Clearfield police responds to backlash from video of man with disabilities

CLEARFIELD — The Clearfield Police Department is addressing backlash from a YouTube video posted Sunday showing an officer sweeping the feet out from under a man with disabilities.

The video was posted on a popular YouTube channel, The Civil Rights Lawyer, run by attorney John Bryan, showing the incident that happened in July.

Bryan said Clearfield resident and Special Olympics medalist Shawn Nicholas was walking home from karaoke at about 3 a.m. when Clearfield police officer Zachary Fratto trailed him in a patrol car.

“Why are you running?” Fratto called out of his cruiser window in the video. “Kind of weird you’re in the parking lot this late at night.”

Nicholas, 44, can be seen on the dashboard camera footage walking across a parking lot and onto the sidewalk toward his apartment complex. “I’m not doing anything, leave me alone,” Nicholas can be heard telling the officer.

This appeared to be a reoccurring experience for the man, who would later tell police he was “fed up with this,” and “sick of cops doing this to me every time I’m walking home,” the video shows.

Nicholas walked across the street and was in his apartment complex parking lot when Fratto turned his car around and stopped the man. “You crossed the road like that, no crosswalk, it’s breaking a crime so I have a legal right to identify you now,” he tells Nicholas.

“Leave me alone or I’ll have you fired,” Nicholas says in the body camera footage. Fratto continues to say the man jaywalked and was “doing something weird.”

Fratto would tell Nicholas later, “You’re emerging from a dark business center in the middle of the night. … If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, but it’s just kind of weird that you run away from me.” The 44-year-old continued to say he did nothing wrong and walked faster because Fratto was following him.

After Nicholas refuses multiple times to give the officer his ID, Fratto begins trying to detain him, the body camera footage shows. Fratto told a supervisor later, “I tried putting him in handcuffs and he kept pulling away, so I just kind of kicked his feet out from under him,” according to the video.

“His mannerisms were pretty weird … I don’t know if he was necessarily on drugs or, I guess, he’s handicapped,” Fratto said in the video to the supervisor.

Nicholas’ elbow was cut when he fell to the ground, officers say in the video, and blood got on Fratto in the process. The Clearfield Police Department said it was a “minor scrape to his elbow, which was assessed by the local fire department and did not require treatment or hospitalization.”

Officers decided to release Nicholas and give him a citation. Another officer told Nicholas, “As his supervisor, I feel like he did have a legal reason to stop you.”

The man was charged in August with interfering with a peace officer, a class B misdemeanor, but no jaywalking infraction. That case was dismissed in October “due to evidentiary concerns,” court records show.

As a result of the YouTube video, social media posts about Fratto have been flooded with negative comments, calling for his firing and encouraging other commenters to submit complaints to the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Peace Officer Standards and Training program.

Clearfield Police Chief Kelly Bennett released a statement Monday that said the department was “previously aware of this incident and reviewed and internally addressed the incident in late July.”

According to the chief, Fratto “did not recognize the potential for disability-related behavior, instead interpreting the male’s actions as intoxication or unusual conduct” and “mistakenly applied the Utah ‘jaywalking’ statute.”

For these mistakes, he received “immediate remedial training and coaching on conducting lawful law enforcement encounters and understanding the conditions under which individuals can be detained and required to provide identification,” Bennett said.

Fratto’s use of force was determined by the department to be justified, as Nicholas “actively resisted arrest by pulling his hands away from the officer and defying his lawful commands,” according to the statement.

Bennett said, “It is my expectation that this incident, like so many others our officers have while serving our community, will allow for an opportunity to grow and strengthen the professional standards of this department. … The department acknowledges that this incident could have been resolved differently, and we extend our sympathies to those affected by this incident.”