Tag Archives: officer clark

Officer Clark Nominated for America’s Most Wanted

The Middletown Police Department’s Officer Douglas Clark and his police dog Niko were recently nominated to be an America’s Most Wanted‘s “All-Star” for the capturing of fugitive Tormu Prall.

Clark, who is infamous at Wesleyan for harassing Wesleyan students and his involvement in the Fountain Avenue incident last year, as well as for other altercations, clearly has a tendency to take his job to the extreme.

However, on September 8, 2008, this quality manifested itself as bravery. Responding to a call about a man breaking into cars, Clark and Niko followed Prall, who is accused of arson and murder, through briars and a forest to a parking lot near the Mattabasset River, where he disappeared from sight:

Using his powerful sense of smell, the dog followed the trail of the convict until it reached the tractor trailers. Then the dog isolated the man’s location under one of the parked trucks.

Based on the dog’s reactions, the officer found the suspect. As he described it, “The dog was very hot … excited. Ears are literally perked forward, tail’s wagging. Everyone should know their own dog.”

At that point, Clark started exhorting the man to show himself and police ultimately took the guy in.

Had it not been for the dog, Clark said police would not have found the fugitive.

“He had wedged himself up under the axles where you couldn’t have seen him,” Clark said, a few days after the capture.

[…] Police had no idea if he had weapons, [Fellow MPD Officer] Puorro said. Still, Clark crawled on the ground and began digging under the trailer.

That bravery, a successful capture and all the work Clark does for the force combined to give Puorro a reason to nominate him, Puorro said — so he did. The next thing he knew, the producers from the show called and interviewed him.

See the full article in the Middletown Press here.
See the “America’s Most Wanted” article on Prall here.
And here’s previous Argus content featuring Officer Clark.

Also, this is my first post as a new Wesleying blogger. Hey Wesleyan.

Officer with the Paintball Gun was Officer Kraeger

A student sends us photographic evidence that the officer with the paintball gun was Officer Kraeger. His badge number appears to be either 4660 or 4880; it’s a little hard to tell from the picture, which is otherwise very clear.


Update 2:51: the same student sends in some more photos. He says:

Here’s another of Officer Kraeger, it happens to be the exact moment he yells “Take them down!” to several students before firing upon them.

The others are of Officer Clark with the K9, and the dude who bitten by it.

See the comments for further discussion on past issues involving Wesleyan students and Officer Clark.


Racial Profiling in Middletown?

Eric Lach writes about something that should upset pretty much everyone at Wesleyan. Jose Chapa ’07, perhaps having one of the worst years ever, was arrested over the weekend after police responded to a noise complaint on Home Ave. In what was a horrifying experience, the officer seemed to be targeting Chapa specifically and taking out his frustrations for the whole Wesleyan community out on him:

“They grabbed me, they handcuffed me, and slammed my face in the road,” Chapa said. “I was yelling, ‘please let me go.’ Then they pulled out the mace.”

Student witnesses report hearing the officers continually yelling and swearing at Chapa and other students.

“We give you a hundred breaks a year, and you just piss all over us,” one of the police officers, who identified himself as Officer Clark, said to the milling students.

According to witnesses, he also said there would no longer be any discretion given by the MPD to University parties. He did give students his badge number, when pressed.

Some students, Chapa included, wondered why Chapa was singled out, among all the other students on the street.

“I felt that they were specifically focusing on him, targeting him as a person among many on that street,” said Erin Moore ’07, who was also with Chapa at the time. “I noticed a difference in the way the officers spoke to me and Rae [Kaplan] in comparison to how they talked to Jose.”

if you’re upset about this, you can contact the Middletown Police Department.

You can contact Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano at Mayor@cityofmiddletown.com.

Of course, if you have any opinion at all about the article, you can write a wespeak.

Or you could watch this again. Not really the same thing, but enough to scare pretty much anyone.