When the news broke last month that Niagara Falls Police Officer Ryan Warme had been arrested, reactions across the community were mixed.
Some were surprised that a police officer — a man charged with protecting residents — would find himself on the other side of the law.
Other more jaded residents pointed to the arrest as just another example of someone on the force abusing their power.
For local law enforcement officials, the prevailing mood was one of disappointment.
“You’re let down,” Sheriff James Voutour said. “You take an oath of office, and you trust the people you’re working with respect that oath. When someone lets you down like that, it does give a black eye to law enforcement.”
Warme, 27, was arrested Dec. 2 by his fellow Falls police, along with federal agents. Warme was charged with raping and tormenting women and buying cocaine on duty.
Warme has now been suspended from the Falls police, and he remains in custody.
He will return to court Jan. 23.
Lockport Police Chief Larry Eggert said when a law enforcement official goes corrupt, officers throughout the area feel the effects.
“Generally, what the repercussions are, of course, are the eroding of the public trust,” he said. “I like to think we have a pretty clean department here, and I wouldn’t tolerate anything else, but the perception the public sometimes gets is that, ‘Well, gee, if he’s dirty, then everybody else is.’ ”
Court records accuse Warme of providing information about undercover Falls police to cocaine dealers. He allegedly gave a crack cocaine dealer a heads-up about police investigation.
That charge, in particular, was upsetting to Voutour.
“It was very difficult to swallow, because of the danger he put his fellow officers in,” Voutour said. “(Telling the criminals) who the undercover drug officers are, what cars they’re driving, that even goes beyond criminal.”
Repercussions
Far away from Niagara Falls, in the small village of Barker, the reverberations of incidents like the one in Niagara Falls are still felt.
“Anytime a police officer does an act like that, it does put a black mark on officers,” Barker Police Chief Ross Annable said. “I think everybody takes a hard look at police officers because of the job, and you get singled out a little more than the average job.”
According to a 2006 Harris Interactive poll, 76 percent of Americans trust police officers to tell the truth. The profession was ranked fourth in trustworthiness, behind doctors, teachers and scientists.
Even with such a high ranking, the Internet abounds with Web sites keeping track of police activities, with addresses such as www.PoliceCrimes.com and www.PoliceAbuse.com.
If a police officer is arrested or suspected of a crime, it can erode the community’s trust to the point where that officer is no longer effective, Annable said.
“If you work at some manufacturing company, and you get arrested for something, you go back to work on Monday,” Annable said. “At a law enforcement agency, you get arrested for something and Monday’s a whole new ballgame. It’s going to change your life.”
Background checks
The Lockport Police Department hired two new officers — Ryan Adams and Tricia Denny — on Wednesday.
Earlier in the week, four binders full of stacks of paper sat on a chair in Eggert’s office, each one containing background check information for all eight candidates for the two positions.
“Each candidate’s got a quarter-inch stack of paper,” Eggert said.
The background checks include interviews with people in all aspects of the candidate’s lives: Parents, spouses, former and current bosses, teachers, neighbors and others.
Interviewers go back as far as high school transcripts, looking at how many times the candidate was marked late or how many absences they had.
“People generally don’t change the way they are,” Eggert said. “If you go back far enough, you can kind of determine what kind of person they are.”
He said the department is also considering running psychological exams on potential officers before they are hired.
In the past year, City of Tonawanda Police Chief Cindy Young has instituted a separate, psychological evaluation for her department's potential officers. The evaluations are conducted by Dr. Jay Supnick of Law Enforcement Psychological Associates in Rochester.
At the sheriff’s department, Voutour said they also do extensive background checks, checking financial histories for any sign the candidate has problems with money.
“(If they do), they have more tendency to maybe be corrupt,” Voutour said. “It’s difficult to predict the future character of a person, and the only way you can predict the future is to look at the past.”
In smaller communities like Barker, the application process also includes a background check, but the applicants are usually locals who are already known by the agency, Annable said.
No matter how much preparation is done, things can change. Eggert said there’s always an “unknown quantity” that can make otherwise good people go bad.
“Sometimes things happen in people’s lives. Bankruptcy, bad marriage, a hundred different things that could trigger an unintended problem,” he said.
Taking complaints
So far, the background checks and intense interview process have proven successful, Eggert said.
Still, complaints from the public are a common instance, and Eggert said each complaint that comes into the LPD is treated equally.
“No matter who comes in, or for what reason, or what condition they’re in, we take the information from them,” he said. “They get attention. There’s no, ‘Come back and see the guy tomorrow,’ or ‘We don’t do those.’ If someone comes in to file a complaint, we are bound by the rules to do it.”
Depending on the complaint, there are different avenues it may take. Some complaints are simple — for instance, a driver complaining an officer was rude during a traffic stop — while others may be more complex or serious.
The complaints go up the chain of command. Depending on the seriousness, they may result in a verbal warning, or they could potentially result in an investigation by an outside agency.
People who are uncomfortable going to the LPD to complain about an officer can go to the Niagara County District Attorney’s Office. Some law enforcement agencies, including the New York State Police, have internal affairs units that deal specifically with complaints and allegations of misconduct within that department.
“There’s a lot of different options that people have,” Eggert sad. “The DA’s office, they have investigators, and they’ll entertain the complaint the same as we will.”
District Attorney Michael Violante could not be reached to comment on how his office handles complaints and allegations of police misconduct.
At the sheriff’s department, anyone with a complaint should call dispatch and ask to speak to a shift supervisor, Voutour said.
He said they entertain a variety of complaints.
“We’ll look at it and get both sides of the story,” he said. “Obviously, if it’s just, ‘The officer was short with me,’ that may be handled at the shift supervisor level. Anything (at a) criminal level will come to me quickly.”
In Barker, Annable said, anyone who has a complaint is welcome to file it in person and sign a statement — but most of the time, people who call just want to blow off some steam.
“I’ve found 90 percent of the people will call and complain, and you invite them to come down and they never show up,” he said. “We do take complaints seriously.”
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