It’s a jarring moment that comes toward the end of a long and often dull segment of body camera footage.
As police release a handcuffed suspect from the back of a squad car, an officer asks patrolman Justin Vazeii if he couldn’t find more than the small bag of marijuana he located during a frisk, which wasn’t enough to secure an arrest.
“I checked his butt and everything,’’ Vazeii says as body cameras capture the action on a street corner in Memphis’ Binghampton community. “You already know I do the whole…’’ he says before halting in mid-sentence.
“He checked my ass and everything,’’ the suspect confirms.
“See,’’ Vazeii replies. “He knows.’’
Vazeii’s behavior on that sunny summer day in 2019 remains in dispute. But the incident has added fuel to a lingering controversy surrounding the hard-charging officer who retired earlier this year at age 36 with a disability pension following an on-the-job injury and who once shot a Memphis teenager during a struggle in a non-fatal encounter that was ruled justifiable.
Records show Vazeii was the focus of 20 separate citizen complaints or supervisory actions between the time of his 2015 initiation as a patrolman and the 2019 Binghampton frisking incident. The number and frequency of those complaints would be enough to trigger a review by MPD’s Performance Enhancement Program, or PEP, an early intervention system that seeks to moderate officer behavior before it causes larger troubles.
Yet just what police supervisors may have done, if anything, to counsel Vazeii or possibly modify his behavior remains a closely guarded secret.
A Shelby County judge is set to decide today whether to release internal MPD documents involving Vazeii and two other officers who made news in recent years for controversial interactions with the public. At issue is a lawsuit brought by an attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on behalf of a local journalist seeking records involving PEP.
“The public has an interest in knowing what the city is doing to help its officers that may struggle,’’ Reporters Committee attorney Paul McAdoo said an August 2022 hearing in the case.
Lawyers for the city of Memphis want Chancery Court Special Judge James R. Newsom III to keep the records confidential, contending PEP is an employee assistance program that involves private health information and other sensitive details. A hearing is set for 1:30 p.m. today.
Additional reading: City fails to release PEP audit reports
In addition to Vazeii, the lawsuit seeks records involving former MPD officer Colin Berryhill, who resigned in 2020 amid an excessive force investigation, and Eric Kelly, a former homicide detective who retired in 2019 during an investigation into a sexual relationship he had with a murder suspect.
Berryhill told the Institute for Public Service Reporting in a series of recent interviews that danger on the streets, poor training and dirty politics within MPD all contributed to the troubles he experienced late in his 12-year career there.
“I came on this job to … help people. I have saved numerous lives. I’ve seen hundreds of dead bodies,” said Berryhill, who says he once was enrolled in PEP but found it ineffective.
“My first solid ten years in the most dangerous city in America, I never got in trouble at all for any use of force or anything like that.’’
A reporter first requested the PEP records in December 2020 and filed suit in April 2022 after the city of Memphis denied the request. The court initially heard arguments in the case in August 2022 before the litigation stalled.
The public-access suit follows another involving MPD’s Performance Enhancement Program. That suit, settled in January, resulted in a revelation that MPD apparently is not conducting required PEP performance audits to evaluate outcomes of supervisory interventions involving struggling officers.
Controversial pat downs
It was bright and sunny on July 31, 2019, when officer Justin Vazeii participated in a “zero tolerance” saturation patrol involving Tillman Station officers and members of MPD’s Organized Crime Unit.
Vazeii and a patrol partner spotted two men standing on the corner of Red Oak Street and Mimosa Avenue in Memphis’ Binghampton community. As the officers approached, the men began to walk away. The officers handcuffed, frisked and temporarily detained both men. Vazeii found a small bag of marijuana in one of the men’s pockets.
That’s when the controversy began.
With body cameras rolling as the two officers frisked the men, Vazeii asks his younger partner, “Did you check his ass crack good?’’
“Yes,’’ the second officer, Christopher Tracy, answered.
The man Tracy frisked later filed an internal affairs complaint and then a federal lawsuit against the city of Memphis contending the officer “forcibly inserted one or two fingers” into his rectum. The city denies the claims in the suit. Those claims include allegations that Tracy’s treatment of the man was part of a larger “custom, pattern and practice” at MPD and that he was acting under the “direction, encouragement or both’’ of the older Vazeii.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Norris dismissed the suit on technical grounds in September 2021, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judgment and returned the case to District Court in Memphis. The suit against the city is ongoing and remains unresolved, though Vazeii and Tracy have been dismissed as defendants.
