Judge: Officer altered charge

Since Washington County initiated an after-hours booking center at the jail last summer, the policy has been to generally accept prisoners charged with first- or second-degree misdemeanors or any level of felonies.
On Thursday, Taylorstown-area District Judge Ethan Ward said when he was on night duty three weeks ago, a police officer from a department he declined to identify upgraded the seriousness of a charge simply to have the alleged perpetrator arraigned and jailed.
The officer, who had sworn in an affidavit that his original information was true and correct, simply erased or crossed out a third-degree misdemeanor charge and changed it to first degree, Ward said at a quarterly meeting of the Criminal Justice Advisory Board, the first convened by President Judge Katherine B. Emery since she became the county’s top jurist in January.
“We need to eliminate this issue right now,” Ward said Thursday. “Having police charging people and forging a complaint and affidavit is unacceptable.”
Magistrates assigned to night, weekend and holiday duty arraign suspects from all over the county through a video hookup at the jail.
Chartiers Township Chief James Horvath and Sheriff Samuel Romano were the only leaders of police departments represented at the criminal justice meeting Thursday at the courthouse, and Horvath and Ward said the officer in question is neither a Chartiers officer nor a sheriff’s deputy.
After hours, the jail serves as a central drop-off point so police officers do not have to make long forays outside their jurisdictions to have prisoners arraigned at the offices of the single, on-call district judge.
On the February night, the jail notified Ward that a prisoner had been brought in for video arraignment. When Ward was told that the prisoner was charged with a third-degree misdemeanor, he said this low-level charge did not fit the criteria for night-duty arraignments at the jail booking center.
“The problem isn’t being called out (at night), it’s amending a complaint to an M-1 so the jail has to take them,” Ward said. “You cannot have police officers amending complaints when they’re swearing to and affirming the facts.”
Ward, the former Donegal Township police chief, continued, “If I had an officer doing that, we’re going to address that with the police officer.” There was at least one similar incident involving the same department, Ward said.
Adding insult to injury, Ward said he called the 911 emergency dispatch center to have the officer in question get in touch with him, but his call was not returned.
Emery noted that a police officer can amend a criminal complaint if a new set of facts presents itself. “We don’t want the booking center at the jail to be used inappropriately,” she said.
Ward could not be reached Thursday afternoon for comment on the specific charge. He implied at the advisory board meeting that the charge was disorderly conduct.
District Attorney Gene Vittone said, “That may be a training issue that needs to be addressed. I need to know more about it, and I will find out.” He said he is available 24 hours a day, and if circumstances like this occur again, he asked to be notified immediately “to get to the bottom of it.” Vittone said he does not know the identity of the officer or police department involved in the incident.
An exception to the policy on arraigning only those charged with second-degree misdemeanors or greater could be made if the prisoner were deemed dangerous to himself or others, or if a series of offenses had occurred.
First-degree offenses are the most serious type of misdemeanor, while third-degree misdemeanors are the least serious.
In Pennsylvania, the general penalty for a third-degree misdemeanor is a fine of up to $2,500, maximum imprisonment of one year, or both. A first-degree misdemeanor carries a fine of up to $10,000, maximum imprisonment of five years, or both.
In a related matter, Emery noted that Washington County had about 3,300 criminal cases last year, more than any other Pennsylvania fourth-class county, according to statistics compiled by the state’s Common Pleas Court Management System. The number of criminal cases has been increasing by about 6 percent a year.