Former Austin Police Cmdr. Jason Dusterhoft’s appeal of his firing in December 2018 was denied last week, making his termination from the Austin Police Department official.
The arbitrator who denied Dusterhoft’s appeal, hearing officer Norman Bennett, said that Austin Police Chief Brian Manley was correct in his decision to fire Dusterhoft.
Dusterhoft “engaged in serious misconduct in this case,” Bennett wrote in the civil service document.
Dusterhoft was fired after a lengthy investigation into allegations that he choked a woman multiple times to a state of unconsciousness during what a disciplinary memo called “rough sex.”
The woman, identified only by a pseudonym in the memo, reported to Austin police in the summer of 2018 that Dusterhoft had assaulted her. Travis County prosecutors have previously said they do not plan to charge Dusterhoft.
Dusterhoft has said all sexual contact between him and the woman was consensual.
However, Manley said in a memo released a year ago that Dusterhoft violated Texas law by committing an aggravated assault and engaging in deadly conduct by strangling the woman. Even if the woman had agreed — the document included text messages between the two in which she appeared to affirm a desire to be strangled — Dusterhoft was still responsible for his actions, which endangered her, Manley wrote.
In addition, Manley said Dusterhoft violated department rules stating that officers must not associate with people involved in criminal activity. Dusterhoft socialized with a woman, including at a strip club, despite being told about her cocaine use and past criminal behavior, the disciplinary memo says.
During his arbitration, Dusterhoft made claims about other misconduct in the Police Department that he said was not properly addressed. An outside investigator has been hired to look into those allegations as well as claims involving racist language by an assistant chief who abruptly retired in the fall.
Ahead of Dusterhoft’s arbitration proceedings, former Austin Assistant Police Chief Justin Newsom informed Manley someone might have had screenshots of text messages in which Newsom made racist statements, according to a complaint filed with the city’s Office of Police Oversight. Manley “agreed to keep it a secret as long as it did not come out in the arbitration, for the good of the department,” the complaint says.
Newsom retired from the department Oct. 30.
Credit: Source link
