News

MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer

SHENANDOAH — A police chief ordered held without bail on charges he tried to cover up the fatal beating of a Mexican immigrant by white teenagers was named in a 2006 lawsuit that claimed police beat to death a Hispanic teenager, then made it look like a suicide.

click image to enlarge

Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor faces federal charges in alleged cover-up.

AP photo

Related headlines

• Pa. police accused of cover-up face abuse suits
• Cops charged with cover-up
• Feds charge Pa. teens, police officers in attack
• Pa. teen facing hate crime charge to be released

Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store

Police Chief Matthew Nestor was never charged, but the allegations contained in the suit, in Tuesday’s indictment and in other civil claims depict a police department with pervasive hostility to minorities and a penchant for using excessive force.

Police “acted as feudal warlords in this coal town community that people were afraid of,” said attorney John Karoly, who represents the parents of 18-year-old David Vega in their federal lawsuit against the borough. Karoly said he wasn’t suggesting police were abusive to everyone, “but I would say the pattern certainly starts to appear that minorities took the thrust of their abuse.”

The suit names Nestor and Capt. Jamie Gennarini as defendants, as well as the borough of Shenandoah. The officers have denied wrongdoing. A civil trial is scheduled for next summer.

Nestor, 33, and two other officers were charged Tuesday with orchestrating a cover-up as the FBI investigated the fatal attack on Luis Ramirez by a group of high school football players. Gennarini and Nestor were indicted separately in a scheme to extort money from illegal gambling operations.

On Wednesday, Nestor was ordered held until trial at a bail hearing in Wilkes-Barre. Judge Malachy Mannion called Nestor “clearly, unequivocally a serious danger to witnesses in this case.”

At the hearing, a federal prosecutor alleged that Nestor drove a cooperating witness in the extortion investigation to an isolated area and ordered him to strip down before returning him unharmed to his home.

The officers pleaded not guilty before a federal magistrate in Wilkes-Barre and the other two were released to home confinement.