HESPERIA — Two Fontana Police Department officers have been placed on paid administrative leave and await disciplinary action for apparent misconduct related to an alleged assault while off-duty last fall in Hesperia, Fontana police Lt. Billy Green said Tuesday.
“We did conduct an investigation into the allegations that were made by the folks that contacted you,” Green told the Daily Press, saying that the investigation concluded there was “sufficient evidence to sustain” some of the accusations.
The officers, identified as Fontana police Cpl. Andy Anderson and Cpl. David Moore, were placed on leave about 30 days after the Nov. 23 incident and are expected to appear before the department’s police chief for a pre-disciplinary meeting within the next month, Green said.
According to a police report obtained by the Daily Press, Anderson and Moore, both former detectives, were off-duty when they arrived at about 10 p.m. at Anderson’s next-door neighbor’s house in the 19000 block of June Street in Hesperia to perform a welfare check on the homeowner, Steven Olsen.
The officers later told Hesperia authorities that they heard moaning sounds coming from the
partially-open garage at the home, walked over to see Olsen slumped over the steering wheel of his Jeep and, believing Olsen’s life was in danger, “decided to take immediate action and check Olsen’s welfare,” the report said.
Olsen was later determined not to be in danger at all, but had fallen asleep in his Jeep, authorities said. He was observed with “bloodshot, watery eyes, slurred speech and smelled strongly of the odor of an alcoholic beverage,” according to the report.
Elizabeth Newman, 33, and her four children who also lived in the home, were inside at the time, as was Newman’s boyfriend Joshua Silverstein, 39, and his three children, according to the report and witness interviews.
The Fontana officers, now acting in official capacity, said they asked Newman if they could borrow sugar as a rouse to gain access to the home. Once inside and in the kitchen, they repeatedly asked Silverstein about Olsen’s whereabouts, concerned partially because Olsen had previously suggested Newman was trying to poison him, Anderson said.
According to the former detectives’ statements, Silverstein became aggressive, denied that Olsen was at the home and “reached backward toward the counter” where a roughly 8-inch knife was resting. Fearful for their safety, they each grabbed portions of Silverstein’s upper body, pulled him to the ground and restrained him on the floor, the report said.
But the accounts given by Silverstein, Newman and their children differed greatly from the two
officers' statements.
“We don’t really know the reason why they came in and attacked me,” Silverstein said Tuesday, denying he ever reached for a knife.
According to Silverstein, the officers were the ones who became aggressive and cornered him in the kitchen before they proceeded to hit and kick him as he fell to the ground.
Silverstein claimed he suffered a busted lip — which an investigating Hesperia Station deputy corroborated as a “scratch to his bottom lip” — as well as bruises to his back and hip. Photographs submitted by Silverstein show a cut lip and a welt on the middle-right side of his back.
Silverstein’s 14-year-old son claimed the officers were combative, “getting in my dad’s face and threatening him.” Newman’s 14-year-old daughter claimed that Anderson continually insisted that the home was Olsen’s and Newman did not belong there.
Anderson allegedly “shoved (Silverstein) up against the wall with both his hands, then he dropped his left and used his right forearm to keep pinning dad up against the wall,” she wrote in an email.
The children said they watched the incident unfold from the top of the stairs of the two-story home.
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Hesperia Station spokeswoman Karen Hunt said Tuesday that the information collected from the incident had been submitted to the District Attorney’s office for review.
The officers had not been charged with a crime as of Tuesday, and District Attorney spokesman Chris Lee said he could not immediately provide a status update.
“We take all the allegations against our employees, whether on-duty or off-duty, very seriously,” Green added. “We will investigate them all.”