Police Chief reacts to video showing officers beating, kicking man in groin at police station

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    JEFFERSON COUNTY, Mo. (KMOV) — Two officers are accused of assaulting a man brought in for booking at a Jefferson County police station and a third officer is accused of deleting photos showing the assault. Video of the alleged beating was obtained only by News 4.

According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, officers James Daly, 55, and Bethany Zarcone were on-duty on September 30 when they assaulted a man brought in for booking at the De Soto Police Station. Charging documents say Daly grabbed the man by the hair and throat, pushed him onto a bench and held him down by the neck for a “period of time.” Zarcone is accused of hitting the handcuffed man in his groin with her knees.

“It was almost disbelief. There are times when police officers have to use physical force while doing their jobs but in this case, this was a picture,” said De Soto Police Chief Jeff McCreary. “It was completely unnecessary. Our procedure is, if someone is being uncooperative during booking, you take the items from them that are necessary to get them in a cell in a safe manner, and then you come back to them later”.

Officials said Allayna Campbell deleted photos capturing the assault. Campbell told investigators a supervisor instructed her to delete them. Campbell was charged with tampering evidence; Daly was charged with three counts of assault, and Zarcone was charged with one count assault.

Daly reportedly put a mock graveyard on his lawn as a Halloween decoration last year. Images of it began circulating on social media showing several crosses with names on them that are used as grave markers. The wording on one of the crosses says, “Here lies Michael Brown, a fat ghetto clown.”

The incident happened on September 30, but McCreary didn’t request an external investigation until two months later, a delay he said came because of their department’s desire to be thorough.

“We like to be completely thorough. There are other people to talk to in these incidents, interviews to be had, you’re looking at all the information on that,” he said. “So I think the investigator had it for a couple weeks. Again it’s probably not the best timeline for us, but by the time that it goes through several hands, it’s the way it turned out for us and definitely something we’re going to improve upon.”

When the original story aired on News 4, the De Soto Police Department released a statement in response to the video:

Tonight on the news was a video that was the subject of the investigation and charges filed against three of our former officers. To our community; the behavior seen on the video is not indicative of the great job many of our officers do every day. There are many good officers at the De Soto Police Department. As Chief, I see a great job many of them do. I also know this through my many contacts with community members who often approach me and report how much things have improved over the last two and a half years. The actions you see in the video are not indicative of our body of work, as we continue the process of rebuilding this department.

One of the things we did as a department, after its near-collapse in July 2018 was to put in place policies and procedures in an effort to improve operations. One of the improvements we made was to our use of force review. In the case of the assault in the jail, the incident was caught by that procedure and the improvements made during our recent jail remodel, which included new cameras. After the incident was discovered, it was assigned to an investigator to do an internal investigation. A request for a criminal investigation was then made to the Jefferson County Sheriff. I can speak for all of the officers of the department that we have felt a full range of emotions including anger, embarrassment and disappointment regarding this incident. We are committed to moving forward and making improvements to all facets of our operations.

We definitely want to thank those in the community that has offered support for our efforts. I’m happy to announce that as part of our efforts to improve, we applied in November 2020 for certification of the department, and look forward to improving our operations and standards during that process. The officers that remain are dedicated to these and other efforts to serve our community with strength and professionalism. I also want to thank Dave Marshak, the Jefferson County Sheriff, and his investigators for their quick response to our request for an outside, independent investigation.

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