5 Philadelphia cops fired for allegedly assaulting or threatening women have all been reinstated

PHILADELPHIA — In March 2020, the Philadelphia Police Department announced that Officer Jesse Alvarez had been suspended for 30 days with the intent to dismiss after he was arrested for domestic violence.

A woman had obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Alvarez and told Internal Affairs investigators that he had burned her with an iron, choked her, and put a gun to her head. He denied the allegations.

Alvarez later had the charges dismissed after he completed an “intimate partner abuse” diversionary program, and, in the words of the program’s director, “took accountability for his behavior.”

But when the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5 filed a grievance to have Alvarez reinstated, an arbitrator selected by the police union said he could not be sure of the “definition” of “intimate partner abuse.”

“It is not evident that [Alvarez] admitted, through completion of the program, to domestic assault,” wrote arbitrator Walt De Treux, adding that the woman “likely suffered” from Alvarez’s “emotional abuse.”

Siding with the FOP, De Treux in November 2024 ordered that Alvarez be reinstated. He returned to the force. Unlike at the time of his firing, there was no news release.

The outcome of Alvarez’s case, along with those of seven other officers who had previously been suspended or fired, became public for the first time when the city posted the information online late last week.

The Inquirer reported last month that the city had stopped publishing grievance arbitration decisions for the past 16 months. A city spokesperson said the delay was not intentional but was due to redaction errors and staffing limitations.

The newly released decisions include five cases in which police officers were fired after allegations of assaulting or threatening women. Two arbitrators appointed by the FOP reinstated all five officers.

“While we are glad that the city published these decisions, the data is concerning,” said Catherine Twigg, general counsel for the Citizens Police Oversight Commission, an agency created by City Council 2021.

“Despite the women bravely reporting the abuse, despite corroborating statements and even video in some cases, the arbitrators decided to reinstate the officers to the force, returning their badges and their guns,” Twigg said Monday.

In the Alvarez case, De Treux’s written decision focused extensively on inconsistencies in the woman’s testimony while spending one sentence acknowledging the officer’s own “credibility issues.” Alvarez was suspended for 25 days in 2017 for submitting fraudulent doctor notes during a departmental investigation.

In another domestic-violence case, De Treux ordered that Officer Timothy Taylor be reinstated in April 2024 despite the city’s argument that the body camera footage of the officers who responded to the scene is “incredibly damaging” to Taylor.

Police in Bucks County’s Northampton Township responded to Taylor’s house in March 2022 after receiving an emergency call and hearing a woman screaming before hanging up. When officers arrived, Taylor’s wife said he had grabbed her head and neck and pinned her to the ground. A 9-year-old at the scene described Taylor as having “slammed” the woman, De Treux wrote.

Taylor was charged with simple assault and related charges. His wife subsequently refused to cooperate in the case. Taylor pleaded to disorderly conduct, a summary offense.

The city had urged De Treux to consider the bodycam footage in judging the credibility of the case. But the arbitrator was dismissive of the video, because then-Commissioner Danielle Outlaw had not reviewed the same evidence before she decided to fire Taylor.

“At the time of termination,” De Treux wrote, “the [Police] Department did not have sufficient proof that [Taylor] engaged in an act of domestic violence.”

De Treux declined to comment Tuesday on his rulings.

The three other officers who were reinstated through arbitration last year are:

•Officer Andrew Humm, who allegedly pulled his gun on a woman in a 2021 road-rage incident in Mount Airy. He denied it, and the video footage was inconclusive.

•Officer Darren Kardos, who a judge in 2023 found not guilty of beating a 28-year-old mother during civil unrest in October 2020. The mother, Rickia Young, did not testify at Kardos’ criminal trial or arbitration hearing.

•Officer Andre Coles, who had been accused of abusing his girlfriend in 2019. The District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges.

Alvarez, Taylor, Humm and Coles are back on the force. Kardos left the job after winning his case. The officers either did not respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.

The FOP declined to comment Tuesday on the officers’ cases.

In the past, the union has argued that it files grievances on behalf of officers because Internal Affairs can sometimes conduct incomplete investigations, or because police commissioners too hastily fire cops without sufficient evidence.

In the Coles case, for example, the three-member Police Board of Inquiry recommended that he receive a 5-day suspension. But Outlaw changed the penalty to termination, apparently without explanation, which surprised some police officials.

John McNesby, the former president of the Philadelphia FOP, told the Inquirer in 2019 that police commissioners “just fire with no just cause, zero investigation, and then point the finger at us.”

A CPOC report in January found that between 2022 and early 2024, 85% of fired officers were reinstated by an arbitrator after the FOP contested their terminations.

“We’re not taking rapists back,” McNesby said in 2019. “We’re not taking people that are slapping their wives back.”

But the union, for years, has backed officers in domestic abuse cases.

In 2016, the FOP fought unsuccessfully to have Officer Joseph Griffin reinstated after he was fired for allegedly choking his wife and threatening to kill her.

“I’m gonna beat the s— out of u tonight… The other ones ain’t s— compare (sic) to what you got coming tonight,” he texted his wife. The FOP had tried to convince an arbitrator to disregard the texts.

That same year, an arbitrator reduced Officer Mark Malaczewski’s termination to a 30-day suspension after he pleaded guilty to harassment and disorderly conduct involving fighting. Police who responded to his Bristol Township home found Malaczewski’s then-girlfriend grabbing her shoulder and holding a clump of her own hair. She told officers that Malaczewski punched her and knocked her head into a brick fireplace.

In reinstating Malaczewski, arbitrator James Darby added a caveat: “Grievant must successfully complete anger management counseling.”

Yet, Malaczewski was charged again in September 2022 with strangulation, witness intimidation, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and filing a false report in an attempt to incriminate another person.

A woman told police that Malaczewski choked her twice, restricting her breathing. He also “hit her with a closed fist repeatedly” and dragged her around the room like a “rag doll,” according to the affidavit of probable cause.

Malaczewski was fired again and is no longer with the police department, a spokesperson said Tuesday.

At a May 2023 trial in Bucks County, he was found guilty on all counts.