Deputy who seized cell phone suspended (with pay)

Charge dropped against woman arrested after recording him
By JOHN WHARTON
Southern Maryland Newspapers
Jun. 30, 2010

A St. Mary's sheriff's deputy has been suspended amid an investigation from his grabbing a woman's cell phone when she recorded him, and prosecutors have dropped a communication-interception charge that police filed against the woman.

"They've got to be stopped somewhere," Yvonne Nicole Shaw, 27, said outside a courtroom Friday after the felony charge against her was dismissed. "They can't keep treating everyone like that. They're supposed to protect and serve, but they're not. They're treating us any way they want. Not all of them, but some of them."

Cpl. Patrick Handy was suspended with pay later that day, Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron (R) said this week, "based on the totality of the allegations of … misapplication of law and, or performance of duty."

Shaw was arrested shortly after midnight on June 12 in Lexington Park's Colony Square neighborhood, and she was jailed on the charge filed by Handy, who seized her cell phone and alleged that its camcorder content included an audio recording of his conversation with other people.

Handy wrote in charging papers that Shaw admitted recording the incident to try "to show the police are harassing people."

St. Mary's State's Attorney Richard D. Fritz (R) said last week that the corporal had probable cause to make the arrest, but that the statute was intended to outlaw the non-consensual recording of one-on-one conversations conducted in private, as opposed to on a public street.

Despite Fritz's announcement that he would drop the case, Shaw was still obligated to go to district court last Friday afternoon for a preliminary inquiry, where defendants are advised of potential penalties if they are convicted and they are urged to get a lawyer.

"Is this the case the state's attorney said he's going to dismiss?" retired St. Mary's District Judge John F. Slade III asked when Shaw initially appeared before him. "I'm not going to make her come back again [on a trial date] if he's going to dismiss the case."

The judge asked that a prosecutor be called to come to the courtroom, and St. Mary's Assistant State's Attorney Michael Kane appeared a few minutes later before dismissing the case.

Cameron said Tuesday that the decision to suspend Handy was made "with a desire to protect the persons involved in the investigation, including Cpl. Handy. He shouldn't be put in a situation where he's responding back to Colony Square or making a traffic stop that would expose him to the notion that it was an ongoing course of conduct to harass Ms. Shaw or anybody else." Shaw said last week that Handy was among the officers responding to a traffic stop at Colony Square on June 18 that left her with a ticket for having a bad tag light on her car.

Shaw paid $199 for a new phone after her arrest, and she said this week that she still has not yet received back the cell phone that was seized from her.

"It has a memory card, with all the pictures of my daughter, phone numbers and dates [with] appointments," she said in an earlier interview last week. "You live by your cell phone."

Cameron said Tuesday, "She's cooperating in allowing us to keep the phone at the time being. It will be returned to her at the conclusion of the investigation, or when we no longer need it."












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