Allegedly lying on a criminal complaint and deleting thousands of pieces of evidence led to the end of Hiel Bartlett’s law enforcement career, according to a so-called “liar cop” listing by the county’s top prosecutor.

Bartlett disagrees with the assertions, and said McKean County District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer put him on the list as retribution for him speaking out against certain practices in her office.

In Bartlett’s opinion, the matter started before the detention and arrest of Matthew Confer on Delaware Avenue in Bradford on May 5, 2020. That incident set off a chain of events in which Bartlett stands accused of lying about being assaulted, approving a criminal complaint containing an aggravated assault charge based on that alleged lie, and telling Shaffer to leave the charge on the criminal complaint so he wouldn’t get sued, according to the district attorney’s office.

Yet perhaps the most serious of the accusations lodged against the former police chief is the deletion of thousands of pieces of bodycam footage from the Bradford City Police Department’s secured digital storage system.

These allegations came to light in a so-called liar cop filing by Shaffer against Bartlett in May 2021, which The Era obtained through a Right to Know request (see related story).

The filing is also called a “Giglio list,” based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision, which established that a prosecutor must disclose any evidence that could call into question the credibility of a law enforcement officer testifying at a trial, according to the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association.

“If such a determination is made while a law enforcement officer is employed with the City of Bradford police department, the effect would be profound,” said Mayor James McDonald, who appointed Bartlett as police chief in January 2020. Bartlett resigned, for the purposes of retirement, on July 16, 2020.

Shaffer’s Giglio ruling came in May 2021.

Regarding the Giglio ruling, Bartlett told The Era, “I am limited as to what I can say so I will only address the areas that I can discuss.

“Under the Brady-Giglio policy, when a police officer is called as a witness the prosecution must disclose impeachment evidence, meaning any evidence that casts doubt on accuracy. There are seven distinct but vague categories (in which) a prosecutor can impeach an officer’s credibility. The McKean County District Attorney has decided to place me in one of those categories. I totally disagree with her assertions and feel her decision stems from many disagreements that I had with her and her Chief County Detective.”

How it began

On May 5, 2020, Bradford City Police were dispatched to Delaware Avenue for an alleged domestic incident. Patrolman Matthew Gustin and then-Chief Bartlett responded. Confer had allegedly been involved in a domestic incident with a woman. According to the criminal complaint in the case, Confer was placed under arrest, but ran from the officers and was subsequently tased.

Then a bystander started to record the incident, showing Confer struggling with the officers. Confer can be seen handcuffed and being escorted to the police car while lightly struggling with the officers. Bartlett and Gustin were able to get Confer to the car, at which point Confer appeared to step back while Gustin was behind him, though the view in the video is partially obstructed by a tree and the vehicle.

From there, the video showed Gustin pull Confer to the ground, where he continued to struggle and attempted to kick Gustin. Confer is pinned to the ground by Gustin and Bartlett, the latter of whom pressed the left side of Confer’s face to the ground.

The officers dragged Confer to the patrol car and placed him inside, after which Bartlett can be seen spraying him with mace in the back of the car. Confer’s actions could not be seen on the video.

The bystander posted the video to social media, leading to an immediate public outcry regarding Bartlett’s actions during the course of the arrest. A police misconduct complaint was made to city officials, and to Shaffer’s office.

Giglio letter

In August 2021, The Era obtained a letter from Shaffer to Bradford Mayor James McDonald, and a letter from Shaffer to Bartlett marked “In re: Giglio.”

The letter to Bartlett contained a “summary of the report of the Chief County Detective concerning Hiel Bartlett pursuant to the PDAA/ (Fraternal Order of Police) Giglio protocol,” Shaffer wrote in the letter to city officials. “The Commonwealth will not call Hiel Bartlett as a witness in any proceeding due to the conduct demonstrated by this investigation.”

The investigation to which she refers is one undertaken by McKean County Chief Detective Ryan Yingling at her request, based on allegations of Bartlett’s dishonesty in regard to the criminal complaint against Confer.

Shaffer spelled out several findings from Yingling’s report, including that Bartlett confirmed that he had lied about an aggravated assault by saying Confer had assaulted him during the course of the arrest; allowed, as police chief, a criminal complaint to be filed knowing it contained false information; and that he had deleted reportedly thousands of files of original police bodycam footage from a computer server at the Bradford City Police Station, according to Shaffer.

