Ex-police officer pleads guilty in child assault case

A former police officer in Delaware County has pleaded guilty to charges that he assaulted his 12-year-old stepson during a family argument outside the West Goshen home they shared.

“This has cost him his career,” said the attorney for Anthony Capodanno, who had joined the Upper Darby Police Department in 2006 after working both as an officer in the Milbourne Police Department and as a state constable in Chester County.

“He is extremely remorseful, and wishes it had never happened,” defense attorney Coley Reynolds of Philadelphia told Common Pleas Judge Alison Bell Royer during the March 1 guilty plea proceeding in her courtroom, an agreement which calls for no prison time but does require anger management counseling.

Reynolds said Capodanno had established a good reputation in the departments he worked for, and had letters attesting to his solid character.

When asked by Royer whether he had anything to say about the case or his decision to enter a guilty plea to the misdemeanor charge of simple assault, the officer, who was forced to retire after his arrest in 2019, demurred.

“I am going to bite my tongue, your honor,” said Capodanno, who was accompanied by his wife — the victim’s mother — and her parents in the courtroom. “I am not going to say anything, out of respect.”

Royer did not press him on the issue.

Capodanno was a member of the Upper Darby SWAT team and had experience in narcotics investigations when West Goshen police learned of the incident with his stepson via a temporary restraining order filed by the youth’s biological father against him in May 2019.

According to Deputy District Attorney Erin O’Brien, who prosecuted the case as part of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit, the assault took place outside the family home off Five Points Road around 3:30 p.m. on May 6, 2019. She said that Capodanno had grabbed the 12-year-old by the throat with both hands, lifted him off the ground, and then thrown a football at him, while he was outside playing with the family dog and friends.

In testimony by the youth’s older brother at a prior proceeding, it appeared as through Capodanno was angry at the boy because he should have been inside doing homework to improve his grades at school.

The case was investigated by West Goshen Detective Jose Torres. In an interview about the incident that Torres conducted a week after the incident, the youth told him that it had likely been recorded on the family’s door bell security system. But when Torres got a search warrant to look for video from the system on the day in question, it appeared as though a video taken at the time of the confrontation had been deleted.

Representatives of the security company said only customers could delete videos from their files, according to the criminal complaint filed against Capodanno.

As part of his sentence, Capodanno will spend two years on court-supervised probation, have to complete an anger management course, and not have any future criminal contact with the boy, now 14. Charges of felony strangulation, endangering the welfare of children, and harassment were withdrawn by the prosecution in exchange for the guilty plea.