Two law enforcement officers pleaded not guilty Tuesday to assaulting a convicted felon who allegedly threatened patrons and employees at a North Baltimore barbershop.
Baltimore City Homicide Detective Terry Love, 31, and Baltimore County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Herring, 36, requested a jury trial for their Jan. 13 court date.
Love’s attorney, Clarke Ahlers, said prosecutors have yet to give him a “single sentence of discovery.”
Love and Herring are accused of second-degree assault and assault with a deadly weapon against Andre Thomas, 43, whom police have arrested at least 32 times.
Ahlers said the criminal information accuses the two officers with assault with a deadly weapon, “possibly brass knuckles.”
“Possibly? Possibly brass knuckles?” he asked. “Don’t we win right now? How can you allege that you can prove a case beyond reasonable doubt when you can only allege something ‘possibly’ happened?”
Barber Bernard Dutton, 34, told The Examiner that Thomas threatened violence September 2007 inside Detailer Barber Shop on York Road.
“He said he would kill me, the owner, and he would kill all us,” Dutton said. “He placed his hand in his waistband like he had a gun. … We didn’t know if he had a gun.”
Court records show Thomas — who police say has eight aliases — has been convicted of 16 crimes, including four assaults and an attempted rape. He is jailed on assault charges, and faces robbery, assault and drug violation charges in upcoming trials.
Love and Herring were off-duty at the time of the altercation. They feared Thomas was armed and attempted to confront him outside the shop, according to Love’s account of the events.
“While outside the barbershop, I identified myself as a Baltimore City Police Officer, at which time [Thomas] became very combative swinging his arms in the direction of this detective still yelling profanity,” Love wrote. “Still unsure if this individual was armed, a struggle ensued.”
After the struggle, Thomas broke free from the officers and ran eastbound on Belvedere Avenue, Love wrote.
Love added that he couldn’t find Thomas and advised his supervisor at police headquarters of the incident.
But city prosecutors said the altercation amounted to a criminal act on the part of the officers.
Prosecutors wrote in a statement that Thomas “was beaten and left unconscious in the road.”
Thomas was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where a nurse told police he pulled out a sink, damaged a glass door, broke equipment and tried to run out of the building before being transferred to the psychiatric ward.
Thomas later told police he had gotten into a dispute with Dutton and that he, along with a man wearing a sheriff’s shirt and another man, beat Thomas unconscious. Dutton, whom Thomas accused of wearing brass knuckles, was charged initially, but the charges were dropped.
Love, who had been suspended after the incident, was reinstated for two weeks before he was charged criminally Sept. 5. He was suspended with pay Sept. 8.
Ahlers said Love has “never owned and never even seen brass knuckles.”
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