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Police: St. Petersburg officer shoved handcuffed suspect to the ground during arrest (w/video)

 
Published Nov. 11, 2015

ST. PETERSBURG — On a busy downtown sidewalk, St. Petersburg police said one of their own officers handcuffed a homeless man and then shoved him to the ground.

Then, on the arrest report, the officer lied. The man fought back, the officer wrote, an account refuted by the two officers who turned him in to the department's internal review office.

That officer, Andrew Cane, resigned Monday before the St. Petersburg Police Department could fire him. He'd been with the agency since 2010.

An internal police review found that Cane, 39, falsified a police report and used unnecessary force during the Aug. 20 arrest of James Robert Blair.

Police on Tuesday released surveillance video of the incident. The video from a nearby business showed Cane responding to a call made by two female witnesses that a man urinated in front of them near the Publix at 250 Third St. S. After handcuffing Blair, the video showed, Cane walked him to a wall so that his back was to the officer.

Although the man appeared to be cooperative throughout the arrest, according to the video, Cane pushed him down on the sidewalk. Even then, the man continued to cooperate. There was no audio to accompany the video.

Cane wrote in the arrest report that Blair tried to walk away twice and twisted from his grip multiple times. When he was handcuffed, he "adopted a stance as if to attack me," according to the report. He listed the charges against Blair as exposure of sexual organs and resisting an officer without violence.

Two other responding officers reported Cane to the department's Office of Professional Standards. They countered Cane's claims in the report that Blair was resisting.

"I'm glad the officers stepped up and did the right thing," Chief Tony Holloway said Tuesday. "It says a lot about our culture here."

Cane could not be reached for comment.

Blair was not hurt during the arrest and has not filed a complaint. Detectives who interviewed him said Blair, 42, told them he did not remember the arrest because he was intoxicated. On Aug. 25 a judge dismissed the charges against Blair, according to court records.

The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office considered bringing a battery charge against Cane but decided against it, Holloway said. The department said Cane resigned Monday once he learned the review board planned to uphold the allegations against him.

This was not the first time Cane was disciplined as a St. Petersburg officer. In December 2014, according to his personnel file, a tow truck driver reported that he saw Cane masturbating in a public parking lot at 801 Central Ave. Cane said his genitals were exposed but denied that he was masturbating. He was suspended for two weeks.

St. Petersburg police Detective George Lofton, president of the Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association Inc., called Cane's actions against Blair "inappropriate and unjustified."

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But he commended the officers who turned him in for demonstrating how to handle police misconduct, especially during a time when the actions of officers are under scrutiny across the country.

"There's a big push in the nation to vilify law enforcement, which I think is misguided," Lofton said. "And I think this is an excellent example that … we do police ourselves well."

Contact Kathryn Varn at (727) 893-8913 or kvarn@tampabay.com. Follow @kathrynvarn.