Mich. police sergeants charged with armed robbery
Nov 19, 2013, 3:56 AM
DETROIT (AP) – Two off-duty police sergeants robbed three men they apparently suspected in the theft of a cellphone belonging to the teenage daughter of one of the officers, prosecutors in Detroit said Monday.
Detroit Sgt. David Pomeroy and Sgt. Michael Notoriano, who works in the Detroit suburb of St. Clair Shores, are both charged with armed robbery, among other charges.
Notoriano’s 16-year-old daughter and a friend bicycled to a Detroit gas station on July 20. Dwayne Weathington, 24, of Detroit grabbed Notoriano’s daughter by her backpack, threw her to the ground, stole her iPhone and fled on foot, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The phone was traced to a location on Detroit’s east side where Pomeroy and Notoriano drove on July 21 and confronted three Detroit men, ages 26, 27 and 28, at gunpoint, prosecutors said.
The officers retrieved the girl’s iPhone, struck one of the men in the face and took a handgun, cash and marijuana, prosecutors said.
Notoriano’s lawyer, Todd Flood, told The Associated Press that his client and Pomeroy are “outstanding” and “highly decorated” officers.
Pomeroy, 47, and Notoriano, 42, both are charged with armed robbery, willful neglect of duty, unlawful imprisonment and failure to uphold the law. Pomeroy also is charged with larceny of a firearm and Notoriano with possessing a firearm during a felony, felonious assault and ethnic intimidation.
The prosecutor’s office didn’t identify the ethnicities of those involved.
The officers were arraigned Monday and a probable cause hearing was scheduled for Dec. 18.
“The case is overcharged,” Pomeroy’s lawyer, Michael Rataj, told The Detroit News.
The prosecutor’s office filed unarmed robbery charges against Weathington. He hasn’t yet been arraigned and doesn’t have a lawyer, prosecutor’s spokeswoman Maria Miller said in an email.
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