University Police are conducting an internal investigation into an alleged case of verbal abuse by a University police officer toward a student.

The student, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Brian, claims that the officer swore at him and asked if he was "challenged" during a confrontation over a parking ticket. Brian had been parked in front of a fire hydrant for several hours, and when asked, told the officer that he had not realized he was parked in a prohibited area.

The officer then allegedly asked, "Are you [expletive] stupid? Are you challenged?"

A report of the incident provided by the Office of Public Safety mentioned different details of the account. According to the report, the officer initially had made several attempts to contact the student via telephone, contrasting the account of the student, who said that he picked his phone up the first time he was called.

According to the report, the officer then gave the student a citation, and waited for the student to return to the car, at which point there was a confrontation.

The report said that the officer's words to the student were, "What are you, specifically dispensated [sic] to park in front of fire hydrants?"

He then later told the student that if he found him next to a fire hydrant in the future, he would "not give him the courtesy of telephoning him."

"It's always tough to mediate and mitigate hearsay," said Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan in an interview with the Justice, speaking in general about complaints such as this one.

"We'll do our best to assess the situation and if we feel that the officer was wrong, then obviously we'll say we believe the officer had misjudgement and we apologize, and we'll move on," he added.

Callahan added that the department uses a "progressive form of discipline."

"If [an] officer had a recidivist employment personnel file, if that wasn't the first incident, or there were many incidents in that person's file, they could be subject to [punishment]," he said.

"We usually initiate a verbal warning, then go to a written warning, then to a suspension and a possible termination. Depending on what the officer had in his or her personnel file, if it was just the first instance, we would have to assess it and go from there."

Brian said he felt that he was mistreated by the officer. "The way I was feeling was that it was not necessary for him to yell at me," said Brian in an interview with the Justice. "I was moving my car, he gave me a ticket, and that's pretty much what you're supposed to do, so I could drive away."

"There are certain steps to take other than to yell at a student who made an honest mistake, in front of other students," he added.
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