Insurrectionist cop was awarded 'Officer of the Year' after falsely accusing black man of murder

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Michael Harriot
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An insurrection enthusiast arrested for storming the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 was once named “Officer of the Year” for a “solving” a 26-year-old homicide when he wrongly accused a Black man of 1st degree murder.

Former Cop Arrested for Storming Capitol Was Once Named 'Officer of the Year' After Falsely...
A former Utah police officer who won one of his department’s highest honors for a false murder arrest has been charged with crossing the “thin blue line” in the Jan. 6 plot to overthrow the U.S....
theroot.com
2:42 PM · Apr 5, 2021

https://www.theroot.com/former-cop-arrested-for-storming-capitol-was-once-named-1846622402

A former Utah police officer who won one of his department’s highest honors for a false murder arrest has been charged with crossing the “thin blue line” in the Jan. 6 plot to overthrow the U.S. government.

The FBI’s joint terrorism task force, along with Utah’s State Bureau of Investigation, arrested retired Salt Lake City police officer Michael Lee Hardin on Friday, or, as the New York Post describes it, took Hardin “into custody without incident.” Apparently, the deadly “incident” at the Capitol where three officers died doesn’t count. According to the criminal complaint, Hardin was charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol Building.

The 50-year-old sedition enthusiast retired from the Salt Lake City Police Department in 2017 after serving about two decades. In 2012, Hardin was awarded the Officer of the Year for arresting Thomas Pennington on first-degree murder charges in the 25-year-old cold case of Patricia Ramirez, who was strangled and left for dead on July 13, 1986.

Prosecutors later dismissed the charges against Pennington when investigators found evidence that he was not involved in the murder. Apparently, Hardin overlooked Pennington’s documents that showed Pennington was working 40 hours per week during the time of the murder. The alleged insurrectionist detective also disregarded the fact that Ramirez’s murder took place on the week of Pennington’s wedding, “as attested to by a marriage license, and a photograph of the newly married couple with the pastor who performed the service” the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Also, Pennington’s wedding and work schedule would have made it difficult to participate in the crime for another important reason:

He was living in Kansas City, Mo., at the time.

*snip*