Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy Altomare believes that he is being treated “like the criminal.” That’s why he is hanging up his hat and retiring from the job with the police department. In the wake of the video-recorded murder of George Floyd at the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, police departments have come under intense scrutiny for how they treat the Black community and incidents that use more brutality than needed.
The Former police chief decided it would be easier to step down from his job than face the use-of-force lawsuit filed by Daniel Jarrells against three officers in the department. Although footage from the brutal incident during a traffic stop in February 2019 shows the white officer kneeling on Jarrells’ neck, Timothy Altomare believes the force was justified and right.
Because of the brutality, he experienced at the knee of one of Altomare’s officers, Jarrells’ lawsuit explains how he suffered injuries due to the excessive police force. Not only did the officers fail to arrest Jarrells properly, but the charges against him were also dropped by the prosecutor on day one. Why did the police officers use so much force against him if they didn’t even have anything to use against him in court?
Now, Jarrells is seeking compensation for the “assault, battery, mental and emotional distress and deprivation of constitutional rights” that he received at the hands of the Maryland cops.
And during a news conference on July 21, County Executive Steuart Pittman admitted that the cops in the video did not practice “the kind of policing we train.” This admission does not bode well for the Anne Arundel County police department and its police chief, who was in charge of the cops at the scene of the violent confrontation.
“This hurts,” Pittman said about the lawsuit, “It will hurt our community; I know it’s hurting people in our community right now.”
After the case came to light, Altomare handed in his resignation notice in the form of his early retirement. He then wrote to the Capital Gazette to claim that his exit from the department had “nothing to do” with the police brutality his officers administered during the 2019 incident.
Instead, he claimed that he was abandoning his post because cops were coming under increased scrutiny, and he would not support “a future in which cops’ rights are stripped away, and your officers are treated like the criminals.”
“I am not leaving because I want to,” he wrote. “I am leaving because I will not be a part of a movement that endangers you or the people we are sworn to protect.”
Altomare claimed that he stands with the Black Lives Matter protestors but does not think it is correct to defund police departments. If so, people like him would lose their jobs – and early retirement privileges.
“There is a movement in this nation and in this county to remove the teeth of the police,” the letter read, adding: “(Policing) is somehow biased against certain groups. That is false!”
Every time you share an AWM story, you help build a home for a disabled veteran.