Torch Exclusive: MSP Trooper Seymour Blew .14 BAC at Traffic Stop, Sister Unlawfully Detained, Brutalized

[XLFD]

Michigan State Trooper Sammy Sidney Seymour who was driving his sister home from the bar early in the morning of January 17, 2015 initially refused a 'Breathalyzer' (PBT) test, but about a half hour later consented and clocked in at .14 BAC, almost twice the legal limit of impaired driving in Michigan. 

Seymour had initially been seen coming from the parking area in front of the Alley Bar by Ludington Police Department (LPD) Officer Steve Wietrzykowski, who saw him drive north a block on South James Street, then headed east on Filer St without any headlights on.  Wietrzykowski then saw the red VW Jetta stop in the middle of the street, before turning from Harrison to Loomis heading past the courthouse, with lights.  Before any lights were activated by the LPD officer, the car turned up Delia heading south, and stopped. 

Behind the wheel was off-duty MSP Trooper Seymour, with his sister, Kimberly Septrion in the back seat, and a young woman named Tracy Smith in the passenger's seat.  Smith self-reportedly had been along to 'babysit' Septrion at the bar, but like her traveling companions, had a few that night.  Officer Wietrzykowski smelled a 'very strong odor of intoxicants', including an open Busch beer by the driver.  in short order Seymour was taken from the Jetta to the back of the LPD SUV. 

Less than a minute later, with Wietrzykowski's formal arrest of Seymour occurring after his refusal to take tests, his sister got out of the Jetta on her own initiative and went back to the LPD vehicle just after Wietrzykowski came back to check out the open beverage and other indicators.

Reportedly, Sheriff Deputy Fort shows up shortly after the LPD officer tries to resume the investigation of Seymour, but is being interfered with by Septrion.  Wietrzykowski reports:

This part of the report is troubling, and is basically backed up by LPD Officer Chad Skiba's report:

Skiba uses the term 'officers' physically dealing with a female when he reports on what he sees at first, and yet his in-car video does not activate until after 2:30 AM, three minutes after Ms. Septrion is whisked away by Deputy Fort to the jail as seen below (the moving car in the street):

The first image from Skiba's in-car camera starts after all the action with Septrion is done, and Smith is rounded up and she apparently accepts a ride home voluntarily from Officer Skiba:

 

The absence of footage from the encounter with Septrion is troubling with the way the reports are written.  As a back seat passenger, Septrion was under no threat of arrest for anything.  Wietrzykowski seems to indicate that she was interfering with an investigation, but her proximity to the patrol car seems to be the main problem noted, and the distorted audio does not indicate she was yelling outside the original patrol car, yet he does not indicate he was outside with Deputy Fort trying to control her, as Skiba's report indicates. 

There is no reason stated by any officer why she needed to be put voluntarily in the back of the deputy's car.  She was never declared under arrest, never detained for the purpose of questioning, never given any probable cause of why she should be locked up in the back of a vehicle.  There are threats of arrest by Wietrzykowski if she didn't stay away from the patrol car, which he admits Deputy Fort was successful in doing. 

Without any articulable reason for detention, they forcefully placed her in the back of the sheriff's car; drunk or not, Septrion had a reason to be upset and fight for her freedom that was taken from her.  The two charges against her, non-aggravated assault and obstructing police can only be claimed to have happened after her unlawful detention. 

But that's not all.  Unmentioned in the official reports so far is the fact that the officers admit taking Ms. Septrion down to the ground to handcuff her, where she struck the street's pavement with her face and chipped a tooth.  Look for the prosecutor to heap a lot of charges on Ms. Septrion when the real crime here was unlawful imprisonment by the sheriff's office of Mason County and the LPD acting in concert.  These two entities acting in concert to take a guiltless person down in the middle of the street just like they did the day they did the same to Joe McAdam.  But they spared the tasers for the lady.

The City and County will once again get sued because their officers just don't want to use their training.  But kudos and commendation should be placed on LPD Officer Wietrzykowski, who did the most impartial traffic stop I've ever seen a LPD officer do, and fairly report on what one might expect of a cornered rat named Sammy Sidney Seymour:

See the complete report here:  2015 1-17 Seymour Stop.pdf

With the Citation here, and the BBUT Report here.

[XLFD]

Breathalyzer tests are notorious for being inaccurate and they can't be used as evidence in Michigan to establish you were driving drunk, with the exception of the Datamaster test, a specialized Breathalyzer carefully regulated.  If Trooper Seymour gets a good attorney and decides to fight that he was drunk he has a lot of options here, as seen in this MI Criminal Attorney link.  As you can see there are plenty of ways to attack the Datamaster's veracity

For some reason, probably expediency, a blood test was not done, although one could suspect it was not due to them needing medical professionals and a MSP laboratory for draw and evaluation respectively.  Maybe they didn't trust whether the results coming back from the lab would be that accurate.

Whereas, I would agree with your characterizations of the interagency attitudes, Celeste, the three agencies quite often train together and depend on each other at incidents.  Seymour has had other recent problems, allegedly with domestic issues within this county, so it is unclear whether the collusion the MSP and locals have recently enjoyed will continue, or be strained by this.  It will depend largely on whether the MSP throws Seymour under the bus or not.  With his retention at desk duty in Cadillac, it looks as if they still want him.

