Former Officer Ryan Warme Was Getting into Trouble Long Before He Became a Cop

A federal prosecutor has called him “the poster boy for detention.”

An ever-lengthening list of witnesses has appeared before a federal grand jury in Buffalo to detail their complaints against him.

Now, an investigation has revealed that suspend Niagara Falls Police Officer Ryan Warme was getting into trouble long before he became a cop.

Warme, 27, already faces charges on a federal criminal complaint that include cocaine trafficking, violating the civil rights of two women and using his police-issued firearm while committing those crimes. Prosecutors have hinted that when the grand jury finishes its work, the list of felony charges will be even longer.

While the three-and-a-half-year veteran of the Falls police force had admitted to having sex with at least two women while he was on duty, he has pleaded not guilty to the charges he currently faces and is being held without bail by the U.S. Marshals.

Warme’s arrest by his fellow officers and federal agents on Dec. 2 was not the first time he’d felt handcuffs on his wrists. In the falls of 2000, while he was attending Western New England College and playing on the school’s football team, Warme was arrested on an assault charge.

Law enforcement sources say the charge stemmed from a fight following a football game. Warme was suspended from the team for four games and was given an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal on the assault charge.

That disposition meant that if Warme “stayed out of trouble,” the charge would be dismissed and removed as a criminal record.

When Falls police detectives investigated Warme’s background prior to his appointment to the Niagara County Law Enforcement Academy in August 2005, they were aware of the arrest but did not disqualify him for it.

“He was given an ACD, if you translate the charge to New York state law, (it’s relatively minor),” Niagara Falls police Superintendent John Chella said. “At that time, it didn’t alert us to the point where he was disqualified.”

Chella also said Warme’s father’s former position as a captain and chief of detectives in the Falls Police Department played no role in the determination not to disqualify his son from a police appointment.

“We would have handled it the same way for any candidate at that point,” Chella said. “We did with him what we’ve done with others.”

The investigation has also shown that a post football game fight wasn’t the only trouble Warme got into during his college days. During the course of a federal court hearing, prosecutors revealed that Warme had been expelled from his college ROTC program “for cheating on an exam.”

Federal investigators learned of the ROTC incident from U.S. Air Force criminal investigators who had handled a probe into Warme’s application to attend Officer Candidate School while he was a member of the Air Force Reserves. On his application for the officer’s school, Warme “checked the (no) box that asked if he had ever been rejected for military service for any reason.”

“The Air Force determined he had lied,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Bruce said in court. “That is a flat out lie.”

Yet that lie was never uncovered by Falls police during Warme’s background investigation.

“There was no evidence of the ROTC issue in his (police) application,” Chella said. “We only verified that he had 60 hours of college credit to come on the job.”

Warme’s father, testifying in federal court, admitted that his son had been kicked out of ROTC “for violating the honor code.” However, he said his son never told him he had cheated on an exam.

Warme had another run-in with the law, roughly a year before his appointment to the Falls police force.

“We have had contact with (Warme) in the past,” Cheektowaga Police Captain John Glascott said. “It was in early August 2004 and it had to do with a domestic situation.”

Glascott declined to comment any further on Warme’s case. Other law enforcement sources indicted that Warme was arrested, though the exact charges were not known.

Like the college assault charge, the Cheektowaga incident apparently resulted in another adjournment in contemplation of dismissal and the case was ultimately sealed. It’s unclear if Falls police were aware of the Cheektowaga incident before Warme’s appointment to the force.

Chella said Warme passed both a psychological evaluation and a polygraph test prior to joining the force.

“We put a lot of weight in those,” he said. “He passed the psych evaluation and he was given a lie detector test to determine if everything on his application was truthful and he passed that.”

Federal prosecutors have suggested that Warme is proficient at lying. Even after his arrest, they say he lied to federal probation officers about why he left the Air Force Reserve in the spring of 2008.

Warme told federal pre-trial services investigators he left the reserves “based on the fact he could make more money working part-time jobs.” However, Warme’s resignation letter indicts that he left the military prior to the start of discharge proceedings against him.

The discharge proceedings followed an incident at a Texas Air Force base where Warme had reported for training in December 2007. Warme was scheduled to be in training until May or June 2008, but in April went AWOL for a period of roughly seven hours.

According to sources with knowledge of the incident, Warme was scheduled to report for drills at 8 a.m., but failed to show up at the base until 3 p.m. Warme told a superior officer that he had “been out drinking the night before, passed out and missed the drill.”

He also told the officer that he “had been afraid to report after waking up, because he knew he would be in trouble.”

By the time of the military incident, Falls police had already begun their investigation into Warme.

There was still another warning sign, prior to Warme’s working on the street, that the young officer might not be qualified. While Warme was attending the police academy, he was the subject of a criminal complaint filed with Amherst police.

In a November 2005 incident in the parking lot of the Marriott hotel, Warme was accused of stealing a woman’s cell phone after a domestic dispute. Chella said Falls police became aware of the incident but had trouble investigating it because the victim was uncooperative.

“She didn’t want to get (Warme) in trouble,” Chella said. “She said she was mad, but didn’t want to get him kicked out of the academy.”