MPD’s internal affairs unit conducted an investigation that found fault only with collateral issues and not the legality or appropriateness of the pat downs of the two men.
Vazeii received an 8-day suspension for neglect of duty in connection with the handling of the marijuana evidence. According to reports, the officer released the second suspect to OCU officers who “asked if they could have the arrest to boost their stats.” The officers then released the suspect without charge and gave him back the marijuana because it involved a small amount.
Though the suspect frisked by Vazeii says on body camera footage “he checked my ass and everything’’ and later told internal investigators that Vazeii “reached into his underwear and checked his rectum,” the officer said “he only used the back of his hands’’ to search the man’s “outer clothing, up to and including the buttocks area,’’ according to an investigative summary report. The report said Vazeii and Tracy conducted routine pat downs, though bodycam footage at times appears obstructed.
Vazeii declined to comment for this story. Memphis and MPD officials also declined comment. Mayoral spokesperson Penelope Huston cited the ongoing public records suit for officials’ unwillingness to comment.
It was not the first time, however, that Vazeii found himself in the middle of allegations involving aggressive pat downs.
Two years before the Binghampton incident a 27-year-old-man filed a complaint with MPD contending Vazeii had inappropriately frisked him during a traffic stop that led to the filing of felony drug charges. According to a June 21, 2017 police report, Tarvin Dean alleged that Vazeii had “penetrated his anus digitally”. The one-page investigative report says bodycam footage found no evidence to support his claims.
Dean repeated his allegations in an August 2022 jailhouse interview with a reporter.
“I felt like he had inappropriately grabbed me in areas where I felt like he was trying to degrade me,’’ said Dean, who was being held on a first-degree murder charge for the shooting of a man in South Memphis. Dean later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving 20 years in prison.
Dean’s then-attorney, Claiborne Ferguson, said he had no information to support or debunk his client’s claim, but said he received a number of similar complaints from other clients about MPD.
“Back in 2017, 2018, there were numerous clients who reported to me that they, police were involved in illegal body cavity searches, fingers up the rectum, searching for drugs, most likely unconstitutional searches. Definitely very invasive and very demeaning to the defendants,’’ Ferguson said. Few, if any, were willing to go public given their criminal reputations and the sensitivity of their allegations, he said.
“Unfortunately, most of the people who suffer from this don’t want to file suit because they don’t want the embarrassment,’’ Ferguson said.
Chain of complaints
Dean’s complaint was one of as many as 14 that citizens filed against Vazeii over two-and-a-half years between April 2016 and November 2018.
Some appear minor or frivolous.
A man complained in October 2018 that “Vazeii has to be taken off the street for the community’s sake,’’ contending that the officer had verbally abused him during a traffic stop. According to a three-page report, however, bodycam footage showed that the man initiated the argument and that Vazeii only raised his voice and cursed in response.
Another man contended that Vazeii had punched him in the face; he didn’t, though the officer did call him a profane name, a report said.
Other complaints appear more troubling.
A woman claimed in October 2017 that Vazeii would come by at night and shine a police spotlight into her house and stop cars leaving her home while looking for a relative with a criminal record.
A law student once complained that Vazeii had improperly detained and handcuffed him in the presence of his 12-year-old daughter at the Wolfchase Galleria Mall.
That man, James R. Davis, was a third-year law student in February 2018 when he took his daughter on a shopping trip to Wolfchase Galleria Mall.
There, he encountered Justin Vazeii, who was moonlighting on a security detail.
According to a complaint Davis later filed, Vazeii handcuffed and detained him following a verbal altercation.
“It was traumatic,’’ Davis, now a practicing Memphis attorney, told a reporter. “As a dad, you never want to get arrested in front of your child.’’
Davis said Vazeii confronted him contending that his daughter and another child were playing in a disruptive manner. When the officer approached him a second time, words were exchanged. A report says Davis was cuffed, detained and given a misdemeanor citation for disorderly conduct and trespassing. The charges were later dismissed.
In filing his complaint, Davis alleged Vazeii was disrespectful and abusive and had overstepped his authority.
