Canton officer resigns over traffic stop probe
A Canton patrolman has resigned following the Police Department’s investigation of a traffic stop during which he argued with the driver and threatened to have social workers take away her three young children.
Police Chief Jack Angelo said the department had already scheduled a termination hearing when the officer, Cody A. Velain, resigned June 16.
The department-issued camera Velain was wearing recorded the traffic stop.
“We took what happened very seriously,” Angelo said. “We don’t condone anything that happened in that video by any means.”
Velain, 28, had been a Canton police officer since 2014. He was a former military police and corrections officer. Canton was his first civilian law enforcement job.
Traffic stop
The city put Velain on paid leave March 12, two days after he pulled over a 34-year-old
Black woman around 8:15 p.m.
The driver was heading home from work and had just picked up her children from her aunt’s house. The Canton Repository is not naming the driver because her only charge was a minor traffic violation.
She didn’t respond to the Repository’s requests for comment, but gave police a written account of the traffic stop, which also was captured on video.
Velain told the driver that he had pulled her over for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, not using her turn signal and no illumination of her license plate.
The driver denied breaking any traffic laws, answered Velain’s questions and provided her license. She appeared to be annoyed.
Velain told the driver that she was “copping an attitude” with him and had “earned” herself a citation rather than a warning. He had the driver get out of the car and took her back to his cruiser, leaving her children to sit in her car, which was still running.
At least two of the children got out of the car and walked back to the cruiser, crying. The children appeared to be about elementary-age.
While standing next to the cruiser, the driver told her children to get back in her car.
“This is what they do to Black people,” she said. “He’s just a racist white man.”
“Wow. Really? Really? I’m racist because you broke the law?” Velain shouted back.
Velain put the driver in his cruiser and told her children that she needed a timeout. A woman who lived in the neighborhood came out of her home and watched the children.
Velain told the neighbor, “Mom’s being a goofball, so she got timeout.” He also spoke on the phone to the driver’s aunt, telling her that the driver “got a little argumentative and aggressive” with him.
Velain and the driver continued to argue inside the cruiser as he checked for warrants and wrote up the ticket.
“I don’t know why the (expletive) you got an attitude, but I’m about to call CPS (Child Protective Services) to take your kids,” Velain said at one point.
“I don’t know why the (expletive) you got an attitude, too,” the driver responded. “You ain’t talking to me like that.”
Velain asked the driver if she wanted to go to jail. “...Go to jail for what?” “Whatever I can find at this point,” he said. “I don’t care.”
When the driver said she had a right to voice her opinion, Velain responded, “OK, that’s fine, and, guess what... I also have the right to make it come out of your pocketbook, so.”
The driver snatched the ticket from Velain’s hand. He applauded as she drove away. The traffic stop lasted about 15 minutes.
Complaint filed
Two days after the traffic stop, the driver filed a complaint with the Police Department, detailing Velain’s behavior and accusing him of racially profiling her.
“I was appalled when I saw it, and that’s why he came off the road immediately,” Angelo said of the video.
A Police Department investigation found insufficient evidence that Velain violated its profiling policy.
But the investigation found Velain had violated policy on cooperation with the public and unsatisfactory performance, and that was enough to move toward firing him, Angelo said.
The chief said police stop drivers all the time and sometimes the drivers aren’t happy about getting a ticket, but officers are trained to remain calm and be professional; Velain did everything wrong.
“I saw somebody who had no control of his temper,” Angelo said. “It was poor self-control and poor policing.”
Past discipline
City prosecutors have dismissed the traffic case against the driver, citing Velain’s unavailability to testify.
A woman who answered the door at an address for Velain said he no longer lived there and declined to pass on a message. The Canton Police Patrolmen’s Association didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.
Velain’s personnel file — obtained by the Repository through a public records request — contained a mix of commendations, reprimands and suspensions.
In May 2019, the department commended Velain for his actions, along with three other officers, to restrain a man who was having a mental-health crisis while sitting on a third-story balcony. The man had a knife and was holding onto his two daughters.
But in November, the department reprimanded Velain after he responded to a traffic crash and assisted with an arrest. According to the reprimand letter, Velain used multiple expletives while addressing a crowd of bystanders, threatened to use force against the crowd and taunted them.
Then earlier this year, in February, the department suspended Velain for a day without pay after he used force to arrest a shoplifter while working security at Walmart. Velain used acceptable force, but wasn’t wearing his camera, as required, when he made the arrest, according to the letter.