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DPS still awaiting OAG’s decision in alleged police brutality case
Prosecutor says they will have an answer shortly
The two police officers who were caught on video beating a habitual offender who had engaged the police in a 40-minute car chase on Saipan last December are still doing administrative duties at the Department of Public Safety, pending the decision of the Office of the Attorney General about their case.
DPS Commissioner Robert A. Guerrero said they have been waiting for the OAG’s decision whether to prosecute the two officers or not.
He identified the officers as Stanley Patris and Giancarlo Evangelista.
The commissioner said they already submitted the report of the DPS investigation to the OAG last December.
“I cannot hold the guys in limbo forever,” Guerrero said.
Assistant attorney general Heather Barcinas said she is still reviewing the DPS report and should have an answer shortly.
Then-assistant attorney general Matthew C. Baisley used to handle the OAG’s White Collar Crime and Public Corruption division. Baisley moved back to Colorado last July.
Guerrero said that Patris and Evangelista were not among the 90 officers he had just promoted.
Patris and Evangelista were not suspended pending the OAG’s decision.
Last June, Guerrero told the media that the result of their investigation has already been forwarded to the OAG.
“Like everybody else, I am still waiting to see what will happen,” Guerrero said in that June interview. At that time, he refused to divulge the identity of the two officers.
Last May, Vincent San Nicolas Norita, 32, entered a guilty plea to 18 traffic offenses and was slapped with the maximum sentence of nine years in prison.
In the evening of Dec. 9, 2016, Norita drove a car on the highways at dangerous speeds while eluding police officers, disobeying traffic signs, failing to signal, and driving with a willful or wanton disregard to the safety of persons or property which caused an accident.
Norita drove the car over 100 miles per hour from Chalan Laulau to Garapan, to Tanapag, back to Garapan, Chinatown, Chalan Laulau, and to Koblerville, where he eventually crashed at an embankment in Koblerville in the evening of Dec. 9, 2016. The car overturned.
The car chase went viral after a bystander took a video of a police officer, who appeared to be hitting Norita repeatedly with a baton or stick as he lay on the ground.
The Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services disclosed that upon medics’ assessment at the scene, the driver, Norita, stated he had pain on the back of his right shoulder blade.
DFEMS said Norita, who was uncooperative, also sustained three small cuts on the forehead and a half-inch cut on the left leg.
