The Campbell police chief
accidentally discharged a gun twice in the city building, and an internal-
affairs investigation has concluded the accidents were caused by human error.
Investigator Kenneth Kotouch
recommended that Chief Gus Sarigianopoulos receive additional training on the
type of gun involved in the accidents, which was not the chief’s duty gun.
He also said in his report,
given to Mayor Bill VanSuch this week, that Sarigianopoulos should qualify to
use his duty gun.
Kotouch told The Vindicator on
Friday that he was referring to a routine qualification police officers do
every year.
The accidental discharges
happened April 17 shortly before 1 p.m. at the police station.
Sarigianopoulos told VanSuch
in a letter dated April 26 that he was attempting to clear the gun, which was
pointed toward the floor, when it discharged. The letter mentions one
discharge.
In the internal-affairs
report, there are details of two.
The first discharge happened
in the chief’s office, and the second happened in the hallway outside the
dispatch room.
The gun involved was a
Vietnam-era single-action Colt 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic. It was one of
three the department had recently acquired on loan from the Ohio Law
Enforcement Support Office.
Campbell Officer Dave Smith,
who is one of two firearms safety instructors for the department, told The
Vindicator that the department can benefit from training on the single-action
trigger guns because the officers are more familiar with the double-action
trigger Glocks they use.
If an officer were to come
across a single-action gun on the streets, they would know how to clear it,
Smith said.
On the day of the accidents,
the gun involved was in a cabinet in Sarigianopoulos’ office.
The chief said he wanted to
get some oil for his duty gun, which was in the cabinet behind the Colt .45. As
he pulled out the gun, it discharged a round into his cabinet door.
The chief, who said he was in
shock that the gun discharged, took the magazine out of it. He went to two
officers who were in the dispatch area at the time. He had the gun in his left
hand and the magazine in the other. He said he attempted to clear the gun when
it discharged again into the hallway floor. Shrapnel ricocheted into the
dispatch room and hit the wall above the dispatcher’s front desk. It also
ricocheted into the ceiling.
He immediately gave the gun to
one of the officers, who cleared it, opened the slide and locked it. That
officer called Sgt. Dave Taybus, the department’s other firearms safety
instructor, who inspected the gun and put it in the department’s ammunition
locker for safekeeping.
City Administrator Jack Dill
and Kotouch took the gun to a certified gunsmith in Alliance. The gunsmith
tested parts of the gun, test-fired the gun and disassembled it. He found no
mechanical malfunctions or design flaws, and he could find no explanation for
the accidental discharges.
The chief was also involved in
an accidental discharge in October. That episode involved a shotgun while he
was on a call with other officers for shots fired at a house on Montgomery
Avenue.
Taybus checked the gun
immediately and determined the safety was sticking, the chief reported in a
letter to Dill.
Kotouch said Sarigianopoulos
should have received his training either last Saturday or today.
Dill said the chief should not
have handled the Colt .45.
“You aren’t supposed to carry
a weapon unless you trained for it,” Dill said Friday. “The gun should have
never been in his possession.”
VanSuch said he is still
reviewing the report.
Sarigianopoulos could not be
reached for comment.