Jason A. Cooper was disciplined
last year for sending an “inappropriate” Facebook message to the woman he had
pulled over during a traffic stop, department records show. He also was
disciplined early in his career with DeKalb police after he failed to correctly
report an apparent kidnapping.
The records show Cooper to
otherwise be a capable police officer.
Authorities now are trying to
determine whether he was at fault for the death of Clinton Hightower. The man
was hit and killed walking across Memorial Drive the night of May 14 as Cooper
sped to the scene of a fatal shooting at the Starlight Six Drive-In on Moreland
Avenue.
Cooper remains on paid
administrative leave while the accident is investigated, DeKalb police
spokeswoman Mekka Parish said.
A DeKalb police internal
investigative report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the
Georgia Open Records Act showed that Cooper, in his fourth year with the
department, was suspended for 10 hours for the Facebook incident.
According to the report, Cooper
stopped the woman the morning of March 12, 2011 for failing to obey a stop
sign. Later that day, the report said, Cooper told investigators he learned
that he and the woman had mutual friends on Facebook, and he sent her a
message.
“Ya sexy [butt] I shouldn’t have
gave u that ticket,” the message read, according to the report and what the
woman showed investigators when she reported Cooper five days later.
Police leaders placed Cooper on
restricted duty and found him guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer on or off
duty. It is unclear how the woman's traffic ticket was resolved.
Cooper could not be reached for
comment, but in his statement for the investigation of the Facebook message, he
admitted wrongdoing.
“This was poor judgment upon my
part on sending a message to [the woman],” Cooper said.
He served his day-long, unpaid
suspension in June.
The other disciplinary incident
involving Cooper happened after he responded to an apparent kidnapping on Aug.
23, 2009.
The officer reported the incident
to detectives assigned to the case as only an assault or battery, according to
internal investigation files. A 12-year-old had been grabbed from in front of a
church by a man in a pick-up truck and pulled by her hair into the truck before
being kicked out a block away.
The internal investigation said
Cooper completed his field report of the incident as a “simple battery” and
failed to change the status of the case when corrected and instructed by his
sergeant for several hours, keeping detectives “from promptly responding to the
scene,” the internal report says.
Cooper was found guilty of
neglect of duty and suspended for 10 hours. He had been on the streets for five
months at the time of the investigation, and his precinct captain considered it
a teaching moment in the memo recommending disciplinary action.
“Officer Cooper is still in the
learning stages of law enforcement,” then-Tucker precinct Capt. S.R. Fore said
in his recommendation. “This incident alone I believe will serve as an
excellent training/learning experience.”