wife, April Ritchie, who first noticed Crawford and pointed him out to her husband. Interviewed by an agent from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, two days after the shooting, she said she felt “unsafe” when Crawford rounded the corner at a distance of 10 to 20 feet carrying a gun she believed was real.

According to the BCI report of that interview, April Ritchie described Crawford’s actions as “very shady,” explaining that he was “kind of being overly aware of his surroundings” and seemed to be “not trying to raise any precautions from anybody.” Crawford didn’t engage the Ritchies, nor did he make eye contact with or otherwise acknowledge other shoppers. She didn’t smell alcohol or marijuana as he passed by, but she did note that he was talking on his cellphone. She briefly saw Crawford’s face — she described him to BCI investigators as a black male with an afro pulled up — but tried not to look at him, she said.

The BCI investigators interviewed 30 other individuals who were in the store that night. None of the shoppers they questioned and just two of the Walmart employees noticed a man with a gun.

The lack of general alarm raised by Crawford’s presence in the store set against April Ritchie’s heightened sense of threat does not prove racial bias. But it does raise the possibility that a form of stereotyping known as implicit bias could have shaped her perceptions.

“Implicit bias is different from explicit bias in that we’re mostly unaware of how it affects our behaviors and interactions,” explained Carmen Culotta, a Wright State psychology instructor who has studied the issue and in January presented on the topic to the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Group, the body tasked with recommending police reforms. According to Culotta, who declined to speak specifically about the Crawford case, implicit bias is often nonverbal and affects our body language and split-second behaviors. “Just about everybody” has this form of bias, she said, which may or may not line up with a person’s consciously held beliefs.

For example, studies have shown that unconsciously held stereotypes about the elderly, women and people of color can shape our behaviors toward individuals from those groups and set the tone for human interactions without our full awareness. Age-related implicit bias may cause people to automatically speak slowly and deliberately around older individuals. Racial implicit bias that stereotypes African-American men as violent, criminal and aggressive may likewise trigger unconscious actions. Asked for an example, Culotta cited the hypothetical case of a white woman who instinctively “clutches her purse” as she walks by a black man.

Once April Ritchie pointed Crawford out to her husband, Ronald Ritchie placed a call to 911 because “it wasn’t normal,” she told BCI investigators. While he was on the phone with dispatch, the couple trailed Crawford at a distance that Ronald Ritchie, who had briefly served in the Marines, deemed safe. He narrated what he saw to the 911 dispatcher.

Ritchie’s eyewitness account

Ritchie’s 911 account exists alongside video evidence from Walmart surveillance cameras showing Crawford’s movements in the store. That evidence was part of what BCI investigators and grand jury members reviewed, though it wasn’t released until after the grand jury decision clearing the responding officers of wrongdoing. A version of the video synched by the FBI with audio from Ritchie’s 911 call offers a unique “real-time” juxtaposition of Ritchie’s words with footage from the store.

Local activist Bomani Moyenda has viewed that video-audio synch dozens of times. And he’s observed numerous, glaring inaccuracies in Ritchie’s account, summarized here. The video does not show Crawford pointing the gun at people, as Ritchie stated twice to dispatch. It does not show Crawford “muzzle checking” children, as Ritchie claimed in his BCI interview. It does not show him “trying to load” the gun, as he stated twice to dispatch. It does not show him repeatedly “waving it around,” as Ritchie said to dispatch and maintained in later interviews.

Early in the audio of the 911 call, Ritchie says, “He’s, like, pointing it at people.” A minute or so later, he tells the dispatcher, “He just pointed it at, like, two children.” The video flatly contradicts these claims, said Moyenda. And in fact, Ritchie himself modified this aspect of his account over time. In his interview with BCI investigators the next day, Ritchie initially tells the agents he had observed Crawford “muzzle checking” two children. He and the agents then view the surveillance footage together, and Ritchie’s account changes. The investigators do not probe him about the shift.

Crawford wasn’t so much targeting anyone as “just waving [the gun] around pointing at things,” which “made me uneasy,” Ritchie indicates in this portion of the BCI interview. A month later, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ritchie is more emphatic: “At no point did [Crawford] shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody.”

How did Ritchie, the eyewitness, get this crucial piece of information wrong?