“That’s the reason why there is such a disconnect between the police department and the community, because when people make these allegations (and) feel like they’re being wronged, there’s no accountability,’’ Davis said.
Only one of the citizen complaints reviewed by a reporter resulted in a suspension, though Vazeii was suspended at least three other times for traffic mishaps, records show.
The District Attorney’s Office cleared Vazeii of any wrongdoing following a Dec. 30, 2022 incident when he shot a teenager as the youth struggled with another officer over a gun. The teen survived. “Deadly force was a necessary and sound decision,’’ District Attorney Steve Mulroy wrote in a report clearing Vazeii. The officer retired in April after receiving an unknown on-the-job injury.
PEP intervention
The 2018 complaint by Davis, the law student, was at least the sixth that MPD had received about Vazeii over a 9-month period. Though it’s unknown if Vazeii was ever referred to the Performance Enhancement Program, the number of complaints were enough to trigger an evaluation for referral to the program. MPD’s policy and procedures manual at that time said PEP will evaluate behavior of an officer when he or she receives five complaints within 12 months, though the threshold has since been raised to six.
Other thresholds for evaluation include two firearms discharges within 18 months and four use-of-force incidents within three months.
PEP THRESHOLDS
The Memphis Police Department’s Performance Enhancement
Program is a “non-punitive” early intervention system designed to detect and
correct negative officer behavior before it erupts into major misconduct.
Referrals to PEP can be made when an officer is involved in the following:
Firearms discharge: 2 in 18 monthsResponse to Resistance: 4 in 3 months
Vehicle Pursuit: 4 in 12 months
On the Job Injury: 3 in 6 months
Management referral: 1 in 18 months
Traffic crashes: 2 in 12 months
Overall complaints: 6 in 12 months
The manual describes PEP as “a structured system designed to identify and manage behaviors that result in performance related problems.” PEP is “a non-disciplinary system” – officers referred to it generally are not subject to suspension or other disciplinary action, but instead receive “coaching, training, and professional development” to assist officers “in order to provide the highest level of service and satisfaction to the public.”
Officers referred to PEP can receive a range of “non-punitive” intervention including anger management, cultural awareness and conflict resolution training, remedial driving or firearms instruction and focused training on communication skills, “critical incident diffusing”, “verbal judo”, defensive tactics and “tactical response to critical incidents”.
“We’ve told (officers in PEP) it’s confidential and these records would not be used against them,’’ MPD PEP coordinator Lt. Laquita Jones testified in a 2022 hearing in the case. “…It’s very sensitive and personal information for each one of the officers.’’
PEP develops corrective actions plans that deal with a range of issues that can include marital problems, suicidal ideations and struggles with substance abuse, Jones said. Characterizing PEP as an Employee Assistance Program, or EAP, Jones said records are kept under lock and key.
Reporters Committee attorney McAdoo has argued that while PEP allows officers to be referred to an EAP, it offers a range of remedial training and services that are not sensitive in nature.
Nonetheless, former officer Colin Berryhill said he was enrolled in PEP once and never got any counseling or training at all.
“From my experience with PEP, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t do anything,’’ he said. “They were not trying to get you help. They were not making any concentrated effort.’’
Berryhill contends that managers would help some favored officers succeed while hindering others. Another obstacle involved rough officers who had a negative influence on younger patrolmen, he said.
“A lot of these guys probably were, like, too tough on people. You know, I was young. I was 21 years old. … I remember these guys were just like, tough. They were old school, you know what I mean? They carried around their wooden batons and like, and they’d be quick to throw someone up against a wall, or pat them down,’’ Berryhill said.
“And I made the decision early on that I wasn’t going to be like that.”
Still, he landed in trouble. Following an internal investigation in 2019, Berryhill was charged with violating MPD’s use-of-force policy for three separate incidents in which he deployed his Taser on citizens. As the investigation dragged on for months, Berryhill resigned in October 2020, taking a new job with the Southaven Police Department. He resigned from SPD in April amid another internal investigation involving “allegations of policy violations for serious misconduct and neglect of duty,’’ records show. An SPD disciplinary review board had voted to terminate Berryhill following an encounter with a citizen.
Berryhill said troubles like his could be avoided with better management and oversight.
“The system is not good and it needs to be fixed,’’ he said.
