Police assault suspect backed by colleagues

Thirty-year U. employee Kenneth Ray is accused of assaulting a Penn Police officer outside Blockley Hall in January. Six weeks after a popular and well-regarded University employee was charged with assaulting a Penn Police officer, controversy continues to follow the incident and accounts of the event differ. Kenneth Ray, who has worked for the University for about 30 years, is accused of attacking a University Police officer who was investigating a burglary report outside of Blockley Hall on January 26 and inflicting right eye trauma and facial soft-tissue scratches to the officer. Ray, who is in his early 60s, was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault and the reckless endangering of another person, according to the district attorney's office. A pre-trial hearing for Ray, who is African American, is set for March 19, at which time a trial date is expected to be set. "Mr. Ray was the victim here and he continues to be the victim," said his attorney, Paul Messing. "We're confident he will be exonerated of all these absurd charges." University Police Chief Maureen Rush said a Penn investigation of the incident "found that the officers followed policy and procedures and no wrongdoing was found on their part." Since the alleged assault, dozens of friends and co-workers of Ray's from the Biochemistry and Biophysics departments have written letters to The Daily Pennsylvanian and signed a petition on his behalf that was published in the Almanac, the University's official journal of record. Through his attorney, Ray denied all of the charges. "He did nothing wrong," Messing said. "He was accosted and injured and then falsely charged by Penn Police and now he's being maliciously prosecuted? all for doing nothing but working late and leaving work and walking to his car in the garage on Penn property." Official University Police records and Ray's attorney have conflicting accounts of the incident. According to the police log book, a suspicious person was reported trying to enter rooms on the first floor of Blockley Hall at 418 Guardian Street. When two officers reached the building, they stopped Ray while he was exiting the building on the Curie Boulevard side and asked him to show his PennCard, the report said. Ray then allegedly refused to produce his identification and would not cooperate with the officers' further requests. When asked whether his client had cooperated with the officers, Messing said that "no one refused any reasonable lawful requests made by anybody at Penn." The report went on to say that Ray attacked one of the officers, striking him in the face and trying to gouge out his eyes. But Messing said that his client "never did anything in an aggressive manner" during the incident and that he also received injuries, including "multiple abrasions" and "muscle injuries." "He was most definitely injured," Messing said. The employee who reported the burglary told police that Ray was not the person she had seen in the building. Friends were quick to come to Ray's defense. Margie Price, a Neurology resident specialist at the University, said Ray has hundreds of friends at Penn and never would have attacked another person. "This man is a very gentle giant," Price said. "He works really hard every single day." Price said colleagues are setting up a defense fund to help pay Ray's attorney fees. "There's an awful lot of people who are willing to stand up for him," she said. And another Ray co-worker, Bill Pennie -- who said he has worked next door to Ray for about 30 years -- said he was shocked to hear of the incident, which he called "unthinkable." "You're more likely to hear laughter coming from [Ray's] work area than anything else," said Pennie, who described Ray as kind-hearted.