'Robocop,' Accused of Severely Beating Black Man in Traffic Stop, Has Notorious History

Video from an Inkster police officer’s dashboard camera has sparked national outrage against William “Robocop” Melendez, who has been named in a dozen lawsuits since 1996 questioning his conduct. (Screenshot: Inkster police video)

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Complaints about Inkster police officer William “Robocop” Melendez, caught on videotape allegedly choking and beating a suspect until he was unconscious, go back to 1996 and include a dozen lawsuits questioning his conduct as an officer.

In a current felony drug possession case, police dash-cam video of Melendez and other officers arresting Floyd Dent, a 57-year-old Ford auto worker with no criminal history, has sparked national outrage, and has been compared to the beating of Rodney King that sparked riots in Los Angeles in 1992.

Dent was allegedly punched 16 times in the head and face in what his attorney called an unprovoked assault that broke his client’s orbital bone, causing severe bleeding, and a brain injury. Dent was hospitalized for two days.

On Wednesday, Dent’s lawyer, Gregory Rohl, alleged Melendez planted cocaine in his client’s vehicle after the traffic stop and says a polygraph test exonerates Dent of the felony drug charges. Dent has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Wayne County Circuit Court.

“It categorically underscores the fact that the cocaine was not Floyd’s,” Rohl said of the polygraph results . “And that he never threatened to kill the police officers, which was the heart of their excuses to beat him down like an animal.”

In their report, police said Dent threatened “I’ll kill you” and appeared to be on some type of narcotic during the Jan. 28 traffic stop near South River Park Drive and Inkster Drive shortly before 10 p.m.

However, the video shows that one of the two officers who approached the vehicle pointed his service revolver at Dent, then drug him out of his 2011 Cadillac and onto the pavement. There is no audio on the video, but Dent claims one of the officers yelled, “Get out of the car! I’ll blow your head off.”

The video shows multiple police officers piling on Dent, punching him and using a Taser multiple times.

In addition to video that has already received national play, Rohl has asked the court to compel the Inkster Police Department to turn over Dent’s bloody mugshot, his booking video and unreleased video the lawyer claims shows nine to 11 officers celebrating after Dent was beat and arrested.

Rohl said the yet-to-be produced video will show his client was set up, and that a police dog deployed at the scene didn’t find any drugs. “Then all of a sudden, you see the man reach into his pocket,” Rohl said. “And then it was obstructed by an officer, and all of a sudden – bingo, he’s got a bag of cocaine. It doesn’t work that way.”

Police claim they initiated the stop after seeing Dent stop at the Motown Inn, an area known for high drug trafficking. However, Dent said he had only stopped there after work to deliver a bottle of alcohol to a friend who lives there, and didn’t have any drugs.

“Systemic Issue of Racial Profiling”

Police claimed Dent, whose driver’s license was suspended, ran a stop sign, giving them probable cause to pull him over. He had been stopped numerous times before, which University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor David Harris, an expert on racial profiling, said raises questions.

“It makes you wonder, ‘Why is this guy getting stopped for trivial (reasons) over and over again?‘ ” Harris said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press. He said the stops are not like those involving drunken or reckless driving, but involve “high discretion” on the part of officers.

“You’re actually deciding to pick somebody out,” Harris said. “And the question is, ‘Why?’ “

At a demonstration that erupted outside the Inkster police station Wednesday, Rohl said there’s “no doubt” that his client was a victim of racial profiling. Dent is black, and the officers allegedly involved in beating him are white.

“There is a systemic issue,” Rohl said. “It’s the fact that there is racial profiling. And it’s how Mr. Dent started his journey here, by being racially profiled.”

Judge Refuses to Throw Out Civil Rights Case

The drug case against Dent has been adjourned until April 15, but Melendez is facing his own legal troubles in federal court.

The dozen lawsuits that have been filed against Melendez include a civil rights complaint in U.S. District Court. Last month, a federal judge denied Melendez’s request for qualified immunity.

The plaintiff in that suit is Deshawn Acklin, who accused Melendez of extreme brutality in a July 26, 2011, arrest with hauntingly similar circumstances to Dent’s.

Acklin was in a private residence located in a known drug trafficking area and had just exited the bathroom when Melendez and other officers confronted him and began punching him in the face while he lay handcuffed on the floor, according to the lawsuit.

Melendez is accused of brutally beating Acklin until he lost consciousness and defecated on himself, and maintaining the beating until other officers pulled him away.

Like Dent, Acklin was hospitalized for his injuries. Like Dent, he was never charged, even though Inkster police kept him in custody for three days.

