Officers in video acted correctly, probe finds
Viral video of arrests sparked outrage, debates on use of force.
WEST PALM BEACH — More than 1 million people saw a West Palm Beach police officer grab a woman by her hair on a March afternoon and pull her away from a downtown bar.
A video posted on Facebook of the March 25 melee at Banko Cantina prompted thousands of comments and heated debates over whether the woman “asked for it” or if the officer’s actions qualified as police brutality.
Last month, an internal investigation into Officer Kevin Harrell’s actions — before and after the minute-long video — concluded that his use of force was justified. The department ruled the same for two other officers seen detaining people in the video, including one who used a Taser on a man.
As for those three Banko Cantina patrons, all have open misdemeanor cases stemming from the confrontation.
Orlando Gonzalez, the attorney for the woman detained by Harrell in the video, said he thinks a jury would find Shannon Chatman’s arrest “intrusive.” He said Harrell should not have engaged the way he did.
The Post sat down with West Palm Beach Police Chief Sarah Mooney last week to discuss the encounter as well as the department’s internal investigation.
“Any time you have a use of force, it’s ugly,” Mooney said. “I wish we didn’t have the crazy viral videos because it doesn’t give the officers the benefit of the doubt . ... It has everybody jumping to conclusions about what happened without all the information.”
What investigators found
Mooney knows the viral video of her officers looks “egregious.” The incident looked particularly bad, witnesses said, because it was a male officer using force on a woman.
Mooney quickly released body-camera footage “to get at least part of (the officers’) story out,” she said.
That footage shows the moments after Banko Cantina security officers called city police about 4:30 p.m. March 25 for help removing a group of people from the restaurant and bar on South Olive Avenue, one block south of Clematis Street.
Some men pulled out marijuana on the dance floor and argued when a bouncer told them to put it away, that bouncer, Joshua Johnson, told The Post.
About 20 minutes later, Johnson said he walked to the bar to grab a bottle of water and one of the men stepped in his way. He asked what the man’s problem was and the man snapped back. The man’s friends came toward them, Johnson said, and other bouncers approached. Johnson told the man and his friends that they needed to leave. He told another bouncer to get a police officer.
Johnson and witnesses agreed: The incident had escalated well before the police officers — Harrell, Daniel Dillard, Travis Limauro and Jason Zangara — arrived.
The officers, who were working overtime that afternoon, declined to speak with The Post about the incident. No one from Banko Cantina returned The Post’s request for comment.
Harrell, Limauro and Zangara all used varying degrees of force while trying to control the situation. As with every use of force, the police department conducted an internal investigation into whether it was justified.
Limauro used his hands and fists when escorting Amandy Fountain, then 31, to the ground. Fountain reportedly hit and kicked Limauro while he tried to arrest her.
Harrell took Chatman, then 25, to the ground after she refused to leave the restaurant. She was “verbally abusive and physically resistant” to Harrell and struck him in the face, police records state.
Zangara used a Taser on Akeem McDonald, then 31, after McDonald reportedly pushed Dillard and took “an aggressive boxer’s stance” when told to back away. The Taser was not effective “due to McDonald’s baggy clothing,” according to police records. In the body-camera footage, McDonald appears to spasm three seconds after being struck and then slumps to his left. A police spokesman said that motion was McDonald removing the Taser wires.
Zangara then went “hands-on” and put McDonald in a shoulder lock.
Once the commotion moved outside, Limauro acted inappropriately toward a man who questioned why Limauro hit a woman, the department’s investigation found. Limauro told the man to leave, then shoved the man into the crowd, knocking a woman onto the ground.
Investigators had Limauro receive counseling and take an eight-hour de-escalation tactics class. Department authorities also noted that Limauro left Fountain alone in his patrol car and ran back into the restaurant after realizing his wallet had fallen out during the struggle with Fountain. Officers are supposed to keep sight of detained people at all times.
Part of the de-escalation training includes “verbal judo,” Mooney said, or a way to use words, not force, to control a situation.
An investigator determined there were minor problems with how Harrell and Zangara handcuffed Chatman and McDonald, respectively, and escorted them to the patrol cars.
“You don’t have just blue uniforms going in there like robots,” Mooney said. “You have human beings inside these uniforms with an expectation that they have the right to order you to do things under certain circumstances.
“When they’re acting under the color of law and they’re doing it appropriately, and you hit them or you completely disregard what they’re trying to do, my expectation is not for my officer to turn and walk away and just leave it as it is. Otherwise there would be chaos all the time.”
Ideally, officers never would use force or inappropriate language, Mooney said, but that would require citizens to respect what officers ask them to do.
Mooney said she encourages officers to use “verbal judo,” not force, whenever possible to control a situation.
“I would rather have somebody come in to complain that they got removed from a place that they didn’t deserve to ... than to have (them) go fisticuffs with an officer in order to argue their point,” Mooney said.
The officers
Each of the three officers investigated for his use of force has been with the department for at least seven years.
All have used force before. And all have been disciplined.
Mooney said she’d be surprised if they hadn’t been disciplined either with written or verbal reprimands.
“If you don’t end up with a few of them in your file over the years, then you’re probably not doing a whole lot of work,” she said.
Mooney would not speak specifically to any of the officers’ discipline history or accolades. (Each officer has received certificates of appreciation, department medals and citizen thank-you notes during their careers with West Palm Beach police.)
When Mooney looks at discipline cases, she said she only considers officers’ disciplinary history to a certain degree. She knows how much officers mature on the job. Mooney, who has worked at the department for more than two decades, understands that expectations and discipline decisions vary under different leaders.
But she does not take suspensions lightly.
“If I terminate somebody or if I suspended somebody, I can tell you that in my heart, I feel very comfortable with my decision to do that,” Mooney said.
Of the three officers, only Harrell has served a suspension under Mooney, who took over as chief in February 2017.
He was given a 24-hour suspension in January for inappropriate conduct with the public and improper use of his body camera, according to police records.
In September, after detaining a man at the Home Depot on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, Harrell took the man’s phone and snapped a picture of the man. Harrell then posted the photo on the man’s personal Facebook account.
While the internal-affairs investigator reviewed the incident, Harrell spent about a month on administrative leave. He then was assigned to work within the department building.
In March, Harrell still was assigned to work in the building, but he took an overtime shift downtown, which is how he ended up at Banko Cantina that afternoon.
He since has returned to normal patrol duties.
The citizens
None of the three Port St. Lucie residents detained in the Banko Cantina has a criminal history either in Palm Beach or St. Lucie counties.
All expressed remorse for the situation escalating as it did, according to police.
The state dropped felony charges against Chatman and Fountain and is pursuing misdemeanor battery charges against them. Fountain also faces a trespassing charge.
McDonald still faces a misdemeanor charge of nonviolently resisting an officer. He was never arrested. Instead, officers gave him a notice to appear to court on the charge.
The three have pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, according to court records.
Neither Fountain, a St. Lucie County School District teacher who was placed on duty away from students following this incident, nor McDonald returned The Post’s multiple requests for comment. Chatman deferred comment to her defense attorney, Gonzalez.
“If anybody watched that video, or all those videos, what happened there is not an arrestable offense,” he said.
“Just thank God nobody got hurt.”