By Eric Francis, Standard Correspondent
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The Windsor police detective who is facing allegations that he used excessive force when he shot a drug dealer in the arm through a car window a year ago in the midst of a sting operation has lost a bid to undergo re-certification as a police rifle instructor.
Judge Nancy Corsones listened last week as Detective Ryan Palmer’s defense attorney, Dan Sedon, implored her to let Palmer handle a rifle for a single day at a police department recertification course so he could keep his credentials current without having to eventually go back through the weeks of re-training that are required when such a certification is allowed to lapse.
Palmer, 29, was arraigned back in July when he pleaded innocent to a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and an accompanying misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment for his decision to shoot Jorge Burgos as Burgos and his girlfriend sped out of a parking lot opposite the American Precision Museum on the evening of Nov. 16, 2014.
Burgos, 36, of Quechee was hit more than once in his arm but managed to lead police on a chase clear to Claremont, New Hamsphire before he was eventually stopped and taken into custody. He later told investigators that he had no idea that the officers, who had arrived in a pickup truck with civilian coats over their uniforms, were in fact police when they rushed at him with their guns drawn.
Defense attorney Sedon noted that the investigation, which eventually led to the convening of a rarely used Windsor County grand jury in Woodstock, took months to unfold and that, “the attorney general made no attempt to take away his weapon or his status as a police officer during that time.”
At July’s arraignment a different judge imposed a release condition upon Palmer that reads, “You shall not be in actual possession of a firearm” which, Sedon noted, was a compromise designed to allow Palmer to continue to be employed as a police officer, albeit one confined to administrative duties, while he fights the charges in court.
“Obviously there are numerous weapons in the environment that he works in (and) that condition has been followed scrupulously,” Sedon told the court but he noted that, “As part of his duties he continues to instruct other officers in the proper use of firearms.
“He continues to be trusted to carry out this (instructor) role by his chief and the people of the town of Windsor. That has to be worth at least some weight in this balancing of factors,” Sedon argued, continuing, “The citizenry and his immediate supervisor trust him in this role. He’s able to do this without actually possessing a firearm because so much of this training is classroom instruction and feedback from the field.”
Sedon noted that it is only Palmer’s patrol rifle instructor status that is at issue. He will be allowed to continue as a handgun instructor regardless of the court’s decision and it was a handgun that Palmer used to shoot Burgos.
“In the attorney general’s opinion, Officer Palmer exercised bad discretion on the day of the incident he is charged for; however, he has been tested and trained for hundreds and hundreds of hours to have that status. He’s never failed any of those tests. He’s held this position for several years and no one has ever had any complaints about his work,” Sedon told the court, adding, “If he was not able to re-certify for the training for patrol rifle instructor he would lose that status and in the future would have to re-take several weeks of training at great cost to regain that status as an instructor. We are asking for a one-day suspension of that condition while he is at the Hartford Police Department, in the company of other police officers, to engage in that training. After that day the condition of ‘no actual possession’ would resume. What is the balance of harms here? How is the public protection actually impacted?”
Vermont Assistant Attorney General Matt Levine urged the judge not to grant the exemption, arguing that Palmer should not be teaching other officers how to handle firearms when there is an open question about how he himself handled one in the midst of a rapidly unfolding situation.
Sedon countered that if Detective Palmer is eventually convicted of any of the charges it will effectively end his police career and render public protection issues “moot.”
“If he is not convicted then he will resume his life as he was living it before this charge and that includes his duties as an instructor,” Sedon said. “Consistent with the presumption of innocence, it is best to preserve the status quo to the extent possible so he can resume his life once and if he is acquitted. It would not be proper to unnecessarily impact or degrade his professional status now when he is presumed innocent of this charge. The way we look at it the protection of the public is not impacted in the least. He’ll be in a law enforcement environment, in a controlled setting, for one day, to achieve certification. What is the harm of him receiving more training if their argument is that he used bad discretion?”
Speaking from the bench, Judge Corsones pushed back against the defense arguments, noting, “It’s not charged as reckless. It’s charged as ‘knowing.’ Knowingly shooting another person.”
“This was in the line of duty,” Sedon countered, “This really comes down to a question of judgment. The state is arguing that he used improper judgment but it was certainly not someone engaged in otherwise unlawful conduct. He was, in the course of doing his job, using lethal force and they are finding issue with (how he did) that.” “There’s no question that he used a firearm that day. There’s no question that someone was wounded. The entire case will come down to the state’s ability to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was not justified in using a weapon to protect himself. The question comes down to ‘Was he justified in doing so?,’ Sedon argued.
In her written decision denying the exception, which was issued later in the day, Judge Corsones said she was “not swayed one way or the other (by the police chief’s and the Windsor select board’s) decision regarding (Palmer’s) ongoing job duties.”
“This court is not persuaded that public safety would be protected by allowing this defendant to actually possess a firearm, for any reason… while these charges are pending,” Judge Corsones wrote, noting, “The grand jury did not determine the defendant acted recklessly…(so) given the utmost seriousness of the crime charged, given the variance of the officer’s rendition of the shooting versus that which was captured on video, and the lack of any sufficiently compelling reason” to do otherwise, she decided to deny the request for the one-time exception.
This article first appeared in the November 5, 2015 edition of the Vermont Standard.