By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
No policy violations or use of excessive force was used by law enforcement officers during an arrest made on Saturday, Nov. 15, according to Glasgow Police Chief Guy Howie, who showed police body camera footage at the department’s training center on Nov. 20.
The Use of Force policy review stemmed from the arrest of 34-year-old Cody Vibbert. A video of the arrest at Adams Place was recorded by a bystander and posted to social media. According to information obtained from the department, a Use of Force Review is opened “any time force, or the threat of force, is used to [make] an arrest [where] supervisors examine all written reports, statements, and available video or Body-worn camera footage to determine policy compliance and identify potential training needs.”
“Anytime that we use any type of force — whether it’s actual hands-on force or the threat of force — there is a review of that use of force and a critical incident review is conducted,” Howie said Thursday. “That critical incident review takes place…in this case [by] a sergeant, a patrol lieutenant, the patrol division commander, the major and then myself.”
Arresting officer Mitchell King’s body camera footage showed a shirtless Vibbert standing in the parking lot in front of the apartments and instead of moving away from the apartments and turning around — as he was told to do by King, who was dispatched with the information that the male subject in the disturbance possibly had a gun — he approached King saying such things as “you’re being out of control” and “I’m looking at you face-to-face.”
Vibbert and King went to the ground where King sprayed Vibbert’s forehead with chemical spray, which had no effect. After being tazed and removing the prongs, Vibbert went into the kitchen of a nearby apartment and was subsequently surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies yelling at him to get on the ground.
The blood that could be seen covering Vibbert’s face in the bystander video was due to his tearing out of the taser tongs and hitting his head against the apartment floor when he wrapped his legs around a deputies legs, which took them both to the ground, Howie said during the body camera viewing on Thursday.
“The blood on the floor is from his chest where he ripped the prongs from the taser out,” Howie said. “The defendant [also] wraps his leg around the officers that are escorting him outside, causing them to fall to the ground, where he hits his head on the floor, which causes him to start bleeding from the head. It’s a very minor laceration but any wound to that area is going to bleed, plus he’s sweating a lot so it looks like there’s a lot more blood than is actually there.”
Vibbert was checked medically once at the Barren County Detention Center. Howie said he was taken to a police cruiser instead of an ambulance because police on scene did not want Vibbert to injure the EMTs.
Though Howie’s review found no policy violations, he did say that police officers in the entire department would undergo “remedial Repulse training” and that it would be policy to assign more than one police officer to cases of “verbal and physical altercations” when possible.
Vibbert’s preliminary hearing in Barren County District Court is scheduled for Nov. 24 at 1 p.m.
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