(Cleveland) - In an update on a story we brought you last week, there's more information about why a Cleveland Police officer was fired.
Officer Howard Hart had been using crack cocaine from July 2016 to July 2020, failed to report for mandatory training, failed to show up for work, and failed to show up for seven appointments with a police department doctor. The letter notifying Hart he had been fired did not say how police came to the knowledge of his drug use.
Hart also didn't accurately report the events of a fellow police officer's actions during an arrest. That officer, John Petkac, stepped on the throat of a man, and slammed the man into the side of a police cruiser after handcuffing him. Officer Petkac was fired in December.
Hart had been with the Cleveland Division of Police's Third District
(Copyright 2021, iHeartMedia)
Listen to WTAM for news at the top and bottom of the hour.