Posted on 05/10/2024 4:21:05 PM PDT by xxqqzz
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A former Columbus police vice detective who pleaded guilty to kidnapping sex workers under the guise of an arrest was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Thursday.
Andrew Mitchell, 60, of Sunbury, will receive credit for the roughly five years he has been in custody since his arrest in April 2019, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. He had pleaded guilty in December to two counts of depriving individuals of their civil rights while acting under color of law and one count of obstructing justice.
Mitchell spent more than 30 years with the Columbus Division of Police and was assigned to the vice unit for the final two years of his employment, which ended in 2019, prosecutors said.
While working as a detective in July 2017, Mitchell wore plain clothes and drove an unmarked car when he handcuffed a sex worker inside his vehicle, then drove to a parking lot and detained the woman against her will after identifying himself as an officer, prosecutors said.
Two months later, while again working as a plainclothes detective, he questioned another sex worker about rates before he said he was an officer and then kidnapped her before releasing her after an undisclosed amount of time, prosecutors said.
In an unrelated case, Mitchell was acquitted in April 2023 of murder and manslaughter charges stemming from the death of a woman he shot while he was working undercover. He was indicted after shooting and killing Donna Castleberry, 23, as she sat in his unmarked police vehicle in August 2018.
Mitchell said he acted in self-defense after she stabbed him in the hand during an undercover prostitution investigation. The jury in that trial reached its verdict after deliberating for about five hours.
(Excerpt) Read more at 10tv.com ...
How did he kidnap the prostitutes? Was he shaking them down or demanding sex or what?
Additional info here. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/courts/2023/04/18/former-columbus-police-officer-found-not-guilty-of-murder/70126251007/
Yeah, that article gives more information. I guess the woman he killed was a prostitute err sex worker. It seems like she did not know he was really a policeman with his unmarked car, plainclothes, etc. and he wasn’t acting the way a policeman was supposed to. She probably tried to get away, there was a scuffle and he shot her. The jury acquitted him of murder and manslaughter. However, he was prosecuted for his practice of “kidnapping” women, as with the one he shot.
IMO, he should have been convicted of at least manslaughter. It was a result of his weird behavior and not a normal occurence in police work. I would give the policeman the benefit of the doubt in a lot of other circumstances.
Must have messed with the mayor’s moll.
He was telling the truth?
Maybe, but he killed someone. Probably other vice cops got away with stuff like that, but didn’t attract attention that way. I don’t quite see how he didn’t get convicted of manslaughter.
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