As with April Ritchie’s perceptions, implicit bias offers one possible answer. A 2004 study by Stanford University researcher Jennifer Eberhardt and colleagues explored how well-documented stereotypic associations between black Americans and crime affects people’s visual processing. In one experiment, participants were “primed” with an image of a black or white face (flashed too rapidly for them to consciously register), then shown a fuzzy image of a crime-related object, such as a gun, being gradually brought into focus. Participants primed with black faces were quicker to identify the still-fuzzy images as a gun or other crime-related object as compared to those primed with white faces. The stereotype, in effect, prompted participants to make connections in the absence of clear visual information, the study found.

Of course, stereotypes can also be consciously held, and the role of racial implicit bias doesn’t preclude the possibility of explicit bias, local activist Jessica Thomas emphasized. Thomas believes overt bias likely played a role in motivating Ritchie’s perceptions.

During the BCI interview, Ritchie does not directly state any racist views. However, several comments to agents suggest a lack of sympathy for Crawford’s death. For example, he opens the interview with the comment that “the other guy kind of deserved it,” referring to Crawford. By contrast, he characterizes the death of Angela Williams, who died of a heart attack as a result of shock over the shooting, as “tragic.” And he remarks to the agents, again referring to Crawford, that “if you’re dumb enough to point any kind of weapon at a police officer you get what’s coming to you.”

Other clues to Ritchie’s racial views include two Facebook posts reported in the media that reference race. One of these was posted the day before his 911 call. According to a Sept. 26, 2014, article in the Guardian, this post was a “meme” featuring comedian Gabriel Iglesias. It read, “Me, racist? The only race I hate is the one you have to run.”

No charges against Ritchie

On Dec. 16, 2014, Crawford’s parents and girlfriend filed a federal civil rights and wrongful death suit against the responding police officers, the Beavercreek police chief, the city of Beavercreek and Walmart. They did not include Ritchie in the suit, though they publicly condemned his actions.

Last spring, however, several Yellow Springs residents, led by Moyenda, filed citizen affidavits asking the courts to review the video evidence and bring criminal charges against Ritchie. Fairborn Municipal Court Judge Beth Root found probable cause for one of the named charges, making false alarms, which is a misdemeanor. She turned the case over to the Fairborn prosecutor, who appointed Mark Piepmeier as special prosecuting attorney — the same prosecutor who’d led the grand jury investigation. At the time of the grand jury decision, Piepmeier said of Ritchie, “He’s trying to be a good citizen, reporting as best he can, what he’s seeing.”

This spring, Piepmeier declined to press charges against Ritchie. “I don’t find any evidence that Mr. Ritchie knew any of the information he was providing was false,” Piepmeier wrote in his decision. He also voiced concern that prosecuting Ritchie would deter the public from calling 911.

Moyenda and other activists have criticized the appointment of Piepmeier and urged another review of the video. They haven’t succeeded.

The statue of limitations in Ohio for misdemeanors is two years. On Aug. 5, 2016, the window for prosecuting Ritchie on the “false alarms” charge closes.

JUSTICE FOR JOHN CRAWFORD?
This is the sixth in a series of articles focused on the 2014 police shooting of John Crawford III and its aftermath.

• Read the previous article in this series
• Read all the articles in this series

In 2014, two high-profile police shooting deaths in Ohio occurred within three months of each other, sparking public outcry and calls for policing reform. John Crawford III, a 22-year-old African-American man, was killed by police in the Beavercreek Walmart on Aug. 5. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice, also black, was shot by police in a Cleveland park on Nov. 22.

That December, Governor John Kasich created a task force to gather public testimony about policing practice and community-police relations and make recommendations for reform. When the task force had finished its work, Kasich appointed another group, the Ohio Collaborative, to review and adopt its recommendations. The Collaborative issued Ohio’s first-ever statewide policing standards last August, and continues the work of crafting new guidelines for law enforcement.

A separate but related effort, also driven by the Crawford and Rice shootings, began around the same time. In late 2014, Attorney General Mike DeWine appointed an advisory group on law enforcement training, made up of police and community leaders. That group looked at the whole scope of police training and recommended specific reforms that are now being put in place.

