DA: Police didn't commit crime arresting man on bogus cocaine charge

“There is no criminal charge I can place,” Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said Wednesday, minutes after the driver, Morgan T. Eaton of Buffalo, who was cleared of the serious felony, and his fiancée, Dominique Calhoun, urged Flynn at a news conference to charge the officers involved.

“We are outraged and disappointed as it feels the district attorney never prosecutes officers who commit crimes against minorities,” Calhoun said after hearing of Flynn’s decision.

She said the couple are submitting a complaint to the Common Council to further highlight the police wrongdoing.

Flynn, at his own news conference, focused on Officer John Davidson, who signed a court document stating that in his professional opinion, he and his partner had seized 30 grams of cocaine when they stopped Eaton’s car for a minor traffic violation.

Flynn said he repeatedly watched the police body camera video that was the subject of a Buffalo News article about Eaton’s arrest. In the video, Davidson, for the most part, clings to the belief that the white powder contained in a vial of pills found in the auto was cocaine – even after a field test performed by another officer, Andrew Moffett, showed that it wasn’t.

The district attorney said Davidson seems to believe, based on his experience, that the pills contain cocaine. So, Flynn concluded, he cannot say the officer knowingly made a false statement. Further, he said Davidson and Moffett had to know that the cocaine charge would either be supported, or undone, by the crime lab’s analysis.

Weeks after Eaton’s arrest, the crime lab found that the powder was not a controlled substance. The pills were suppositories that Calhoun had bought to deal with a yeast infection, she said. She was not in the car when it was stopped and searched by police.

Flynn said the officers properly arrested Eaton on an outstanding traffic-related bench warrant from the Town of Tonawanda, and they were right to cite him with violations for a personal use amount of marijuana.

But though he will not prosecute the officers, Flynn said they were wrong to accuse Eaton of cocaine possession before the crime lab’s analysis.

“Bottom line, they should have never charged him. They should have waited,” he said, acknowledging the disruption the charge created in Eaton’s life.

Still, he said Eaton has recourse by filing a civil lawsuit against the police department, and the police command should decide if Davidson, Moffett or others acted within the rules.

The Buffalo Police Department suspended Davidson and Moffett in late September pending a full investigation, and they remained suspended Wednesday, a police spokesman said. The first 30 days are without pay. The head of the Buffalo police union has said he's confident the two will be cleared of wrongdoing.

In their Wednesday news conference, Eaton, Calhoun and others who advocate for racial justice spoke of the  disruption to people’s lives caused by overzealous policing. Eaton lost a part-time job coaching youth basketball and took a hit to his reputation during the months the charge was pending.

“Another miscarriage of justice for another African-American,” said the Rev. Mark Blue, head of the local NAACP.

“This is a great time to make a statement that this is not going to happen to any other individual,” he said in the hopes of bringing public pressure to bear on the district attorney. “If they did it to one, they have done it to others.”

Eaton’s arrest began on the afternoon of March 8, a Sunday, on Strauss Street, just north of Broadway. The cops pulled over Eaton when he failed to signal as he pulled to the curb. They smelled marijuana, began a search and soon focused on a pink laptop bag resting near a child safety seat in back. The bag held, among other things, an unlabeled vial with capsules inside.

“Ooh, are those all coke?” Davidson said when his partner showed him the bottle.

“I think so, I mean, unless ... ” responded Moffett, who never finished the sentence.

“That’s awesome. That’s a lot,” Davidson said, noting that each capsule would contain around a gram of cocaine, and the total weight could lead to a serious felony charge.

Moffett tested some of the powder. He tore open a small, sealed envelope, unfolded the swab inside, dismantled a capsule and spread the contents on the swab. He rubbed it around.

"It's not coke," he soon told Davidson.

But Davidson continued to suspect cocaine.

“I mean, that looks just like crack,” he said, adding that it was just of poor quality. He suggested charging Eaton with cocaine possession anyway but telling the crime lab to test the substance for all types of drugs.