Also named as defendants in that suit are officers who were under Melendez’s command: Shawn Adams, Jeffrey Czarnecki, Allen Lash, Phillip Randazzo, Douglas Parsons and Daniel Schewe, as well as Jordan Dotter, an auxiliary officer who was named in a separate lawsuit that has since been consolidated with the current action.

The other officers named in the suit offer dramatically different versions of what happened, and U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain refused to throw out the lawsuit.

Drain noted “sufficient evidence that Melendez’s purported actions were objectively unreasonable in light of Acklin’s clearly established constitutional rights.”

Why “Robocop”?

Melendez earned the “Robocop” nickname as a member of the Detroit Police Department, where he cost the city more than $1 million in settlements and was the subject of more citizen complaints than any other officer in the city.

The settlement was for a 1996 traffic stop that resulted in the shooting death of an unarmed man. The victim, Lou Adkins, was shot 11 times after Melendez and his partner, who wasn’t named in the lawsuit, had scuffled and already taken him to the ground, witnesses said at the time.

When that case was settled in 1999, Melendez had been sued four times for alleged use of unreasonable force, according to the Detroit Free Press.

In 2003, Melendez was among a group of 17 Detroit police named in an eight-count federal corruption indictment for stealing guns, money and drugs from suspects; planting weapons; busting into homes without warrants; and other crimes. The officers were acquitted in 2004.

Melendez earned the “Robocop” moniker because of his outstanding physical condition and a physique like that of “The Incredible Hulk,” his precinct police commander said at the time of his indictment in Detroit.

Some of the other lawsuits against Melendez were dropped, and some were settled out of court. Detroit also paid $50,000 to the family of a man who was killed in his kitchen in incident allegedly involving Melendez.

Melendez resigned from the Detroit police force in 2007. It’s unclear when he joined the Inkster department.

“Too Many Bad Apples”

Inkster Police Chief Vicki Yost said in a news conference last week that she asked the Michigan State Police to conduct an investigation into allegations against officers immediately after she learned Dent had been hospitalized.

Melendez is no longer on street patrol, according to Yost, who will meet with Rohl to discuss a settlement agreement sometime this month. Dent hasn’t ruled out his own civil rights lawsuit.

The status of the other officers involved in allegations of police brutality is unclear, but Yost said they will be dealt with after the investigation by state police.

“It needs to be independent. It needs to be thorough. It needs to be impartial,” she said of the probe.

The former Inkster police chief, Hilton Napoleon, said the department has “too many bad apples.”

He said there were several questionable incidents during his 3½ years as the top cop in the Downriver community of 25,000, including the alleged assault of a handcuffed suspects, claims that officers stole cash from citizens,and allegations that officers falsified time sheets to claim unearned overtime pay.

“I’ve had complaints of Inkster officers taking money off of people and planting drugs,” Napoleon said.

During his tenure, Inkster was operating under what’s called a financial consent decree. In efforts to avoid outright emergency management, city officials whittled the force to about two dozen officers, down from 60 in 2011.

“Any time you lose two-thirds of your officers, the ones that are left there are going to have a lot of issues and complaints,” Napoleon said, and “you have some problem officers” in Inkster.

Napoleon, the brother of Wayne County Sheriff Benedict Napoleon, said the police union and administrative bureaucracy made it difficult for him to fire problem officers who don’t belong on the force.

“You have officers there that have questionable integrity, and they should not be wearing the badge, and they should not be out there policing people,” Napoleon said, reiterating statements he made during his time as chief. “You can’t change a person’s heart. And you can’t make a person do the right thing and be moral.”

Napoleon, a former Detroit cop whose career as a police officer spanned nearly 30 years, abruptly resigned last summer, citing the financial constraints and the horrific murder of a 2-year-old girl. But a scathing report made public after his resignation called for Napoleon’s dismissal.

The 12-page report cited plummeting morale among officers and a “bunker mentality,” and said the police department had “evolved into the chief’s private militia.”

The report said that in 2012, the department cleared only 23 percent of its aggravated assault cases, 11 percent of its robberies and none of its murders, giving residents “a prevailing feeling of chaos and hopelessness.”

The Risk Management Associates consultants who completed the report said there has been an “obvious effort by responding officers not to take reports” and an “ineffective and insufficient investigative function.”

Inkster’s murder rate doubled to 18 in 2013, up from nine year prior, according to the 2014 state of the city report. Inkster is so ridden with crime that Napoleon suggested a couple of years ago that the National Guard might be needed to help restore order.

» Read the judge’s ruling in the federal lawsuit below.