In the letter, Shaffer said witnesses told investigators that Bartlett had admitted that Confer hadn’t assaulted him, but he had approved the filing of a criminal complaint alleging that it had.

Confer was incarcerated on the basis of the allegations in the criminal complaint.

Allegations by date

According to Shaffer’s letter, three days after the arrest, Bartlett was notified that a citizen’s complaint had been made and that city administration was investigating the circumstances surrounding the May 5 arrest. At that time, a law enforcement witness asked Bartlett for his report on the incident, but Bartlett said he had yet to write it and said he would get it done.

On May 9, after Bartlett learned of the city’s investigation, Bartlett completed a report in the case. However, Shaffer noted, the report does not contain the date and time of its drafting, even though the program used for reports automatically inserts the date and time. To have them missing means they were intentionally removed, Shaffer said.

The investigator checked numerous other reports, but found none where the date and time were missing, she wrote.

On May 11, Shaffer withdrew the assault charge from Confer’s criminal complaint. She went on to recount a conversation she had with Bartlett, which was documented by Yingling. In that conversation, Bartlett insisted to Shaffer that the conduct alleged in the complaint had occurred. Shaffer told him that his report said otherwise, and he said “he had not had a chance to review the body camera footage when he typed his report, so now he wants to change it to say” the actions did occur, the letter read.

However, a witness provided evidence that not only had Bartlett reviewed the bodycam footage on the day of the arrest, but he had also downloaded and sent it via social media.

During the conversation with Shaffer, Bartlett told her that if she withdrew the charge, “you are screwing us over and opening me up to a civil suit,” the letter read.

On May 12, a representative from Axom Enterprises, the company that stores the police department’s bodycam footage, was at the police station on another matter. A witness reported to Yingling that Bartlett questioned the representative on how to gain access to the library retention archives. “This witness reports you expressed concern about city administrator Chris Lucco having access to these videos for investigation purposes,” Shaffer wrote.

The witness stated that the Axom representative warned Bartlett that changing the retention periods “would result in the loss of an abundance of video evidence, which would be permanent after seven days,” the prosecutor wrote. She further explained a seven-day safe period exists within the system to reverse a permanent action that can result in the loss of evidence.

The representative told the investigator that Bartlett changed the retention periods “which resulted in the deletion of reportedly thousands of original police bodycam videos/potential evidence,” which included several years’ worth of evidence, Shaffer stated.

Deleting this footage is prohibited if a citation has been issued or the contents of the video may be necessary as evidence in a future proceeding, she wrote.

“Neither prior to causing the deletion from the Axon server, nor in the next seven days that you would have been able to reverse your action, did you confirm that all of the bodycam videos stored on the server had been saved on CD and preserved in the criminal files,” she stated.

“To this day, it is impossible to estimate the damage this has done to the department’s criminal investigations or that of any department the city has ever assisted for each recording that was not saved to CD prior to its deletion,” Shaffer wrote. “The city continues to identify which cases contain bodycam videos that have been forever deleted and not preserved and will have an ongoing obligation to disclose to the district attorney’s office in every case in which a bodycam video existed and was deleted in this mass deletion.”

In concluding the letter, Shaffer explained that the information found during the investigation could call into question Bartlett’s credibility. “The Commonwealth cannot continue to call you and risk every prosecution,” she wrote. “The Commonwealth has no choice but to protect the integrity of the investigations and prosecutions.”

Appeal

Bartlett filed an appeal to the Giglio ruling to Shaffer, who held a reconsideration hearing. In a letter dated Oct. 6, which was obtained through a Right to Know request to the City of Bradford, Shaffer told Bartlett the Giglio determination would stand.

She explained in the letter that Bartlett declined to interview with Yingling, during the reconsideration, he provided information and called witnesses, and was given the opportunity to respond to allegations against him.

“Following the conference I requested additional investigation on some of the matters you asserted, which has now been completed,” Shaffer wrote.

