ITHACA, N.Y.—An Ithaca Police Department investigator has been suspended after comments he made about a suspect were unwittingly captured on his body camera in October.
IPD officer Kevin Slattery appears on recorded tape making comments to another officer regarding beating a suspect and planting evidence. Slattery reported the video to the department himself on Nov. 6, saying the comments were made the week prior.
Ithaca Police Chief Dennis Nayor, in a statement to the Ithaca Voice, said that Slattery was promptly suspended once Nayor was informed of the incident, and that further discipline is being considered pending further internal investigation. Slattery remains on suspension with pay until the internal investigation is complete—a further suspension after the investigation concludes would be without pay.
Mayor Svante Myrick said that he hopes to share more with the public about the outcome of the internal investigation surrounding the case later in December. City Attorney Ari Lavine declined to comment on whether or not this is Slattery’s first disciplinary action since joining the department, citing ongoing lawsuits surrounding the repeal of New York’s 50A law that protects law enforcement personnel record from public release.
The comments occurred in a squad car on Oct. 30 after Slattery obtained a DNA swab from Jovon Monk, who is now on trial for sex offense allegations. After the swabbing process, which is largely uneventful: the two officers converse with Monk as the swab is being taken, inform him of the security process around the samples and confirm to him that, after he asks, his DNA sample would be immediately sealed, then seal it in front of him. Then Slattery and his partner get into the police vehicle, turn on music and start driving.
Though the video is almost entirely obstructed by what appears to be Slattery’s jacket, their conversation is mostly audible. After some idle chit-chat, Slattery tells a story to his partner about a previous encounter with Monk, apparently stemming from an arrest in 2014, according to Monk’s attorney, did not result in any criminal convictions.
“Yeah, Monk, I fucked him up one night years ago,” Slattery said, explaining how he received the call to the scene from fellow officers. Slattery said when he arrived, he saw a “long gun” in the corner of the same room as Monk (though Monk’s attorney claims that it was only a BB gun). The tape contains no indication that Monk, a Black man, ever made a move toward the weapon or threatened to use it during the interaction, only that he was pacing back and forth talking to another IPD officer when Slattery walked in and thought he saw Monk walking toward the weapon. What follows is Slattery’s description of the ensuing event.
“I fucking pinned him up against the wall. He was fighting with me, so I fucking suplexed him to the ground. Then, I’m on top of him and he’s still not giving up, so I’m giving him knee strikes, I fucking knee struck him in the neck. Fucking struck him in the fucking back.”
Slattery says that at that point, Monk stopped struggling and was handcuffed. After being cuffed, Slattery said he and another officer who he calls “Doane” tried to get Monk to stand up and walk to the police vehicle, but that Monk refused. It appears that the other officer Slattery is referring to is Eric Doane, an officer with the Ithaca Police Department and the former president of the Ithaca Police Benevolent Association (Clarification: an earlier version of this story said that Eric Doane is still the president of the IPBA—his term ended in 2020). The City of Ithaca declined to identify the other officer Slattery is talking about.
“We said ‘Look, dude, you’re going to the car, you can either go to the car with us or you can, you know, be dragged to the car,’” Slattery said on the tape. “He said ‘I ain’t standing up.’ So I grabbed one foot and he grabbed another and we fucking bounced him down, all the way down the stairs.”
The two then go silent for a small period before continuing to talk, this time ostensibly joking about planting evidence in response to Monk’s earlier question asking if his DNA would be sealed.
“He was being sketchy, wasn’t he?” Slattery said to his partner. He then imitates Monk’s question about sealing the DNA sample before apparently offering a hypothetical sarcastic response as they both laugh along. “No, we ain’t sealing it man, we got some places to put this first. Whoa, whoa, whoa, sealing it? We have to put this on the evidence first.”
The two then have a brief discussion about DNA swabbing protocol in general. At that point, Slattery appears to realize his body camera is still recording. “Oh, hold on,” he says, before reaching inside his coat and turning off the camera.
The 9-minute video can be watched in full below. Slattery’s comments begin at the 6:45 mark of the video.
Monk’s defense attorney, Kevin Kelly, expressed dismay at the video’s contents and argued it pollutes his client’s current case.
