The personnel files
The transcript shows the closed hearing delved into two events in Pearson’s Newport News Police Department personnel file.
In the June 2012 case, two police sergeants were working an extra-duty shift at the Brickhouse Tavern, a restaurant in Port Warwick. They didn’t know Pearson personally, “but knew him to be a police officer,” Wrobleski said. They saw him drinking “for some time,” watching him leave and get into his unmarked police car.
The sergeants trailed Pearson, pulling him over. One of the sergeants said the odor of alcohol coming from Pearson and his car was “strong,” Wrobleski said. But the sergeant told investigators he didn’t call dispatchers, in part because the TV program “Cops” was filming in Newport News at the time.
“The sergeant did not want to bring any embarrassment to the department by stopping the defendant, a police officer, in his police car for a DUI,” Wrobleski told Spencer. The incident was reported internally, however, and Pearson lost the use of a take-home car for six months, the prosecutor said.
There was a dispute at the bond hearing over whether Pearson was on-call for work at the time, with Wrobleski contending he was in an on-call status and Clancy asserting he was not.
In April 2015, Wrobleski said, Pearson was at another restaurant, RJ’s Sports Pub, with his then-girlfriend when she referred to a nearby pool table as “the terrorists’ table.”
The three men at that table — two of whom were Muslim — heard the reference, Wrobleski said. As the bar was closing, the girlfriend said loudly that she and Pearson should “get out of here before the terrorists blow the place up like Chicago on 9/11.”
One of the men corrected her, pointing out the 2001 attacks took place in New York City. In the parking lot,
Wrobleski said, one of the men said he saw Pearson “sitting in the driver’s seat of his truck and staring at him.”
According to Wrobleski’s account, the unarmed man walked over to the truck and told Pearson, “What your girlfriend said was not okay.”
Wrobleski told the judge that Pearson pulled out his police handgun, pointed it at the man and said, “Get the (expletive) out of here, or I’m going to blow your heads off,” then showed his badge and said, “I’m a cop, mother (expletive). Now what?”
The prosecutor said Pearson’s girlfriend smacked a cell phone out of the hand of another man who was filming the scene, breaking the screen. The girlfriend called 911, saying the group was threatening her and Pearson.
Patrol officers soon arrived. They asked one of the men to take a breath test, and he blew well below the threshold for drunken driving. Pearson wasn’t asked to take such a test, even as Wrobleski said he had been “drinking at the bar for some time” and had a $70 tab.
No arrests were made. The three men filed a complaint to the Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, which asked police to open a criminal investigation into Pearson.
Wrobleski said several people alleged Pearson pulled his gun, including a promoter at RJ’s who wasn’t involved. But a detective found that no charges could be filed “because the elements of brandishing a firearm had not been satisfied,” Wrobleski said.
The detective’s report, the prosecutor said, “was a comparison of alleged inconsistencies and the statements of the four independent witnesses.” However, Pearson’s then-girlfriend was charged with assault and battery for breaking the man’s cell phone.