Just another day at the office.(mb
The Warwick Police Department released police officer body camera video from an incident last month that led to an assault charge against a police sergeant.
Sgt. Bretton Kelly, 55, was charged with one count of simple assault for allegedly striking a handcuffed man during the July 15 incident, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and Warwick Police Col. Bradford E. Connor said in a press release last month.
The incident allegedly happened when the Warwick police responded to a domestic disturbance on Amsterdam Avenue, the officials said. Police officers arrested a woman, and her husband who tried pulling one of the officers away from his wife, Neronha and Connor said.
Officers arrested the man and put him in the back of a police vehicle, the officials said. Investigators allege that Kelly later went to the police vehicle, where the man was handcuffed and restrained by a seatbelt, and kicked him in the head and struck him in the face before forcibly removing him from the vehicle. The video shows a handcuffed man sitting in the back of a police cruiser, apparently feeling ill. As a police officer opens the door, the man’s body, restrained by a seatbelt, tilts out the door. “You gonna be all right?,” an officer asks. “I don’t know,” the man answers.
After sitting back up, the man was breathing heavily and sweating. Officers opened cruiser windows and inquired about getting an ambulance. “I don’t feel good,” the man said and his body again tilted out the door, and he appeared to retch or vomit.
After two other officers and a sergeant can be seen approaching the car, a thud could be heard and the man said, “What the [expletive] you hit me for?” “Get out of the car,” he’s told. “What did you just punch me in the head for?,” the man says. “Cause you hit my officers,” a sergeant says then, pulls him from the car. “I got my hands cuffed. What the [expletive] are you doing?,” the man says. Kelly, a 17-year department veteran, is suspended with pay and will face departmental discipline when the criminal case is concluded, according to Connor.