Trooper's tactics questioned

PALMER -- Three people arrested by the same Alaska State Trooper on different occasions testified Thursday in Palmer District Court that the trooper used excessive force.

Each of the witnesses was convicted on charges stemming from the arrests. The judge asked them to describe those convictions to help him better understand what happened at the time of the arrests.

Magistrate David Zwink ruled that he would hear the testimony in the state's case against Tammy Barile, 35, who was arrested last year by the same trooper. Barile alleges Trooper Eric Spitzer's use of force in arresting her Feb. 26, 2001 resulted in a black eye, numerous bruises and five stitches below the eye to close a profusely bleeding wound.

Barile's defense attorney, Nancy Driscoll, filed a motion Jan. 16 charging that Spitzer "has engaged in a pattern of aggressive and abusive behavior toward other persons while on duty."

Trooper supervisors said they have checked into Spitzer's actions and there is no truth to the allegations. They have declined further comment. Calls to Spitzer were not returned. He also reportedly did not attend the hearing because he was out of town at the time.

Barile's trial was scheduled for early May, then was postponed for the judge to rule on whether the testimony of others claiming to be hurt by the trooper would be allowed at her trial. Barile faces charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assault. Zwink ruled against allowing two named in the original motion to testify on the grounds that one person's case is pending, and the other person did not seem certain that Spitzer was the officer who arrested him.

Hank Kochendorfur, 17, an Eagle River high school student, testified Thursday that he was contacted by Spitzer for driving around on back roads off Knik-Goose Bay Road after a night of drinking by a campfire. His next point of consciousness was being booked into the Mat-Su Youth Facility several hours later.

Sometime after his 2:30 a.m., arrest and his booking at the facility, Kochendorfur was brought by ambulance to Valley Hospital. There he received five staples to close a head wound and five stitches to close an injury below the right eye, he said. He had gravel burns on his face and chipped teeth, he testified. He said he was also diagnosed with an eye staff infection.

After emergency personnel treated Kochendorfur, he was taken by Spitzer to Mat-Su Youth Facility on drunk driving and eluding charges, he said.

"In his [Spitzer's police] report, he said I was fleeing and he had to tackle me three times on the rocks," said Kochendorfur, who weighs about 150 pounds.

Kochendorfur's case was resolved under a single DWI plea agreement that eliminated the other charges. Kochendorfur said he frequently sees Spitzer because he lives a street away from Spitzer's home in Eagle River.

"He told me after that he was just doing his job," Kochendorfur told Zwink.

Johnnie R. Day Jr., 27, testified that on March 31, 2001, he was arrested for drunk driving by Crusey Street near Wasilla Lake. He said he didn't resist arrest because he knew he "screwed up" by drinking and driving.

His wife and a friend were present at the time of the arrest, he said, and his wife told Spitzer that Day has a claustrophobic condition and requested that he crack the window.

Day said he had been arrested before and other officers didn't have a problem cracking the back window for him. He said he was diagnosed for claustrophobia at the age of 11 when he was growing up in Kansas.

During the first leg of the trip to Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, Spitzer stopped off at the Wasilla Police Department. There he became upset with Day, Day said, because he had some marijuana in his mouth and swallowed it. "He put me in handcuffs and shackled my legs," Day said.

Day said he wasn't resisting arrest. He said he went cooperatively into the patrol car and there Spitzer again refused to crack a window. He double seat-belted him and turned the heat up.

Day said he banged his head against the window and asked the trooper to crack the window. He was feeling sick, he said, and couldn't breathe in the heat.

At Wal-Mart, the trooper pulled over and grabbed Day out of the back of the car, tossed him to the ground and pepper sprayed him "two or three times," Day testified. In shoving him around, Day said, his handcuffed wrists were twisted and a bone was broken. Then he was placed back into the car and they proceeded down the road again.

At Nye Ford, Day said Spitzer stopped the patrol car again because Day was begging to have the window cracked and had continued to bang his head against the window. "I couldn't breathe," he said. At that point, he was getting sick and soon threw up on the floor of the car. Spitzer again pulled him out of the car, shoved him around and pepper sprayed again "three or four times," Day said.

After being booked into Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, Day said he was not granted medical help for his wrist, which by then had swollen. When he got out of jail, he went to the doctor for x-rays and was told a bone in his wrist had been shattered. The only way to fix it would be to undergo surgery to take a piece of bone from his hip and graft it into the wrist fracture. He didn't have that surgery because it would mean six months of being laid-up. Since his wrist is impaired, he said, he can no longer work in construction, but instead stocks shelves at Fred Meyer.

Day brought the x-ray to court with him to show Zwink, and the oversized T-shirt he wore on the night of the arrest that Spitzer allegedly grabbed to "yank him around."

In further testimony, teen-ager Samantha Landi testified that she and two friends left a party at about 1 a.m., on Feb. 16 at Houston because the police were called to the house. "It obviously wasn't a good place to be, so we were leaving," she said, admitting that she drank three beers though she is underage.

When Landi's friends saw a trooper patrol car coming, they dashed into the woods, but she kept walking down the road, she said.

"The trooper called out to me, 'are you going to stop or do I need to shoot you?'" she told Zwink. "He got out of the patrol car and slammed me to the ground," she said.

Then he stood her up, asked questions and administered a breath test. She said her hip was hurt from being knocked down and it took her a while to answer questions because she lost her breath.

Spitzer kept her in the front seat of his patrol car while he wrote out a minor consuming alcohol ticket, then released her to a friend.

The testimony from four others claiming Spitzer used excessive force was scheduled to continue Monday before Zwink.