In this article in the News’ series on the Crawford shooting and its aftermath, we take an in-depth look at both these statewide reform efforts. While it is too early to predict their ultimate effect on policing in Ohio, we seek to understand their aims and early impact. Next week, we conclude the series with observations and reflections from local activists and Crawford’s father, John Crawford Jr.

First-ever statewide standards

The Ohio Collaborative has issued three statewide standards to date, with more in the works. The standards are intended to put every Ohio law enforcement agency on the same page — literally — by defining written policies on key areas of policing practice. The value of such policies is accountability, according to Collaborative member Reverend Daryl Lynch III of the New Prospect Baptist Church in Cincinnati.

“How else do we hold police accountable for abuses of power?” he asked. In his view, the standards send a message to police. “We’re letting law enforcement know that it will be held accountable. Outside eyes are watching,” he said last week.

The first two standards, issued a year ago, concern police use of force, including lethal force, and police officer recruitment and hiring.

“We had the greater sense of urgency with those,” explained Cleveland State University Professor Ronnie Dunn, a member of both the Ohio Collaborative and the earlier task force. “They seemed the most critical to address, hopefully to put a stop to controversial shooting deaths.”

The standards take the form of policy statements intended to serve as models for law enforcement. The use-of-force standard, for example, stipulates that force may be used when it is “reasonably necessary” to make a lawful arrest, prevent an offender’s escape or protect an officer or others from physical harm. The use of lethal force policy defines human life as “the highest value” in Ohio and specifies that officers may use force to defend themselves or another person from serious physical injury or death and in accordance with U.S. and Ohio Supreme Court decisions.

The second standard, on recruitment and hiring of officers, affirms the value of a “diverse workforce,” directs law enforcement to “strive to have a diverse work force that reflects the citizens served” and  states that “agencies should utilize due diligence in ensuring that their prospective employees have the proper temperament, knowledge and attitude to handle this very difficult job.”

This August, the Ohio Collaborative issued a third standard, requiring that police adopt a community engagement strategy “with a primary focus on improving police-community relations.” Future standards will likely focus on data collection to address bias-based policing, the use of body-worn cameras and law enforcement dispatching, according to Dunn.

Police departments are encouraged but not required to comply with the new standards. The Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, or OCJS, runs a certification process, but there are no penalties for non-compliance. Over 50 Ohio law enforcement agencies have been certified on the use-of-force and recruitment and hiring standards to date, according to a recent OCJS press release. That’s around 5 percent of the state’s more than 950 law enforcement agencies.

The Ohio Collaborative will issue a report in March, 2017, listing the agencies in compliance by that date. But the work of the Collaborative will continue, and the opportunity to seek certification will remain open to law enforcement.

“There are nothing but benefits to being part of [this effort],” said Karhlton Moore, OCJS’s executive director. “There’s benefit to everyone, community and police, from all of us working together.”

New standards, but what impact?

Skeptics of the new standards believe that they’re overly broad and lack the force and message of a mandate.

“I don’t think a generalization is enough to enact change,” said Yellow Springs resident Jessica Thomas, an activist in the Crawford case who has followed the task force’s work. “If you don’t know the specifics of what you’re trying to fix, how can you know what specifically to change?” she asked.

In her view, police should face penalties for non-compliance. “Giving suggestions isn’t enough. … There needs to be a real conversation about defunding police departments who are not compliant with the new policies,” she said.

Collaborative member Dunn of Cleveland State stressed that the standards are minimums, allowing agencies the latitude to craft what works for their community. “This is just a baseline that we want all departments to have. They can clearly exceed the standards,” he said.

And Lynch of Cincinnati, responding to the lack of enforced compliance, said, “We’re fighting that they become mandatory. That is our goal.”

Upcoming standards may offer more specific guidance to law enforcement. For example, the Collaborative is currently discussing a standard concerning bias-based policing. The standard would address bias in policing, and could require departments to collect demographic data for traffic, bicycle and pedestrian stops.

Demographic data collection is essential, according to Dunn. “It’s vitally important if we’re going to get to the heart of the issues that have given rise to the crisis in our nation,” he said. Demographic data is what allows police and community members to get a “true picture” of who is stopped and arrested, he said. Should the Collaborative omit data collection from the bias-related standard, “it’s questionable to me what our real commitment is.”

