Ex-Pennsylvania officer faces arraignment in punching case
PITTSBURGH – A former Pennsylvania police officer pleaded not guilty to charges he deprived a suspect of his civil rights by slugging the man in the face and filing a false police report to justify his actions.
Former Redstone Township Officer Norman Howard III and his attorney declined to comment on the charges after his arraignment in front of a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh Tuesday.
But defense attorney Charles Porter confirmed the 42-year-old suspect is no longer in law enforcement.
Howard was still working as a sergeant for the West Brownsville Borough police when he was indicted April 15 for the incident in nearby Redstone Township.
Both municipalities are about 35 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Howard previously resigned from Redstone Township after he was charged last September in an alleged domestic dispute that was unrelated to the federal charges.
A judge dismissed the charges stemming from the domestic dispute.
According to the indictment, Howard, who lives in Grindstone Township, used unjustified forced when he struck a person identified only as “D.N” in the face with his fist May 26, 2013. The indictment doesn’t detail the circumstances of the alleged punch, for which Howard is charged with deprivation of civil rights.
He’s also charged with falsification of a document, a police report in which Howard “purposefully omitted” mention of the punch and described the incident in a way that was “intended to cover up and create a false justification for Howard’s unreasonable use of force on D.N.”
Howard faces up to 10 years in prison on the civil rights charge and up to 20 years on the false report charge, if convicted, though such stiff penalties are unlikely for a first federal offense, and given Howard’s lack of a previous criminal conviction.
Online court records show he was charged with simple assault and harassment in August 2010, but had the charges dismissed by a district judge in Fayette County. The same thing happened to a bad check charge filed in May 2011.
Howard was charged with simple assault and harassment again after a Sept. 1 altercation with a 27-year-old woman, while he was still an officer in Redstone. Officials there suspended him and he resigned from that police force before a district judge dismissed the charges Dec. 29, according to court records.
That happened after Howard and the woman – whose tooth he allegedly knocked out during an argument – completed counseling classes, court records show.