Officer faces additional charges in pepper spray incident
A Columbus police officer previously accused of pepper spraying three women without cause during racial injustice protests last year faces additional charges after investigators identified a fourth victim.
Traci Shaw, a 21-veteran of the Columbus Division of Police, was among three city police officers charged in June with misdemeanor offenses related to alleged criminal misconduct during Downtown protests that began here in late May 2020 following the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
At the time, Shaw was charged with three misdemeanor counts of assault, three counts of dereliction of duty and three counts of interference with civil rights following an investigation by specially appointed independent prosecutor Kathleen Garber and independent investigator Richard Wozniak.
Garber and Wozniak announced on Monday that Shaw will face one additional count of each of those charges after the pair’s continued investigation of a May 30, 2020 incident involving the officer led them to identify a fourth alleged victim.
Shaw is accused of pepper spraying a group of women that day near the intersection of High and Goodale streets, according to an affidavit of probable cause signed by Wozniak.
In court records, the women claim that Shaw exited her cruiser and pepper sprayed them with no provocation before they could explain that they were walking to a friend’s apartment nearby. One of the women recorded video of the incident that was provided to investigators, court documents show.
Three of the women knew each other and had already cooperated with the city’s investigation. But it wasn’t until this month that one of the victims identified by name a fourth woman who was with them at the time, but who they had never met before that night, the affidavit states.
Charges against Shaw and fellow Columbus officers Phillip Walls and Sgt. Holly Kanode were announced in June following Wozniak and Garber’s investigation into alleged police misconduct occurring within the first several days of protests that began May 29, 2020 and continued well into June.
Wozniak, a retired FBI agent, and Garber, a former Franklin County prosecutor, were hired by the city to conduct the investigation working as independent contractors.
Walls is charged with two counts each of assault, dereliction of duty and interference with civil rights for allegedly pepper spraying two people on May 29, 2020 who were on the sidewalk at the intersection of Broad and High streets.
Kanode, who is accused in court records of falsifying a use-of-force report regarding an arrest that took place on May 30, 2020 at the intersection of Broad and High streets, is charged with one count of falsification and one count of dereliction of duty.
When the charges were first announced, then-interim Columbus police Chief Michael Woods said all three officers would be on “relieved of duty” status, meaning they would be paid to work on desk duty, in accordance with standard procedure until the cases against them are resolved.
Columbus police have drawn no shortage of criticism for their handling of last year’s protests as public anger reached a boiling point over police fatal shootings of unarmed Black men in cities across the country, including Columbus.
In late April, a federal judge said police had “run amok” in handling unrest in a ruling prohibiting Columbus police officers from using tear gas and wooden bullets to break up non-violent protesters. The ruling came after more than two dozen protesters filed a lawsuit alleging police used excessive force during the 2020 protests, some of which led to rioting and vandalism at the Statehouse and to Downtown businesses with costs running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.