The agenda gave it five words. “Appeal of Discipline – Scott Ruszkowski.”
It sat between a fire captain’s retirement and a donation of weather radios, and it took part of a twenty-two-minute meeting to dispose of. By the end of it, Lieutenant Ruszkowski had been denied a hearing, ordered into remedial training in verbal judo and constitutional law, and told by a member of the board, out loud, that Ruszkowski had made an arrest without probable cause.
Ruszkowski has run the South Bend Police Department since 2015. He is the Democratic nominee for St. Joseph County sheriff, the county’s top law enforcement job. He had been on the force since the late 1980s and was a lieutenant in 2007 when the Board of Public Safety took up his appeal.
The board was the civilian body that decided police discipline in South Bend. The record of that meeting required no Access to Public Records Request. The records were available on the city’s public server: a one-page agenda and three pages of minutes from Wednesday, October 10, 2007. The minutes were signed by all four board members and attested by the board’s clerk. Redress South Bend obtained the documents used for our story from docs.southbendin.gov.
Here is what the records say.
The board had a full morning. It confirmed the dismissal of a fire engineer. It accepted the retirement of a fire captain who had been facing charges. It accepted a donation of 104 weather radios, valued at about $1,560, and Ruszkowski’s appeal of discipline.
Police Chief Thomas Fautz had filed disciplinary charges against Ruszkowski and written Ruszkowski a letter of reprimand over an arrest. Fautz had also watched the video of that arrest, and his conclusion fills two sentences of the minutes. Viewing it made it “clear that Lieutenant Ruszkowski did not follow proper procedure,” he told the board. The discipline, he said, “will correct any future problems and is enough.”
Ruszkowski did not accept his reprimand. He appealed and asked the board for a hearing. Chief Fautz asked the board members to deny Ruszkowski’s request.
They denied it. Bruce BonDurant moved to deny the hearing, Patrick Cottrell seconded, and the motion carried. BonDurant then moved that the board uphold the chief’s decision, that Ruszkowski “be ordered to take remedial training in verbal judo and constitutional law,” and that “the letter of reprimand be placed in Lieutenant Ruszkowski’s personnel file.” Cottrell seconded that one too. It carried.
One person spoke from the floor. Ken Marks of the fire department wanted to know in what capacity Ruszkowski was being judged, as a lieutenant of the police department or as president of the Fraternal Order of Police. If the board was disciplining the union president, Marks asked, what authority did it have over him?
Board member Alford answered for the board. The decision rested on its viewing of the videotape of the arrest situation, he said, and on Ruszkowski’s actions as an arresting officer.
Then Ruszkowski asked his own question. Was the board saying he did not have probable cause to make the arrest?
“Mr. Alford stated yes, that is what the Board was saying,” the minutes read.
The meeting adjourned at 9:50 a.m.
The minutes do not name the person arrested. They do not give the date of the arrest, the location, or the charges. They do not describe what the videotape showed beyond the summaries of the two officials who watched it.
A former law enforcement officer who reviewed the arrest report and watched the video described both to Redress South Bend on condition of anonymity.
On paper, the former officer said, nothing about the arrest looked wrong. The report described two men who were loud and uncooperative, whose speech was slurred, who had drawn a crowd and resisted.
The video did not match the report, the former officer said. The men were out of the car and cooperative. Their speech was clear. No crowd had gathered. One of them kept asking what he had done wrong, and the former officer recalled Ruszkowski telling him to stop talking or he would go to jail, then arresting him when he spoke again. “There’s no crowd gathering, there’s no yelling and screaming,” the former officer said of the footage. “You could clearly understand what he was asking.”
“You look at that report and you think, okay, it looks like they did everything that would be probable cause to arrest them,” the former officer said. “So what is this letter of reprimand about?” And then he saw the video.
The former officer also described what happened after the arrest, none of which appears in the minutes. Both men were Black. Both were given breath tests at the jail, and both registered zero. The driver had been arrested on an alcohol related charge, the former officer said, though he was not certain of the exact charge. The prosecutor on call was notified, and the men were released on their own recognizance. The former officer believed the charges were later dropped.
Redress South Bend has not independently verified the charges, the breath test results, the release, or the disposition of the cases.
Chief Fautz called the discipline enough, and it stood as he wrote it. Ruszkowski was ordered into the training and kept his rank. The department made him a captain in 2011 and uniform division chief in 2013, and in October 2015 he was appointed the 62nd chief of the South Bend Police Department. He has held the job ever since.
The minutes were sitting on the city’s public server when Redress found them. The hearing Ruszkowski asked for was denied. The board ordered the letter placed in his personnel file. Redress has found no public copy of the video and no other public account of the arrest. What remains is three pages of minutes, Ruszkowski being ordered to take remedial training in verbal judo and constitutional law, and that Ruszkowski had made an arrest without probable cause.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
