Ohio fires vice officers over arrest of Stormy Daniels
COLUMBUS: Two vice officers were fired on Thursday by the city of Columbus, Ohio, for their role in the wrongful arrest of pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels at a strip club in 2018, an arrest that a lawyer for Daniels said was the result of a “conspiracy of dunces”
The officers, Steven Rosser and Whitney Lancaster, were found to have violated police rules when they arrested Daniels on three counts of illegal sexually oriented activity and then lied to internal affairs investigators about the basis for the sting, city officials said.
The charges against Daniels were dropped within 24 hours, but not before the arrest, at Sirens Gentlemen’s Club in Columbus, drew national headlines. Daniels is best known for saying that she had an affair with Donald Trump before he was president.
Amid scrutiny that the arrest had been politically motivated, the city later paid US$450,000 (13.7 million baht) to settle a lawsuit filed by Daniels. It also disbanded the troubled vice squad after a federal corruption investigation.
The disciplinary action against the officers had been recommended by the police chief in September and was upheld on Thursday by Ned Pettus Jr, the city’s public safety director, who said in a memorandum accompanying the decision that Rosser and Lancaster had demonstrated a “gross neglect of duty and incompetence”.
The charges against Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, stemmed from sworn statements given by the officers that Daniels, while dancing topless at the club July 11, 2018, pressed patrons’ faces into her chest and fondled the breasts of some women in the audience.