A captain within the Cincinnati Police Department is under investigation for allegedly strangling a woman in Washington Park while off-duty.
Records obtained by CityBeat list the officer as Captain Brian Norris, commander of CPD’s Special Services section, which oversees the department’s traffic, K-9 and motorcycles units, as well as the department’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center.
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 St. around 10 p.m. for a report of a man choking a woman.
Keep scrolling for a video from the scene provided by a witness.
“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.
CityBeat sits down with a witness
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 Street and Race Street, 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 a 44-second video with CityBeat that 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 in the video can be heard saying to Norris.
“She knows what she did,” Norris replies to the witness.
“It doesn’t matter what she did! Get off of her!” Kate replies in the video.
“He was super smug,” Katie 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,’” Katie 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.
Police leaders respond
CPD has launched an internal investigation into the Oct. 24 incident, conducted by the Cincinnati Police Department’s Internal Investigation Section. In addition, CPD Chief Teresa Theetge and the City of Cincinnati Law Department have requested a bilateral investigation into the alleged assault by an outside prosecutor’s office, which CPD said is currently underway.
CPD’s public information officer Lieutenant Jonathan Cunningham confirmed to CityBeat that Norris has not been charged with any crime and still has police powers at this time.
Ken Kober, president of the Fraternal Order of Police at CPD, the department’s labor union, told CityBeat Norris is not on administrative leave because the incident happened outside of work.
“This is all because it’s an off-duty incident, there’s been no criminal charges, there’s really no need to put him on leave,” Kober said. “Right now it’s basically just a waiting game to see how this plays out.”
Norris’ role as a captain does not regularly include him interacting with the public, according to Kober.
“He does all the administrative stuff,” he said. “Our captains, they’re not doing the hands-on investigating cases.”
The investigation into the incident on Oct. 24 is still underway. Kober said Norris has a right to a fair investigation, but acknowledged that the allegations are concerning.
“Even though he’s a police captain, he has the right to due process, like any other citizen does,” Kober said. “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 judgement until the investigation is complete, the findings are out, then we can hopefully move forward with whatever happens.”
CityBeat reached out to the Sentinel Police Association, an organization that represents the interests of minority members of the force and community, but did not hear back by press time. Stewart Isaacs, the Sentinel’s president, told WLWT that Norris “is a valuable member of the police department and a valuable member of the Sentinel Police Association. We don’t want the public to rush to judgement and want to let all the facts come out.”
Watch witness video from the scene below:
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This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 10, 2024.