“The information you provided in the conference was directly contrary to the evidence or known facts and is not credible; not relative to a material matter such as providing false information or deleting original body camera footage; or were your mere assertions against one of more other law enforcement officers that were found to be baseless and false after further investigation,” Shaffer stated in the letter.

“The prior Giglio determination will not change.”

Bartlett explained the process behind the Giglio ruling, in that it is entirely within Shaffer’s purview.

“The District Attorney is the person that decides if any officer is added to the Brady/Giglio list,” Bartlett told The Era. “She is the judge, jury and executioner. This is wrong. Legal, but wrong. If it can happen to me, it can happen to any officer in our county. Our officers in our community are second to none and deserve better, better treatment, better representation and better support.”

He outlined the issues that he said led to Shaffer singling him out.

“These arguments/disagreements started over her lack of care for officers in the field, lack of care for officer safety, her causing unnecessary court overtime (paid for by taxpayers) by repeatedly continuing criminal cases with the ultimate result of dropping cases before the preliminary hearing, failure of the McKean County Drug Task Force to follow through on drug arrests (at the time they had 30+ pending cases, with some cases being over 2 years old) and my threat of pulling city officers out of the task force to start our own drug unit,” Bartlett said. “I believe her putting me on this list has nothing to do with her accusations of wrongdoing on my behalf because there was no wrongdoing, just (Shaffer’s and Yingling’s) hurt feelings.”

Impacts

While Bartlett is no longer employed by the City of Bradford Police, as of Oct. 21, he remained on the roster of the Bradford Township Police, according to Chief Robb Shipman. He has been on the roster since June of 2011, but the last shift he worked with the township was in June of 2020, Shipman explained.

Bartlett has not been scheduled to work because of the Giglio decision, Shipman told The Era.

In the City of Bradford, McDonald said a Giglio ruling would mean an officer could not perform required functions of his job.

“In a department such as ours all officers from the chief to the most junior officer are expected to be able to make arrests and perform day to day patrols, investigations, and enforcement duties,” he continued. “With that being said, such a Giglio ruling essentially renders an officer to only be able to perform administrative tasks. If an officer is unable to testify, or the District Attorney will not prosecute a case if the officer is a witness in that case, that officer would not even be able to be used as a witness to another officer’s arrest.”

When fully staffed, the city police have 19 officers including the chief and the school resource officers. There is no position in the department for an officer to handle purely administrative work.

McDonald said, “Upon review of the documents supplied to the City from the District Attorney, It appeared that a very exhaustive and thorough investigation was done prior to her determination to place Mr. Bartlett on the Giglio list. Although I was not privy to all of the information at the disposal of the District Attorney’s office, the summary of the investigation that was supplied to me seemed to make it pretty clear that her decision was an appropriate conclusion in this case.”

The mayor said he is hopeful that his situation doesn’t weaken the community’s trust in the police.

“We have taken substantial steps to assure the public that nothing like this should ever happen again,” McDonald said. “Under the current leadership of Chief (Mike) Ward and his command staff, I believe the public does in fact have trust and faith in our police, and they certainly should.”

For its part, The William Hanley Sr. Lodge 67 Fraternal Order of Police had no immediate response to the Giglio decision.

Jeffrey Shade, president, explained he was unaware of the decision in its entirety, and would not respond until he would be able to review the decision and the basis for it.

“We did not represent Hiel Bartlett in regards to this matter as he was Chief of a Third Class City and not under the umbrella of the FOP for representation at that time,” Shade said. “Hiel Bartlett is a member in good standing with William Hanley Sr. Lodge #67 FOP.”

Aftermath

In the Giglio letter, Shaffer said Bartlett may request a review of the Giglio status every two years.

She also noted, “The investigating regarding this shall be maintained as an ongoing investigation by the District Attorney’s office for at minimum, (1) the length of time that any sentence remains unsatisfied in any case in which you were affiant or other potential witness that resulted in a conviction or (2) as long as you are employed in any law enforcement capacity.”

The ruling will remain on Bartlett’s record permanently, should he serve in any law enforcement capacity.

Currently, Bartlett is not working in law enforcement. He owns and operates a restaurant in Bradford.

The Bradford City Police Department is now led by Chief Mike Ward, who served as assistant chief under former chief Chris Lucco and under Bartlett.