The last of three Metropolitan Police Department officers has been cleared by a department trial board of any wrongdoing as the officers’ whistleblower case against the city moves forward.
Benjamin Fetting was found not guilty last week on all charges, according to the police union.
Officers Fetting, Jose Rodriguez and Andrew Zabavsky claim they were wrongfully placed under investigation by MPD after refusing to say under oath that the city’s alcohol breath-analysis equipment was fully functional. In a complaint filed last September, they said they were instructed in 2010 by prosecutors to not answer questions when giving testimony in court regarding the accuracy of the analysis equipment used by MPD. At the time, the officers, who were responsible for a large portion of the city’s drunk driving arrests, had learned that the equipment had not been properly calibrated for years.
After they ignored the request, in July 2010 Zabavsky and Rodriguez learned they had been placed under investigation for not following proper procedures during a prior DUI arrest, according to the complaint. It also said they were placed on an internal list of officers whose testimony would not be supported by the Attorney General’s Office.
Fetting testified in a September 2010 trial, and afterward prosecutor Tamara Barnett “berated Officer Fetting about his testimony and told him that he should not have answered questions about the [breath-analysis] devices,” the complaint said. The following month he was barred from training for, and a promotion to, the department’s DUI Program, according to the complaint.
In a statement to the media, the police union said the department’s case against the officers was based largely on the information provided by OAG attorneys, including the claim of one attorney who said Fetting made a series of statements regarding a DUI case during a meeting.
“Not only was the attorney’s testimony found to be ‘mistaken,’ the officer was able to document that the OAG even made up the date of the meeting,” the police union stated. “While the Trial Board decision generously described the attorney’s testimony as only ‘mistaken’ and a result of ‘distraction’ and a heavy case load, at the end of the day — OAG tried to end the career of an honest, hard working officer through misleading facts.”
Rodriguez and Zabavsky had been previously cleared of wrongdoing, internal documents show.
