‘On the Ground, Or I Will Shoot You!’: Pennsylvania Police Chief Suspended After Pulling Gun on Motorcyclist Over Traffic Violation While Off-Duty In Video
As he rode his motorcycle to work at Wingstop, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 24-year-old Benny Pena-Rivera noticed he was being followed.
He didn’t know the driver tailing him was off-duty Manheim Township police chief Duane Fisher, who was not in uniform and drove an unmarked vehicle. Pena-Rivera said he even exchanged smiles and a wave with Fisher.
He next saw Fisher when he pulled into work. Without lights and sirens, Fisher pulled up behind Pena-Rivera, got out of his car, drew his gun, and ordered him to get on the ground. Before Pena-Rivera tried to register what was happening, Fisher, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, had grabbed him and pressed the gun to his face.
“All I heard was, ‘On the ground. On the ground, or I will shoot you,” he told Local 12. “If you’re a cop or something, you’re supposed to identify yourself and not come up the way you came up to me. While he is slamming me on the electric panel, he still has his gun in his right hand, pointing it over here. I’m telling him, ‘Don’t shoot me. What’s the reason you’re going to shoot me for?”
The confrontation took place in late April and was caught on security video, though there is no accompanying audio.
Fisher claimed he identified himself as “Manheim Township Police” twice before the two men started wrestling. Pena-Rivera was able to escape on foot at the time. In a probable cause affidavit, Fisher states Pena-Rivera pushed and shoved him before fleeing the scene. The chief also claimed Pena-Rivera committed “several” traffic violations, including running the same light they had both stopped at and using his motorcycle to knock him over.
The affidavit goes on to allege that Fisher first observed Pena-Rivera on an unregistered motorcycle, driving erratically, and running a stoplight.
With Pena-Rivera on the run, Fisher switched his lights on for the first time and called for backup, as seen in the video. One day later, on May 1, Pena-Rivera was arrested.
“I woke up in the morning and went to the gas station, grabbed a pack of cigarettes, and when I was talking on the phone, apparently someone overheard my situation, and they called the police,” Pena-Rivera said of his arrest. “Five minutes later, eight, nine, maybe 10 cops pulled up to where I was at the moment, and that’s when I got arrested.”
Pena-Rivera pleaded guilty to several traffic violations, though charges of aggravated assault, evading arrest and resisting arrest were dropped after he obtained a copy of the video and showed it to Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams.
“The Manheim Police Department and the parties agreed with the resolution of the charges in this manner based on the facts and the circumstances of this case,” she wrote in a statement released to the media.
She went on to say the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chief Fisher “had a criminal mens rea, or intent to commit a crime, when he attempted to stop the defendant. Mens rea, per the legal definition, is a person’s thinking and/or intention/purpose at the time of an incident.”
She said her office “does not have authority over internal policy or discipline specific to any police department in Lancaster County” and that any decision to discipline the chief would have to come internally.
An internal probe has indeed been launched on Fisher, who is suspended with pay pending the completion of the investigation.
Pena-Rivera said the experience has tainted his view of police.
“I hope justice goes the way it should because right now, I don’t feel comfortable being outside,” he said. “Every time I see a police officer now, I feel threatened.”