Upper Darby cop shot in car, possibly by own gun

Upper Darby police officers, responding to a car accident yesterday morning, found one of their off-duty patrolmen unconscious behind the wheel - with a gunshot wound that may have been caused by his own weapon.

Jerome Brown, an ex-Marine who joined the force in 2000, was in guarded condition yesterday after undergoing emergency surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

The circumstances of the shooting remain unclear, according to police Superintendent Michael Chitwood Sr., but investigators were not searching for a gunman.

Brown, 30, a father of three and former bike cop from Lansdowne, rammed a pole in a bank parking lot at about 6 a.m. after his vehicle struck another driver's SUV.

As medics were extracting him from the vehicle, they discovered "what appeared to be a gunshot wound in his lower-left abdomen area," Chitwood said.

"He apparently will be all right," Chitwood said yesterday morning after Brown underwent surgery.

Police recovered his off-duty 9 mm Glock in a holster on the passenger-side floor. One round had been fired from the gun, but the bullet casing did not eject, Chitwood said.

"We don't know at what point in time the shooting occurred," he said. "Did it occur before? Did it occur after the accident? Did it occur at the accident?"

Brown, who has received three commendations for his police work, is the first and only black officer on the force. In 2004, he clashed with Upper Darby brass, claiming that they had failed to process one of his DUI arrests because the defendant was "a friend" of the department.

Then-Superintendent Vincent J. Ficchi resigned after a no-confidence vote and the defendant was later convicted of drunken driving. But the state Attorney General's Office found insufficient evidence to conclude that the charges had been deliberately quashed.

"They get along with everybody in the neighborhood," Brown's next-door neighbor, Mary Anagnostopoulos, said of Jerome, his wife, Michelle, and three children. "They're great people. If you have groceries, they'll help you bring them in."

The last shooting of an Upper Darby police officer was a friendly fire incident in 2004. Then-Lt. Anthony Paparo was hit by a fellow officer after police opened fire on a distraught gunman who walked into the station. Paparo survived.

Brown was one of the responding officers in that incident. Investigators were unable to determine which round struck Paparo because the bullet was deformed, Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green said yesterday. *