Officer fired from police force after one year at Penn

Jeff Dougherty was the police officer who first approached Bill Sofield The Division of Public Safety said yesterday that it fired University Police Officer Jeff Dougherty this week, less than a year after he was hired. Several University Police officers said Dougherty's firing Monday came after months of official warnings resulting from showing up late for work and other disciplinary infractions. Although Dougherty gained notoriety as the officer who initially approached and cited College freshman Bill Sofield and two companions in front of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house October 30, the officers said his termination likely had nothing to do with the incident. The events in and around the FIJI house attracted more than 50 officers to Locust Walk after one of Sofield's companions allegedly assaulted four police officers. Director of Police Operations Maureen Rush refused to say why Dougherty was terminated. Dougherty did not return repeated phone calls to his home yesterday. An officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the termination was "not a surprise" because Dougherty repeatedly came to work and had "general discipline" problems. He had received several verbal and written warnings from superiors and fellow officers, the officer said. "He was a good guy. I liked him," the officer said. "But they had problems with him from day one." FIJI brothers, on the other hand, said they were frustrated with the firing. They claimed that Dougherty, who knew all the brothers in the house at 3619 Locust Walk, was being used as the scapegoat for the bad press University Police received after the brothers accused police officers of brutality in their handling of the incident. After Dougherty cited the three men -- including Warnell Owens, 26, and Sofield's 28-year-old brother, Richard, an assistant U.S. attorney -- for disorderly conduct, Owens and Bill Sofield allegedly fled into the FIJI house. Owens ran out the back door and allegedly assaulted four police officers trying to arrest him before he was forcibly subdued. Fifteen to 20 of the officers who arrived at the scene then entered the house to arrest the younger Sofield. According to several FIJI brothers who witnessed the incident, police used excessive force in Sofield's arrest. But Dougherty, who simply made the first citation, was not one of the five officers students said struck Sofield unnecessarily. Last week, Sofield was acquitted on disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges. A recent Division of Public Safety investigation of the incident concluded that police officers did not use excessive force when subduing Sofield. "If [Dougherty's firing] had anything to do with the whole [Sofield] incident, it's kind of ridiculous," said FIJI President John Ward, who alleged that Dougherty was an "easy target" for the University to eliminate in an effort to placate the "questions" prompted by the incident. Dougherty was one of 19 officers hired in March 1997 after the Division of Public Safety accelerated its recruiting process following a fall crime wave that included the shooting of a student and the murder of a University biochemist. When University Police officers are hired, they are put on probationary status for a year, during which they are not unionized and can therefore be more easily fired. Rush said she "doesn't anticipate" firing any of the other 18 new officers before their one-year "introductory" period has expired. During the trial, Dougherty cited the fact that he "didn't recognize" the Sofields and Owens as one of the reasons he approached them. A former Philadelphia Housing Authority police officer, Dougherty had a tendency to be confrontational and act as if he was still policing the "projects," the anonymous officer said. Ward, a Wharton senior, disputed this notion, saying Dougherty "did his job real well." His relationship with the FIJI brothers was friendly, never "adversarial, like a lot of the students have had with police this year," Ward added. The Sofields are considering filing a civil suit alleging police brutality in the incident. A trial could settle many of the allegations that have surrounded the case for several months.

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