Conviction for officer assault stands

A 50-year-old woman’s conviction for assaulting a Spirit Lake police officer will stand, Kootenai County Magistrate Penny Friedlander ruled Monday, despite the woman’s contention it was the officer who battered her.

Sally Frengle and her supporters protested in front of the Kootenai County Courthouse on Monday, hours before a hearing on Frengle’s attempt to have a jury’s guilty verdict against her overturned.

Frengle said the jury would have found her innocent if the court had allowed her attorney to introduce allegations of past misconduct against former Officer Matt Hathaway.

Hathaway was fired from the Spirit Lake Police Department less than a month after Frengle’s Aug. 26, 2006, arrest on six charges, including battery on an officer, DUI and possession of a controlled substance.

Frengle said she was driving behind Hathaway and trying to flag him down to ask for directions. Hathaway wrote in his report that Frengle was tailgating him, failed to stop at an intersection and didn’t use her turn signal.

She and Hathaway gave different versions of what happened next.

Hathaway said Frengle failed sobriety tests and “became agitated.” The officer said she resisted his attempts to handcuff her, struck him in the groin and attempted to punch his face and chest. The scuffle caused about $1,000 damage to his patrol car, he wrote in his report, and he later testified that Frengle had caused him injuries that required him to seek medical care.

Frengle, who is just over 5 feet tall, said it was Hathaway, who is 5-foot-9 and 155 pounds, who battered her.

She said the damage to the patrol car was caused when he repeatedly “bashed” her face onto the hood of the car. Pictures taken at the hospital a few days after her arrest show her eyes black and swollen and multiple bruises on her arms and legs.

Hathaway testified at Frengle’s trial that he didn’t do anything wrong that day.

“We were both scared,” he said, according to court minutes. He also said “50-year-old women can kill a cop, too.”

A video taped from inside Hathaway’s patrol car depicted the stop and arrest, but much of the altercation took place outside the camera frame.

Frengle alleges that Hathaway pulled her out of view of the video recorder mounted in his patrol car. Frengle said she wasn’t resisting, as Hathaway claimed, but was trying to move to a position where the officer’s actions would be caught on tape.

Spirit Lake Mayor Roxy Martin said Hathaway worked for the department June through September last year and that she was unaware of excessive force and wrongful arrest claims leveled against Hathaway when he worked as a Bonner County deputy sheriff.

Then-Spirit Lake Police Chief Tony Lamanna hired Hathaway, Martin said.

“Tony never should have hired him,” the mayor said Monday, adding that Hathaway “just didn’t fit with our Police Department.”

Hathaway could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Martin said Hathaway’s termination was not a result of his conduct during Frengle’s arrest. She declined to say whether any complaints had been made regarding Hathaway, but Martin said no tort claims had been filed against the Police Department.

Hathaway was fired for “not following proper procedure for calling in sick and following chain of command,” Kootenai County Deputy Prosecutor Ann Wick testified in a February hearing in Frengle’s case. However, an investigation by the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor determined that he did follow proper procedure, Wick said in court documents.

Wick successfully fought to keep a half-dozen tort claims filed against Hathaway in Bonner County from being used against him in court. Those claims included allegations of excessive force, wrongful arrest, illegal detention and improper searches.

“The focus on this case should be on what transpired between Mr. Hathaway and Ms. Frengle on the day in question – not on what happened one or two years ago, during a totally unrelated incident, upon an entirely different set of facts,” Wick said.

Hathaway used excessive force, defense attorney Jed Nixon argued, and said the tort claims showed Hathaway had a “documented history of using excessive force and disregarding” constitutional protections.

In all, Frengle was charged with six misdemeanors and found guilty of all but one – a charge that she had an open container of liquor in the car.

A bag containing marijuana and drug paraphernalia was found inside the car, Hathaway wrote in his report.

Nixon argued Monday that the evidence in the case didn’t prove the bag was Frengle’s or that she knew it was in the car.

She testified at trial that her husband, who had recently died of cancer, used medical marijuana in the late stages of his illness. Frengle said she didn’t know if any of his marijuana remained in the car or their house.

Frengle continues to plead her innocence. The day of her arrest she drank one beer, she testified. Several witnesses attested to the same.

Nixon tried to get the DUI conviction overturned on the strength of that testimony, and the fact that she was given neither a breath nor blood test for alcohol.

Friedlander said she wasn’t going to second-guess the jurors who convicted Frengle.

Frengle said she will appeal her conviction.