False Arrest

A former Severna Park Elementary School principal against whom charges of being a marijuana kingpin were dropped has lost her $3 million lawsuit against Anne Arundel County officials.Patricia Ann Emory claimed false arrest, malicious prosecution and civil rights violations in the police search of her home in October 1992 and her arrest. U.S. District Judge Frederic N. Smalkin dismissed the suit Wednesday, writing, "This is a case that should never have been brought."Senior Assistant County Attorney John F. Breads, who argued for the county, praised the ruling.

A Baltimore Circuit Court jury on Tuesday awarded $95,000 to a man who had sued city police alleging that his arrest in April 2009 was unwarranted, according to his attorney. Tyron Decarlos Satchell, 18, had sought $1 million in punitive and an additional $4 million in compensatory damages against officers Frederick E. Murray, Christopher Warren and John Potter, all assigned to the Southwest District. According to his lawsuit, the three plainclothes officers confronted Satchell as he sat on the front porch of his home in the 1700 block of Poplar Grove St. The suit says the officers ordered some young men who were there off the porch, demanded their identification cards and "told them to sit on the ground.

Brian Watson was getting out of the bathtub last July 5 when city police knocked on his front door and charged him with rape.Exactly nine months later -- having languished in the Baltimore City Jail without ever being brought to trial -- Watson was taken before Circuit Judge David B. Mitchell, where his case was thrown out of court.The state's attorney's office, having done a DNA genetic code test of Watson's blood, saliva, hair and sperm, decided it had the wrong man and told him he could go home.

A Baltimore man has filed a lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court against two city police officers, claiming they falsely arrested him on drug charges and then twice beat him unconscious. One of the officers being sued is Brian L. Sewell, who was accused last year of planting cocaine during a drug arrest and then falsifying a report. That case against Sewell was dropped after his file was among those tampered with during a break-in at an Internal Affairs office in December. Sewell has been suspended and the department seeks to fire him, a Police Department attorney said.

Roberta A. Sharper, a 60-year-old high school science teacher, says a shopping trip to a Value City store turned into a nightmare after she spent $253 but was accused of stealing an $8 belt.Mrs. Sharper said yesterday that security guards at the chain's Catonsville store falsely charged her with trying to steal her own belt, which they said belonged to the store and was worth $7.99.She said three guards trapped her in a room for three hours and refused to allow her to leave until she signed a document saying the belt wasn't hers.

A sexton who was arrested in September on suspicion of loitering outside the Baltimore church where he works has filed a $5.5 million suit against two city police officers, accusing them of yelling a racial epithet, intentionally using excessive force, and falsely arresting and imprisoning him.The suit, filed Friday in Baltimore Circuit Court, alleges that Central District Agent Brian M. Fockler and Officer Georgios S. Giannakoulias acted without probable cause...

A Baltimore man filed a $2 million lawsuit yesterday against two former city police officers and two others who remain on the force, accusing them of battery, false arrest and false imprisonment.Two of the defendants, former Officers David Brendel and Gerald Tarud, resigned from the force in May after pleading guilty to improperly seizing scalpers' tickets at a baseball playoff game in an unrelated incident.Yesterday's suit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court, also names Officer Thomas Newman and Sgt. William Davis as defendants.

A Delaware man was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for violating his probation by having his former girlfriend arrested on false charges of attempted murder.Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. of the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court ordered the sentence for William Edward Kennedy, 35, of Harrington, Del.Kennedy was placed on five years' probation in November after he pleaded guilty to assault and battery for burning Cathy Rone, 27, of Linthicum with a cigarette and beating her two months earlier.

A veteran Baltimore police officer was placed on administrative duties yesterday after a brief internal hearing into allegations that she falsely arrested an 18-year-old man on drug charges last week, police officials said. Jacqueline Folio, 41, who joined the department in 1989, will be transferred from the Southeastern District to juvenile detention duties pending the outcome of the agency's internal disciplinary process, police officials said. Folio, who also lost her police powers, could not be reached for comment.

A Baltimore police officer was charged with criminal misconduct yesterday after authorities said he fell for a random, undercover sting and falsely arrested a city resident on drug charges. Officials said the case represents the first failure under random integrity checks that are being conducted by Internal Affairs detectives and FBI agents to rout out corruption under a new city police administration. Officer Brian L. Sewell, a six-year veteran assigned to the Central District, surrendered to authorities yesterday; he had been suspended since the incident occurred last month.