RED FLAGS IGNORED
Retired Ewing cop says department neglected to pay heed to warnings in hiring officer now accused of killing infant >>
EWING >> A retired township cop claimed in a bombshell interview that the officer who conducted a background investigation into Daniel Bannister was not entirely forthcoming with critical details she learned about the now-suspended township cop’s troubled past in a report later handed over to the chief and top brass before Bannister was hired.
Bannister, who is accused of killing his infant daughter Hailey, was apparently involved in a scuffle with a former supervisor and was rejected for jobs by two police departments, prior to being hired by Ewing in 2017.
The background investigating officer — identified by the retired officer as Lalena Lamson — apparently learned those details about Bannister but did not give them much weight when putting together her report, the retired cop said.
The cop said that Lamson learned during her investigation that Trenton Police had also rejected Bannister for a job. The Trentonian previously reported that Bannister was passed over for jobs by Lawrence Township Police.
Lawrence Police Chief Brian Caloiaro confirmed that Bannister was rejected twice by his department but did not disclose the reason why Bannister was not hired.
Trenton Police Capt. Stephen Varn declined to comment on whether Bannister ever applied for a job with the department.
“She was told by Lawrence and by Trenton not to hire this guy,” the retired cop said. “They gave her the, ‘This is off the record,’ which there is no such thing as ‘off the record.’ She was told by Lawrence he had anger issues, and she left that out of the report.”
Ewing Police Chief John Stemler and upper brass eventually learned those details but Bannister was already hired, the retired cop said.
Lamson has been on the force for more than 17 years, wearing many hats including background investigator.
She was voted officer of the year last year by her peers, according to a profile of her that appeared on the Community News’ website. The story confirmed that she was a background investigator.
She apparently no longer does background investigations on police officers, the retired cop said.
When reached for comment, Lamson directed questions about her involvement in Bannister’s background investigation to Ewing Police.
The Trentonian has repeatedly attempted to reach Stemler for comment, leaving multiple messages on his work phone, but he has been out of the office and wasn’t expected back in until next week.
Township Mayor Bert Steinmann acknowledged in a phone interview he wasn’t involved in Bannister’s hiring process but was confident the department “thoroughly vetted” the suspended cop before offering him a job.
He cautioned against viewing the department’s decision to hire Bannister in hindsight of what prosecutors have alleged was the patterned abuse of his daughter over the course of her short life.
Bannister’s wife, Catherine, a former kindergarten teacher at a charter school in Trenton, is also charged with child endangerment for allegedly concealing her cop husband’s child abuse from doctors and authorities.
“[The department] did nothing wrong. I strongly believe they followed the same protocol that they do for everybody else. This is an unfortunate situation that happened, but whether he was hired by Ewing Township Police or not, I don’t think the course of events would have changed,” Steinmann said. “So I don’t know why this is all of a sudden whatever.”
“I mean, it’s a big deal in the fact that he allegedly did what he did, and it’s very sad, obviously, but whether he was a Ewing Township Police officer or something else, I don’t think the circumstances would have changed,” the mayor continued. “It probably still would have happened.”
Red Flags
The retired Ewing cop, who spent decades with the department, said he could no longer remain silent about the flawed hiring process that enabled Bannister to land a job with the township force despite apparent red flags from his past, which included an alleged physical altercation with a supervisor at Dick’s Sporting Goods in the Princeton area.
The Trentonian has been unable to determine the exact date of the alleged altercation but obtained a copy of Bannister’s resume which confirmed he worked as a freight flow lead for the sporting goods store from 2009 to 2013.
A manager at the Princeton area branch referred questions about Bannister’s employment to the human resources department.
Dick’s human resources and media relations representatives did not respond to multiple detailed messages seeking confirmation of the physical altercation and the reason Bannister left the company.
Princeton Police said that West Windsor would have had jurisdiction over any calls out to the Dick’s, which is located on the 500 block of Nassau Park Boulevard.
West Windsor Police said the public information officer was out for the next two weeks and no one was there to provide information to The Trentonian about whether officers responded to the store at the time of the alleged assault.
The retired cop alleged that Lamson learned about the altercation but downplayed it in the background report, shared with the chief and members of upper brass who made the final call on whether to hire Bannister.
“She wrote in there that this guy and his supervisor from Dick’s had a ‘mutual combative situation,’” the retired cop said.
The retired cop said he did not work directly with Bannister but interacted a few times with him and got the impression from talking with members of the department that Bannister was “not well liked.”
The retired cop said Bannister once complained to superiors about a training officer’s use of force on a suspect during a call. He said Bannister, despite not being on the force that long, “stirred the pot when there was no reason to.”
“The training officer had to physically manhandle somebody and he didn’t like it,” the retired cop said. “Bannister went to the sergeant and says, ‘I’m not really comfortable with this. This guy is putting his hands on somebody,’ which is ridiculous because this is a guy who has got anger issues. … He’s like the big liberal ‘cops suck, don’t touch anybody’ type guy. I’m like you can’t do the job, you have to be a little bit hands on, but in this day and age you have to be very particular that you can shut it off and know how to control it.”
Mother’s Concerns
When it came to their infant daughter, Catherine Bannister told investigators she told her husband he needed to be gentler handling her.
She reportedly told her
husband that he shouldn’t handle their infant daughter unless he “was educated on early childhood development,” according to a probable cause affidavit, and even confided in a friend, a pediatric nurse, with her concerns about her husband.
Catherine Bannister told investigators her husband was having trouble bonding with their cranky baby girl, according to court documents.
Baby Hailey was taken to a hospital Dec. 5 after her mother called 911 saying she was having trouble breathing.
The infant died six days later, at Robert Wood Johnson Children’s Hospital in New Brunswick, from her injuries, which included nine skull fractures, four broken ribs, a brain bleed and major eye damage, according to court records.
Bannister told investigators that, on the morning of Dec. 5, he was at home with the baby and his 2-year-old son after Catherine left for work, according to court records.
Prosecutors have alleged that the baby died the hands of her father’s repeated abuse. For his part, Bannister told investigators his son accidentally hit baby Hailey in the head on Thanksgiving, while throwing a tantrum during a family photoshoot.
‘This guy shouldn’t be on this job’
Bannister, who is suspended
without pay from the township police force, remains locked up pending trial. A judge ordered his wife released.
Ewing officials said he would remain suspended until the outcome of his court case.
Bannister’s defense attorney, Jeffrey Garrigan, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment on the claims raised by the retired Ewing cop.
The retired cop said he recalled telling Bannister “in a nice way” in one of their few interactions that he didn’t care for him.
“I just told him, ‘Look man, there’s something about you that just rubs me the wrong way.’ He gave me that big shitty-a** looking smile. Something about him just wasn’t right. I looked at him like, ‘God damn, this guy should not be on this job.’”
Steinmann felt his department couldn’t have done much more to root out Bannister.
“If the results are bad, really bad, obviously, they share some of those … They
have to report to Civil Service on the rejection. If there was something very glaring, the story would have probably been a little bit different.”
The Ewing mayor said Lawrence Police’s decision to reject Bannister twice wouldn’t automatically disqualify Bannister from employment with the township.
“It’s a sad situation, that’s for sure,” he said. “They make look at the procedure, but I think our procedures are pretty tough. We do reject people, obviously, for positions in the police department.”
Asked if he felt Bannister should still technically be a Ewing cop, even though he’s not getting paid, the mayor said it “doesn’t put anybody in a good light. To be quite candid with you, yeah, he should be fired. If it comes back he’s found not guilty, then we have some liability for firing. He’s lost every benefit that there could possibly be. I don’t think the results are going to end up changing.”