“It’s frustrating since we’re all innocent until proven guilty,” Kelly said. “He brags about dragging my handcuffed client down concrete stairs years ago–that arrest ended with no criminal conviction against my client. Then he jokes about evidence tampering in this case. I will do my best to limit the harm to my client’s case, and help Ithaca regain confidence in our police force.”
The City of Ithaca released the video to the Ithaca Voice and intends to publish it on the city’s website in the near future as the internal investigation concludes. Slattery has been a police officer with the Ithaca Police Department since 2006. He is listed as a sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Division on the City of Ithaca’s website. He was promoted to sergeant in 2016, according to the department’s Facebook page. A request for comment from the Ithaca Police Benevolent Association has not been answered.
Mayor Svante Myrick and Police Chief Dennis Nayor both made statements to the Ithaca Voice in response to the incident. Nayor said he recognizes that Slattery’s comments on tape reflect “two areas of critical importance—force and integrity” and that they serve to harm the police’s relationship with the public—which is already tenuous locally and nationally at the moment—which motivated him to act quickly in initiating the internal investigation and suspending Slattery.
“As the Chief of Police, I am thoroughly disappointed in the statements made by this sergeant,” Nayor said. “They are wholly inconsistent with our values and culture. I took swift action to suspend the involved sergeant, and in consultation with the mayor and city attorney, I will seek to impose appropriate discipline.”
“I am keenly aware that this comes at an already strained moment in IPD’s relationship with the public,” Myrick said. “I continue to believe that IPD as an organization is one of the most professional police departments in the state. But there is clearly room for improvement, and we will continue the hard work of building and maintaining a culture of respect and professionalism throughout the department.”
Myrick continued that he intends to share the conclusions of IPD’s internal investigation into the matter with the public, “hopefully sometime this month.” Subsequent to that, the city will seek appropriate discipline, he said.
Additionally, Slattery issued his own apology for the incident. He said that he reported the incident to the department on Nov. 6, 2020, calling the statements “inappropriate jokes” and claiming that they do not accurately reflect his interactions with Monk in the past.
“I immediately turned over that recording to my superiors and to the District Attorney’s office,” his apology states. “These inappropriate comments were made in jest and do not accurately reflect on my actions in dealing with that subject. I sincerely apologize to the Department and the community for the embarrassment I have caused. I assure all that these comments do not accurately depict the professional manner in which members of the Department and I have always strived to conduct ourselves. I will work diligently to regain the trust of the Department and community I have so proudly served for the last 15 years.”
Slattery’s statement appears to imply that he never actually mistreated Monk during the arrest—that he was lying in his statements caught on tape about the arrest. But Kelly, Monk’s attorney, said his client maintains that he was indeed physically mistreated during the arrest, including being dragged down the stairs. The Ithaca Voice is unable to independently verify whether or not IPD officers beat Monk during the arrest because no complaint was made at the time, meaning body camera footage of the arrest was not retained.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matt Van Houten, when asked about a potential investigation into Slattery’s conduct, said that the issue is not being handled by his office. He did, however, confirm that his office had turned over the video of Slattery’s comments to Kelly, Monk’s defense attorney.
“There is no criminal investigation relating to Kevin Slattery,” Van Houten said. “I can’t comment on any internal matters that IPD is conducting as I am not involved in those matters. I take our ethical and statutory obligations regarding the disclosure of impeachment materials (anything that might be used to question the officer’s credibility or truthfulness) or potentially exculpatory information to the defendant in any criminal proceeding with the utmost seriousness. We have made such a disclosure in a pending case where this particular officer is a potential witness.”
Monk was indicted by a grand jury last month on charges of first degree rape, first degree criminal sexual act and first degree sexual abuse, allegedly stemming from a late-night incident on April 28, 2020. He does have a criminal history outside of this most recent arrest: In 2016, he was arrested and charged with an attack on a woman after breaking into her apartment, but ended up only pleading guilty to fourth degree criminal mischief in connection to the case. To reiterate, that case is not related to the arrest Slattery describes on tape.
This is the second punishment against a police officer to be publicly announced from the Investigations Division over the last year, after the City of Ithaca moved to terminate Investigator Christine Barksdale in January 2020 after allegedly failing to sufficiently investigate over 200 cases since 2009 while working in the division.