Capt. Brian Norris of the Cincinnati Police Department was arrested Friday following an investigation into an alleged off-duty strangulation of a woman in Washington Park in October.
According to an announcement from CPD, Norris, commander of CPD’s Special Services section, has been charged with assault and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors.
Norris’ police powers have been suspended following the arrest. CPD said he has been moved to an “administrative assignment pending the outcome of this case.”
“I stand by my decision to have an external agency investigate this situation,” said Police Chief Teresa Theetge. “It is imperative to have a fair and impartial investigation when any high-ranking member of our agency is alleged to have engaged in misconduct. Capt. Norris is entitled to due process, and we will await the outcome of this case.”
The case sparked wide attention after CityBeat shared a video of the incident provided by a witness from the scene.
Keep scrolling for a video from the scene, provided by a witness to CityBeat.
The video depicts a man who appears to be Norris crouched on top of a woman, his arms planted forward, while the woman cries and says, “Get off of me.”
“Get off of her!” one witness can be heard saying to Norris.
“She knows what she did,” Norris replies to the witness.
What happened?
According to heavily redacted records from CPD, Norris is listed as the suspect in an assault investigation from Oct. 24, with the offense listed as “strangulation.” Records show officers were dispatched to the corner of Washington Park across from Teak Sushi on Race Street around 10 p.m. for a report of a man choking a woman.
“We just watched a man, like, chokehold his wife or a woman, and she’s screaming, saying, ‘I’m not OK,’” 911 call records show.
One of the witnesses at the scene spoke with CityBeat about the incident. This witness, who we will call Kate, has asked to keep her identity anonymous for the sake of privacy.
“I was walking my dog, and my partner was actually coming to pick me up from the walk because I was cold, and I was walking east on 12th Street towards Race,” Kate said. “There was a man behind me, of course, I had no idea who he was at the time, and he was dragging a woman in a headlock. […] He’s just, like, pulling her in a headlock. She’s kind of struggling to keep up, and she’s kind of frantic and freaking out, obviously.”
Once Norris and the woman reached the corner of 12th and Race streets, Kate realized she was not the only concerned witness.
“I looked back at the witnesses behind me, and was like, ‘Are we seeing the same thing right now?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, I think we are,’” Kate said. “So I said, ‘Ma’am, would you like us to call dispatch? Would you like us to call somebody?’ And she said, ‘Yes, please call somebody.’ She said she needed help.”
At this point, Kate told CityBeat she saw Norris throw the woman on the ground. She said another witness called 911. Kate’s partner arrived to pick up their dog, and that’s when she said she confronted Norris in Washington Park.
“When I started walking back across the street, he had started dragging her again in another headlock and took her, like, around behind the landscaping,” Kate said. “That’s where the video starts.”
Kate shared the 44-second video with CityBeat:
“He was super smug,” Kate told CityBeat about Norris at the scene. “He said, ‘Do what you gotta do, call the cops.’ I was like, ‘We literally did! I don’t know why you keep saying that.’ He did just keep saying that in this, like, really smug, like, kind of creepy kind of way.”
After being confronted by Kate and other witnesses, Norris can be seen in the video getting off the woman and walking away. The woman remains on the ground, crying as Kate crouches down next to her; this is where the video ends.
“We were waiting on dispatch at this point,” Kate told CityBeat. “She was definitely incredibly hysterical. She was noticeably super frightened and just distraught.”
After about 15 minutes of sitting with the woman, Kate said Norris came back, but they were still waiting for the police to arrive. Kate said she stood between the woman on the ground and Norris, asking him questions.
“I asked him all these questions, and he said, ‘All I’m going to tell you is she knows what she did.’ And I said, ‘That’s not what I asked you,’” Kate told CityBeat. “And he’s like, ‘Well, that’s all I’m going to tell you is she knows what she did.’ And I kind of got frustrated with him, and I kind of gave up.”
Kate then flagged down a patrol car she said was not there to respond to their call.
“They parked their car, and then they ran to the scene to help,” she said. “And then by that, the cops that dispatch had sent had showed up.”
Kate said police officers handcuffed Norris right away, placing him in the back of a squad car.
Investigative notes from CPD’s records show Norris did not talk to police at the scene, and that the alleged victim told officers “she could not talk about the situation due to her job and the job of the suspect,” adding that she “could not talk about the situation in public or with BWC’s (body-worn cameras) on.”
When an officer told the alleged victim he could not turn off his body-worn camera, records show she responded by saying, “He is CPD.”
Kate didn’t know at the time that Norris was a member of CPD, let alone a high-ranking captain. In hindsight, she thinks she saw a moment when the responding officers realized the suspect was CPD.
“We were talking to the cops and giving them our information, gave them our licenses, you know, everything that you’re supposed to do in that situation,” Kate said. “One of the cops that was handling Norris in the squad car had walked up to the cop that we were talking to and was like, ‘We have a problem. Can you come check this out?’ And so we kind of were like, ‘That was strange.’”
While names are redacted from most of the incident records, one section appears to describe testimony from the alleged victim where she says the incident could have been “misconstrued” and that Norris was “attempting to help her” after she fell to the ground while she was upset over a personal family matter.
Records show officers did not consider the incident to be a matter of domestic violence. They also say Norris was not suspected of using drugs or alcohol.
What happens next?
Norris will have the right to appeal punitive decisions from his employer, CPD, via the department’s union. Ken Kober, CPD union president, previously told CityBeat that Norris has the right to due process.
“Even though he’s a police captain, he has the right to due process, like any other citizen does,” Kober said following the start of the investigation. “While these allegations are concerning, especially him being a police officer, a high-ranking police officer, I hope everybody, citizens and the media, waits to pass judgment until the investigation is complete, the findings are out, then we can hopefully move forward with whatever happens.”
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This article appears in Dec 11-24, 2024.