Louisville police taking second look at cop camera plan

* The lesson here...

I don't see that lesson in this story. If they had arrested him, the PSU complaint probably would have stuck if this is true.

Settle, 50, in sweat pants and filthy from doing remodeling work, had stopped to chat with someone he knew at a wine tasting in the mall's atrium when spotted by Officer Daniel English, who thought he was acting strangely, according to Robison.

Settle, who had recently moved to a home outside Elizabethtown, couldn't remember his address when English asked.

"He approached him and it went downhill from there," Robison said, saying the officer reported that Settle seemed confused and upset that he was being stopped.

Settle said he told the officer he had been evacuated from Afghanistan with brain trauma and memory issues, and the officer told him he needed to leave the mall.

"I asked him, 'Have I done something wrong?' and he said 'There is no panhandling here,' " Settle said, adding that he denied he was a vagrant and asked to speak with a supervisor.

When the officer asked for identification, Settle said he reached for his wallet, which he kept in his front pocket because he was wearing a cast on one arm, and "the next thing I know he's grabbing the back of my arm and telling me to get my hand out of my pocket and up in the air where he can see it."

"When I look around he had his Taser right in my face," Settle said, claiming he again asked to speak with a police supervisor and told the officer he could verify that he was a soldier in the wounded warrior program. Robison confirmed the officer twice pulled his Taser but did not use it.

After he was escorted outside, Settle said he placed his military ID on the ground, as the officer had a Taser pointed at him, and was approached by several other officers, and told them he was a soldier with a brain injury.

"I could see where this was going and I did not want to get thrown on the ground or pushed against a police car," he said. "And they are saying 'Shut up and do what you're told.' "

Settle said he saw one officer give a signal and they "took me down hard," putting him face down on the ground and with his hands handcuffed behind his back for about 15 minutes.

Settle said he was told he was going to jail, but nobody would tell him why.

"They said, 'Don't worry about it,' " Settle said. "I said what have I done wrong? And I couldn't get an answer."

But eventually, after calling officials at Fort Knox, Settle said, officers came back to him, referred to him as "colonel" and thanked him for his contribution to the country.

"I said this has nothing to do with me being a colonel. I am a soldier but most importantly I'm a citizen and a resident."

Settle said he was told to leave the mall and get his gift card somewhere else on the way out of Louisville.

Robison said while officers cannot restrict a citizen from property without the owner's request, it is common on "trouble runs" in which there is a conflict to remove the person from the area.

The department declined the newspaper's open records request for the internal investigation report, saying it was not a public record based on state law.

However, emails obtained by the newspaper show that an officer involved told a Fort Knox official that day that Settle was "aggressive" and "hostile toward the officer," but that he was not arrested after his identification and condition were verified.

Robison reiterated that the officers claimed Settle acted aggressively toward them and "they felt there was an imminent assault that was going to occur."

"We have different sides of a story," he said. "Traumatic brain injury or not, if there is a fear of an imminent assault, they need to react to that."

Settle denied he was aggressive or hostile, saying he was professional and "if anything, I was concerned I was going to be shot." He said he did move toward an officer who had gotten in his face, though he did so to talk to him and was not a threat as there were officers all around him at that point.

And, he said, if he was aggressive or threatened an officer, "Why wouldn't they do a report?"

Officers cleared

An internal investigation into the conduct of Officers Trey McKinley, Donald Pugh, Jeremy Linton, English and Joseph Vidourek as well as Sgt. Kirby Shobe ended with exonerations and no disciplinary action taken, according to a June 20 letter from Police Chief Steve Conrad.

In a letter outlining that decision, Conrad told Settle, "I am sorry your experience with the Louisville Metro Police Department was unpleasant."

Robison said the officers would probably not speak about the incident because of the possibility of a lawsuit, but that he would notify them. None of them responded Friday.

Robison acknowledged in an interview that the officers did not file an incident report - "I wish there had been" one, he said, adding, however, there was not enough evidence that Shobe knew all the facts of what had happened to punish him for failing to write a report.

Officers did not follow policy and SOP's. The officers took the low road when they verified the Soldier had been truthful in his explanation on his current health status.

Seems that the officers thought their poor decisions would never be questioned. ...... Very bad for all involved.... Happy Veterans Day to all.