A Cuyahoga County grand jury has decided to charge Cleveland Police Officer David Mindek with dereliction of duty for his part in the July 4th shooting of Dan Ficker in Parma. The other Cleveland Officer on the scene, Matthew Craska, has been cleared in the shooting.
According to a release from the prosecutor’s office, Mindek is accused of “negligently failing to prevent or halt the commission of an offense or to apprehend an offender, when it is in the law enforcement officer’s power to do so alone or with available assistance.” Dereliction of duty is a second degree misdemeanor.
As Scene documented in our recent cover story, Mindek and Craska crossed over to Parma in order to confront Ficker about jewelry allegedly stolen from Mindek’s residence during a July 4th party. Mindek was off-duty at the time; Craska and Ficker became involved in a physical altercation that ended in the shooting.
The charge comes after a long wait for Ficker’s family, who’ve vocally questioned why the officers approached their son in the first place. Scene spoke briefly this afternoon with Ficker’s mother, Bernadette Rolen; she said the grand jury results did not come to as a surprise and that the family plans to file a suit in federal court.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2012.
This outcome is unbelievable and sad, another cop gets away with murder in Cleveland! I guess it’s just the status quo anymore. It just makes me sick.
No justice. Maybe one day people will rise up and take our Police Force back.
NO JUSTICE! This sad!
This is proof that the police are above reproach. The public should be very scared…even when the police are dead-wrong, they don’t have to answer for anything.
Some of these cops feel as though they have a license to just kill anyone. This is bad. We don’t need those type of cops on the force. They need to make an example out of these cops to show that they are not above the law. When one person is unsafe we are all unsafe. That cop didn’t have any right to kill this man. Ohio has a lot unjust things going on people stealing money all type of things are wrong with this state. The very people society is suppose to trust are the ones who are acting as though are gangsters. Nothing will be done. My heart goes out to the family. The police force needs to be changed they protect anybody. We don’t need those type of cops they are worst than the criminals.
Well, did they find the stolen jewlery? Or was this an innocent man?