A Cold Spring councilmember’s son plans to sue the city and the police department over what he calls a wrongful detainment, and city council went into executive session to discuss the matter Monday night.
It isn’t immediately clear what the purpose of the executive session was, and no decisions were made.
But councilmember Cindy Moore, whose son is Jonathan Moore, excused herself from the discussion because of a conflict of interest.
Jonathan Moore was arrested by Cold Spring police and subsequently detained on Nov. 25, 2022 before officers realized they had arrested the wrong Jonathan Moore, according to a letter from Moore’s attorney, James Morgan.
“I’m not involved in this litigation,” Cindy Moore said at Monday’s meeting. “I’m excusing myself from executive session. And there’s other evidence out there like I said – body cam footage. If you really want to know about (the) situation, I would say contact for open records, check more of all body cams and information concerning it because it shows exactly what happened.”
Letters exchanged between the city’s and Moore’s legal counsel were included with the agenda for Monday night’s meeting in a packet released to attendees at each meeting.
In one of those letters, the city’s attorney, Brandon Voelker, confirmed that Jonathan Moore and/or his mother had indeed received the body camera video. He also said that any litigation should be directed at Campbell County Dispatch, since that’s who, he said, made the error.
“It is very evident throughout the video,” Voelker writes, “it was the Campbell County dispatcher that asserted that Jonathan Moore had a warrant out for his arrest and in fact Officer Brian Steffen explained all this to Mr. Moore upon Cold Spring Police being able to ascertain and correct the misinformation that was provided by Campbell County Dispatch.”
Cindy Moore said Monday night that she was upset that the letters included the packet that named her personally.
In response, Voelker noted how a prior phone call Moore made to Police Chief Steven Collinsworth about the incident was defined as a complaint by a public person, according to the Policeman’s Bill of Rights, and that the issue must now be treated as a public issue.
“It was pretty crystal clear that the county dispatcher messed something up,” Voelker said. “And we’ve been unequivocal about that.”