So far, just one local law enforcement agency, the Greene County Sheriff’s Office, has been certified in the new state standards. Complying with the new standards wasn’t difficult, according to Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer.

“I don’t think we had to make any policy changes,” he said. The state standards, he explained, are “rules we basically already follow because we’re nationally certified,” referring to his agency’s accreditation through the Commission on Law Enforcement Accreditation, or CALEA, considered the “gold standard” of police accreditation.

Fifty-five law enforcement agencies in Ohio are currently certified by CALEA, meaning that for them, the new statewide standards are likely redundant. CALEA’s policy standards are much more extensive — there are 484 separate standards — and agencies are evaluated through a more rigorous process than state certification allows, according to CALEA’s Dan Shaw, who oversees accreditation in our region.

Here in Yellow Springs, the local police department is not accredited by CALEA, nor is it currently seeking state certification. Chief David Hale said last week that he is taking a “wait and see” approach to the new standards. “We’re trying to understand the ramifications of being certified,” he said.

Greene County Sheriff Fischer expressed the view that smaller agencies might benefit most from the guidance provided by the new standards. Yellow Springs police department, with 21 employees, is potentially such an agency. And in fact, when Hale arrived on the job as the new chief two years ago, the department’s policy manual contained significant gaps. For example, there wasn’t a specific hiring policy for police officers, just a general policy for Village personnel, nor did the old manual contain a written policy for use of force, according to Hale.

“We were doing things according to the law, but the written policies weren’t complete in some cases,” he said.

One of Hale’s priorities as chief has been to update and complete the department’s policy manual. While Hale believes Yellow Springs’ written policies are now in line with state standards, he doesn’t yet plan to seek certification.

“I’m confident that if we submitted our policies, they’d pass. … [But] if we’re already meeting the standards they’re asking for, what’s the benefit?”

‘Fresh look’ at police training

Alongside the statewide standards, new guidelines for police training came out of a different group, formed by Attorney General DeWine in response to the Crawford and Rice shootings. That group sought to complement rather than duplicate the Ohio Collaborative’s efforts, according to the group’s chair, Reginald Wilkinson, Ohio’s former corrections director.

“We took a look at everything training-related, getting input from many different law enforcement groups,” he said.

In an interview with the News last month, DeWine described the impetus for the effort. “With the high-profile police shootings … I thought I had the ability to impact police training. I wanted [the group] to take a fresh look at police training through fresh eyes.”

The advisory group was racially and geographically diverse and included “a lot of people from the outside not normally associated with the police,” DeWine said.

After several months of meetings, the group came up with 29 specific training recommendations. Those recommendations are now being reviewed and implemented by the attorney general’s office. All but four are either completed or in progress, according to attorney general spokesperson Jill Del Greco last month.

Highlights include new screening requirements for applicants to Ohio’s basic training academies. Academy training is mandatory for all police officer recruits. Applicants are now required to have a high school diploma or GED and pass a drug screening and fitness test, which were not previously entrance requirements. A proposed psychological exam, truth verification test and certain criminal disqualifiers are under review, said Del Greco.

DeWine stressed the importance of the proposed psychological screening, calling it a measure of an applicant’s “basic fitness” to become a police officer.

Another set of recommendations from the attorney general’s group targets the basic training curriculum, specifically, an expansion of basic training hours and courses. As of July, a new 16-hour course called “Community Diversity and Procedural Justice” was added to basic training. The course covers implicit bias, or unconscious prejudice, as well as topics related to procedural justice, or police legitimacy within a community. To accommodate this and other new courses, basic training hours have been increased from 653 to 681.

Group Chair Wilkinson, the former corrections director, believes that the new implicit bias training is one of the group’s most significant recommendations. “We immediately made sure every cop got it,” he said of the training. But he also acknowledged that such training was “just a start” on a topic that many see as fundamental to inequities in policing.

DeWine said he was pleased with the new emphasis on implicit bias training. “I think it’s essential,” he said. “We want [officers] to understand what their biases and prejudices may be.”

Basic training will also now include more scenario-based and stress-induced training, which are more realistic forms of training that “simulate the life and death decisions” that officers may face on the job, said DeWine.