[XLFD]

 I think I do; if I remember right, Judge Wadel issued an opinion that landed on page 3 of the COLDNews back in 2011, finding in favor of the defendant.  Thanks for refreshing me on that, I found this article about the findings.  Here is Judge Wadel's learned decision on the matter.  It came up on the LT at some point back then also.

[XLFD]

Good point, one figures that if you test at 0.10 on a test that has up to +/- 0.03 error, then you can get in serious trouble and actually have a 0.07 level.  It also affects those who may get punished for being 'superdrunk', when the tests may come back at or just over that level. 

I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who get behind the wheel after drinking enough to get them tipsy, but they should get a fair BAC reading and a chance to avoid an onerous rap for a clinical or testing error.

[Willy]

I agree. I have no patiance for those that drink alcohol and then operate a motor vehicle but if a test is to be given then it must be as accurate as possible, if not then the only reason for it is to make it easier to prosecute people, as the test expert stated.

[XLFD]

 In an update, Chief Barnett related to the MCP that at the time he was arrested, Trooper Seymour did not have a weapon.  A review of Officer Wietrzykowski's in-car camera video shows that although he knew of Seymour's occupation, and presumably that he could conceal-carry a handgun, there is no attempt to check or frisk Seymour for weapons before he is put in the back of the LPD car.  Due to the audio quality, it's not even clear he asked Seymour a question about any weapons.  It's not in the report either.

Provided Seymour was drunk enough to realize that driving toasted without lights was okay, he may have been drunk enough to go a little nuts when he's put in the back of a police car and use the weapon to effectuate his escape.  Look at how his sister reacted, and then what they did to his sister.  He may have protected her if he had been carrying, since he was probably sober enough to realize it was improper of Deputy Fort to treat her like a felon.  Extending professional courtesy to a fellow law enforcer in such a situation could get you killed.

[XLFD]

Celeste, the no-headlights reason for stopping was in the provided police report at the start, where Officer W. observed Sammy's car leave the parking area in front of the Alley Bar, head south on James and turn east on Filer.  What isn't explicitly stated is that the car would have to effectively do a U-turn to do this since if Sammy was properly parked he would have been pointed north. 

Presumably, Wietrzykowski, looking from the north, saw no headlights on while he did the U-turn-- after that he probably couldn't tell for sure.  When he next saw Sammy one more block down on the Harrison-Filer intersection, his lights were on-- so the three blocks without lights that were reported initially just wasn't the case, it was less than one block that it was observable. 

Common Ludington lore is that Ludington Police (and their friends) will stop almost anyone coming from the downtown Ludington area anytime near bar-closing time without much cause being needed.  It's like sharks sensing blood in the water.

[Willy]

Some older model cars may not have auto-on headlights. If Mr Seymour's vehicle had auto-on headlights when he purchased it, my guess is that he disabled the auto on and used the manual over ride that many cars have. The reason he may have done this is it's possible that he used his personal vehicle when on surveillance of suspects and if he parked down the street in order to observe what was going on, he would need to disable the auto-on so that he became less obvious because the lights  would draw attention to him. 

[XLFD]

I dug up a little internet research and learned that the 2008 Jetta would come with daytime running lights (DRL) just like most newer cars, but that even back as early as 2003 there were internet how-to pages on how to disable them to improve your gas mileage or bulb-life, or drive discreetly, including this one:  http://www.doitscared.com/38/disable-volkswagen-jetta-daylight-runn...

You both brought up excellent points concerning the issue, and it actually becomes an issue of interest, since Officer Wietrzykowski used that rationale to follow the Jetta in the first place.  If Seymour had not disabled the DRL, the logical question to ask is whether Officer W. fudged his reasonable suspicion for following Seymour.  It's a good defense for his attorney if he hadn't disabled the DRL, or if LPD never checked when they had the vehicle in their custody.

[Willy]

Celeste, how do you arrive at the bus conclusion from what I stated? Officers cannot properly perform a surveillance operation with head lights glaring. Sounds like you know Mr. Seymour and believe that he was set up. If that's so, then do you think officer Wietrzykowski was sitting in his vehicle with his lights on while waiting for Seymour?

[David Organ]

That's our finest at work ALWAYS make there own laws as they go!!!

[XLFD]

I looked up some public court records down at the county courthouse and found out a little more about the two persons of interest in this traffic stop. 

Sammy Seymour effectively has three court records in Mason County not related to this stop.  A complaint for divorce was filed by his ex wife, Rebecca, on 4-24-2013, finalized on 6-20-2014, with a miscellaneous order added on 10-17-2014 made up the first.

Just eight days before the divorce complaint started, she had petitioned Judge Nellis for a Personal Protection Order (PPO) on Sammy, which was denied.  Similarly, on 8-29-2006, a PPO against Sammy was denied for another Ludington woman by Judge Raven.  Understand that these PPO petitions may have not been warranted on their merits, but also understand that if either judge had approved them, Sammy, from my understanding, would not be able to wield a firearm on duty.

[XLFD]

The grapevine is ripe with mentions of domestic violence on his ex-wife.  If anything, the court records indicate that whereas there may be a basis for such allegations with a PPO petition filed, there was not anything acted on by the Mason County courts.  Chances are if there was some DV going on, the county sheriff would have been the acting police agency, as the residences of Sammy and his wife are outside the city limits. 

I doubt whether he will be helpful towards me, however, since I've been getting on his case about Deputy Fort's behavior.