Jury rejects ex-sergeant's charges in gun drop-off

A federal jury on Wednesday rejected a civil suit from a former Philadelphia police sergeant, who said he was wrongfully arrested while off duty last year as he tried to anonymously drop off a bag of guns at a police district headquarters.

Brandon Ruff, an eight-year police veteran, alleged that six officers involved in detaining him Aug. 3 had no cause to do so, used excessive force, and then fabricated a story that led to criminal charges being filed against him.

He shrugged off the jury's verdict, though, as if it were the outcome he had expected from the start.

"I'm not surprised, looking at the jury and looking at the officers that are accused," said Ruff, who is black, referring to the all-white panel, largely drawn from the suburbs, and the six defendants in the case, four of whom were white. "If I were another color, this wouldn't have happened like that."

City lawyers had argued throughout the four-day trial that the officers acted appropriately in response to Ruff, who refused to give his name while dropping off the weapons, resisted arrest, and only identified himself as a fellow police officer after he had been detained.

Jurors, it seemed, largely bought that argument. It took them less than an hour to reach their verdict.

"There was no grand conspiracy here where these officers got together to get Brandon Ruff arrested," said Brock J. Atkins, a lawyer from the City Solicitor's Office, representing the accused officers.

Ruff, who was last assigned to Powelton's 16th District, lost his job with the department in February - the same day that prosecutors filed charges against him for giving a false identity to police when he was dropping off the weapons.

But in his closing arguments to jurors, his lawyer, Michael Pileggi, maintained that his client's criminal case stemmed from the Police Department's attempts to justify overreaction by its officers.

Ruff testified this week that he went in August to 35th District headquarters in Ogontz - the closest station to his house - to drop off three guns, believing there was an ongoing anonymous gun buyback program. There was no such program at the time.

When officers asked him for his identification - as part of the standard procedure for gun drop-offs - Ruff resisted.

He told jurors he eventually told the officers that he had received the guns from his tattoo artist, DeRyan Jones, and then left the building to make a phone call.

But during their own turns on the witness stand, Police Officers Ivene Eckels and Angelina Bednarz - both defendants in the suit - insisted that Ruff gave them the name "Ryan Jones" as his own.

As he left the building, they followed him out, along with several other officers. That's when their supervisor - Sgt. Donna Bachmayer, who was also sued - spotted another gun tucked into Ruff's waistband and tried to stop him.

Ruff resisted, flailing his arms and cursing at the six officers it took to place him in handcuffs, Bachmayer said. In Ruff's version of the story, the officers hurled curses at him in equal measure and threatened to shock him in the heart with a Taser.

It was only after Ruff was brought back to the station that the officers learned he was one of their own.

"Why didn't he just tell them who he was? What was he trying to hide?" Atkins, the officers' lawyer, asked jurors during his closing argument. "Had they known he was a police officer, we would not be here today."

Ruff still faces a trial next year on the false-identification charges - a misdemeanor his lawyer likened Thursday to "one step up from jaywalking."

In the meantime, the ex-sergeant said, he didn't expect much from a justice system and police department that - in his view - remains racially biased and based on favoritism.

"When you're not out drinking with sergeant, you are the black sheep," he said. He paused, then added: "No pun intended."