Officer Fired After Dragging Woman On Ground To Jail Entrance

Big deal, this ani­mal will be hired by the next depart­ment down the road and giv­en a raise.

A Tampa police offi­cer has been fired after drag­ging a woman on the ground fol­low­ing an arrest, the depart­ment said in a state­ment. The Tampa police depart­ment fired offi­cer Gregory Damon fol­low­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion that deter­mined he vio­lat­ed mul­ti­ple depart­men­tal poli­cies while book­ing a sus­pect into the Orient Road Jail on Nov. 17.
“Professionalism is not only expect­ed, it is demand­ed, in every encounter our offi­cers have with the pub­lic, regard­less of the arrestee being unco­op­er­a­tive or unpleas­ant in return. As law enforce­ment offi­cers, we are held to a high­er stan­dard,” said Interim Police Chief Lee Bercaw.

Body cam­era footage and sur­veil­lance footage cap­tured the incident.

According to offi­cials, Tampa police respond­ed to a call regard­ing an indi­vid­ual sleep­ing out­side the Tampa Family Health Center and refus­ing to leave despite requests made by employees.
Officers arrest­ed the woman, who had pre­vi­ous­ly been pro­vid­ed a warn­ing for tres­pass­ing on the same prop­er­ty the month pri­or. The woman refused to exit the patrol vehi­cle and told the offi­cer “I want you to drag me!”
“Damon took the indi­vid­ual by the arm, drag­ging her from the vehi­cle to the entrance of the jail where he then buzzed the door entrance, prompt­ing two deputies to come out­side and assist with rais­ing the indi­vid­ual from the ground and begin­ning the jail intake process,” the depart­ment said in a statement.
It con­tin­ued, “Rather than remain­ing pro­fes­sion­al, Damon him­self made rude and deroga­to­ry com­ments to the arrestee.”
The inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that Damon vio­lat­ed depart­men­tal poli­cies relat­ed to search­ing, trans­port­ing, response to resis­tance, treat­ment of peo­ple in cus­tody, stan­dard of con­duct, and more.

In 2013, Tampa revised its pol­i­cy on han­dling unco­op­er­a­tive peo­ple fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar inci­dent, accord­ing to the department.
It added spe­cif­ic lan­guage that advised offi­cers “that drag­ging an indi­vid­ual who is unco­op­er­a­tive is nev­er an appro­pri­ate prac­tice and instead, the cor­rect pro­ce­dure would be to request assis­tance from the book­ing staff.”
The depart­ment said that deten­tion deputies are required to help lift some­one from the trans­port vehi­cle and secure them in a restrain­ing chair to be rolled into the intake area.
“This for­mer officer’s actions were unac­cept­able and are not tol­er­at­ed at this depart­ment, which is why we act­ed swift­ly in ini­ti­at­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, reliev­ing him of his duties, and ulti­mate­ly ter­mi­nat­ing his employ­ment,” the depart­ment said in a state­ment. Damon was not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able to respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Damon is not being rep­re­sent­ed by the Tampa Police Benevolent Association in this mat­ter, accord­ing to the organization.