Kevin Grasha

kgrasha@enquirer.com

Two Cincinnati police officers accused of trying to cover up the crash of a fellow officer who one witness described as "drunk as hell" never asked him to undergo field sobriety tests or breath tests, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Prosecutors also said Officer Jason Cotterman, the first to arrive at the scene of the March 2015 crash, "completely ignored" the witness who said Sgt. Andrew Mitchell – who was off-duty when he crashed his personal vehicle into a utility pole – appeared drunk, sped through stop signs and almost struck the witness's car.

Instead of investigating the crash, which left Mitchell's van totaled, Assistant City Prosecutor Heidi Rosales said Cotterman drove Mitchell to the department's District 5 headquarters.

Sgt. Richard Sulfsted oversaw Mitchell being taken away from the scene before a full investigation could occur, Rosales said during opening statements in the trial of both Sulfsted and Cotterman,

"This was all done to protect a fellow officer," Rosales said.

The bench trial, in Hamilton County Municipal Court before Judge Josh Berkowitz, is expected to last about a week. Cotterman and Sulfsted are charged with dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice. In a bench trial, the judge determines the verdict.

The handling of the crash triggered an investigation by the department's internal investigations unit. Sulfsted had his police powers suspended two days after the crash while Cotterman lost his police powers in May. Both were charged in July.

Charges against Mitchell also were issued in July. He pleaded guilty in December to two traffic violations and was ordered to pay $315. He has returned to duty and is currently a District 4 shift supervisor, officials said.

Attorneys for both Cotterman and Sulfsted said there was no attempted cover-up. Cotterman drove Mitchell to the headquarters building, they said, after another officer at the scene refused to get involved. Cotterman needed Sulfsted's opinion, they said, about whether Mitchell showed impairment before any sobriety tests could be administered. Sulfsted was Cotterman's supervisor.

Cotterman's attorney, Merlyn Shiverdecker, said the officer who refused to get involved "is probably the biggest hypocrite."

That officer, who had a trainee with him that night, never approached the scene and said he "didn't want anything to do with it," according to Shiverdecker.

"He had a legal duty to get involved – not a legal duty to stick his head in the sand and claim deliberate ignorance," Shiverdecker said.

Sulfsted's attorney, Scott Croswell, said it's discretionary whether to issue a citation to a fellow officer.

He said there have been more than 100 crashes in "the past few years" involving officers in their personal vehicles, where they were at fault. The officers, he said, were not given citations "as a courtesy."

Croswell added that nothing Cotterman or Sulfsted did prevented charges from being filed against Mitchell.

"What, from all of this, stopped anybody from prosecuting him?" Croswell said.

911 call in officer case: Driver 'drunk as hell'

About six hours before the March 22 crash, Rosales said Mitchell stopped working his shift, claiming he was suffering from a stomach flu. A friend, she said, had sent him a text message, asking if he wanted "to hang out." Mitchell went to the friend's house and drank four or five beers, Rosales said. He left the friend's house sometime after 4:30 a.m. The crash happened about half an hour later on West McMicken Avenue, as Mitchell drove from Downtown toward Clifton.

In a 911 call, a man tells the operator that Mitchell's van "was flying around the corners, running stop signs – everything ... Oh, he's drunk as hell, ma'am. He is drunk as hell."