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Dueling testimony over Phila. police officer's firing

In the haze surrounding former Philadelphia Police Sgt. Brandon Ruff's firing, there are three events on which all parties can agree.

Brandon Ruff poses outside of Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission where he dropping off a truckload of food donations.
Brandon Ruff poses outside of Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission where he dropping off a truckload of food donations.Read more

In the haze surrounding former Philadelphia Police Sgt. Brandon Ruff's firing, there are three events on which all parties can agree.

Ruff, while off duty, walked into 35th District headquarters in Ogontz on Aug. 3 and dropped a bag of guns on the counter. He was detained moments later. And within six months, he had lost his job.

Everything else that happened between those moments remains up for debate - as was made clear Monday in a civil trial before a federal jury.

Ruff, an eight-year police veteran, whose last posting was in Powelton's 16th District, is suing the department and six officers involved in a scuffle that day. He says they assaulted and falsely arrested him when he attempted to anonymously turn in three guns that he had confiscated under a no-questions-asked gun buyback program. But four of the accused officers took the stand Monday and sketched a much different story. Ruff was aggressive, refused to say who he was or where the guns came from, and then resisted arrest, they said.

Not once did he identify himself as a police officer until after he was in handcuffs, said Sgt. Donna Bachmayer, a 35th District supervisor and a defendant in the case.

"Someone with no ID comes into a police station with a bag of three guns and no ID? Something ain't right here," she said. "Why Mr. Ruff wasn't charged with recklessly endangering other people, I have no idea."

Ruff, a tall, muscled man covered in tattoos, believes he was stereotyped as a thug. He testified that the guns came from his tattoo artist, DeRyan Jones, who wanted to turn them in.

Dressed in casual clothes, Ruff drove to the Police Department office closest to his house and attempted to turn them in under the department's "no questions asked" policy, he told jurors Monday.

Instead, he said, 35th District officers peppered him with hostile questions, followed him outside as he left to make a phone call, put Tasers to his chest and ribs, and handcuffed him.

He filed his civil-rights lawsuit less than a month after the incident. In February, he was charged with falsely identifying himself, a third-degree misdemeanor, and fired from the force. He faces a criminal trial next year.

But city lawyers argue that the confusion stems from a department policy for gun returns that Ruff should have known and did not follow.

"No questions asked" gun buybacks are one-time-only events. Regular policy requires anyone turning in a firearm at a district headquarters to show his or her ID and answer a few brief questions on the weapon's ownership history. Officers must check to make sure the weapon has not been recently used in a crime or reported stolen.

"I don't think it would have gone this far if he had just identified himself earlier in the situation," said Officer Ivene Eckels, who interviewed Ruff that day.

When pressed for his name, Ruff gave Eckels the name Ryan Jones, she said. (Ruff maintains he told the officer that he received the guns from DeRyan Jones, and that she wrote the name down wrong and assumed that was his name.)

As it turns out, one of the guns Ruff turned in last year did turn up as stolen.

But Officer Michelle Long, the desk officer at the 35th District window, said that when she asked where Ruff where the guns came from, he initially said he didn't know.

"How do you bring a bag of guns into a police station and not know a thing about them?" she recalled asking.

As Ruff left the building and ignored the officers' commands to stop, Bachmayer, the sergeant, said she noticed what looked like an additional gun tucked in his waistband and ordered his arrest for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, but Ruff began flailing his arms around and insisting that the officers couldn't arrest him.

It took two more officers and their Tasers to subdue him.

Bachmayer said Monday she felt betrayed by Ruff, who not only put her officers at risk but also involved them in an Internal Affairs investigation that dragged on for months.

Asked Monday to recall what she told Ruff once she found out he was a fellow officer, Bachmayer locked eyes on her onetime colleague and held little back.

"How could you do this? How could you do this to a fellow officer?" she said, in a speech peppered with expletives. "You are a disgrace to this badge and the uniform I have put on every day."

Testimony in the trial is set to resume Tuesday.