Allan Appel File Photo
Six months ago, Officer Charles Kim was found at Christopher Martin’s restaurant in the middle of the night catching a bad guy causing trouble.
This weekend Martin was found at Christopher Martin’s in the middle of the night again. This time, he was allegedly causing some of the trouble.
Kim (pictured in a file photo) was one of two officers who had to turn in their guns and go on paid leave Sunday after allegedly shooting their guns into the air outside the popular upper State Street bar shortly before 2:30 a.m. They were off duty at the time of the incident.
The department is conducting an internal investigation into the incident.
The officers fired “several shots” and were not involved in any kind of argument, Chief Dean Esserman said Monday.
“We all take this very seriously. We are very heartened in a bad situation that our officers on patrol and our supervisor on patrol handled it very well — identified the crime scene right away, froze it, activated internal affairs immediately,” Esserman said.
On a Wednesday last September, Kim was on duty shortly before 3:30 a.m. when he responded to a burglar alarm at Christopher Martin’s. He arrived to find a man with a hammer, knife, and 2‑foot metal bar outside the dining room door. Kim saw that a portion of the door frame had been detached. Kim arrested the man, whom he found had been trying to break in.
Now Kim, who graduated from the police academy in December 2008, himself could be in some trouble.
Click here to read about a cultural event Kim and other Korean-American officers held at Lincoln-Bassett School last November; and here to read about a baseball outing with neighborhood teens in which he and other Newhallville cops participated.
Click here for a detailed story on the latest incident by the Register’s William Kaempffer.