Finally, the advisory group sought to expand advanced training, which officers are required to take annually. In 2016, annual advanced training hours increased from just four to 11. In 2017, they will rise to 20, with the eventual goal of 40 hours of advanced training for each officer annually. And the group recommended new training topics, including this year’s required course on community-police relations.

The Ohio legislature appropriated $5 million in 2016 to pay for the new advanced training. That money will cover reimbursements to police departments for coverage of officers absent due to training, according to Del Greco.

Advisory Group Chair Wilkinson said he “couldn’t be more pleased” with the progress on the group’s recommendations. “They’re accomplishing all of them, not just part of them,” he said of the attorney general’s office.

Another member of the group, Reverend Daryl Ward of Omega Baptist Church in Dayton, said recently that he was impressed by the seriousness of the group’s work.

“It was a substantial process,” he said. “I’m not a Republican, but I think the attorney general did a good job.”

Justice for John Crawford?

Because both of these major reform efforts emerged in response to the shooting deaths of John Crawford and Tamir Rice, it bears asking, are these reforms likely to avert future police shootings in Ohio?

“Our goal is to have fewer tragedies,” said DeWine. Better training for police in key areas decreases the likelihood of tragedy, he added. “But we’ll never know what tragedies we avoided,” he said. “You can’t tell what didn’t happen [in the] millions and millions of contacts between police officers and the public.”

To Wilkinson, it’s those “millions and millions” of community-police interactions that are the real focus of reforms. “You hear about these [shooting] cases and they are sensational. But they are not what happens every day to every cop,” he said.

Ohio Collaborative member Dunn said the absence of unrest and violence may be one indicator that Ohioans believe that leaders are working to prevent future shootings. The impact of the new reforms are difficult to gauge, he acknowledged. But at least in his city of Cleveland, he senses people have a feeling of, “Okay, something’s being done.”

Set against this measured optimism, the example of the Beavercreek police department — which responded with lethal force to a single 911 report of a “black male” in Walmart waving and pointing a gun — suggests the limits of standards and training.

The department has held CALEA accreditation since 1999, and in July was reaccredited “with excellence,” for the second time since 2013. Sean Williams, the responding officer who shot Crawford and is still on desk duty, worked on the latest accreditation effort, according to a July 30, 2016, Dayton Daily News article. As suggested earlier, CALEA accreditation is far more robust than the standards and accompanying certification that Ohio has unveiled to date.

Even more revealing, though, is an Aug. 11, 2015, report by Beavercreek Police Chief Dennis Evers reviewing where the department stands in relation to recent state and national policing recommendations. (A department spokesperson didn’t return calls for comment about departmental changes since the 2014 Crawford shooting.) In that document, Evers states that the department averages 87 hours of annual advanced training per officer, set against the goal of 40 hours recommended by the attorney general’s advisory group. Elsewhere in his review, Evers notes that the department already collects demographic information on all traffic stops and arrests, with monthly and annual reports reviewed annually by the chief — putting Beavercreek ahead of national and state recommendations.

In summary, Evers writes, “The Beavercreek Police Department meets or exceeds the proposed recommended law enforcement changes outlined in the reports of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Governor’s Task Force on Community-Police Relations and the Advisory Group on Law Enforcement Training.”

For those seeking justice for John Crawford, that may be a discouraging conclusion.

The Yellow Springs Police Department has added a new officer, Allison Saurber, 22, to its fulltime ranks. Saurber comes to Yellow Springs after working for a year at the Butler County jail. Before that, she graduated from the police academy.

Because she hasn’t previously worked as a patrol officer, Saurber is currently shadowing other local officers to learn the ropes of the job. Currently, she is learning from Dave Meister and previously, she spent several weeks in the company of RJ Hawley. She’s worked both day and night shifts, and currently works from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Before Saurber came on the job, the department was down three officers, following the departures of Tom Sexton, Jessica (Frazier) Kessel and John Whittemore.

While she’s just beginning to interact with villagers, Saurber is eager to see herself as part of the community.

“Instead of the big, mean police officer, I want to be the kind of individual people want to see, like a resource to the community,” she said in a recent interview.

Saurber lives in Butler County. For a more extended story about the department’s newest officer, see the Oct. 13 News.