A Springdale Borough resident was arrested from the public speaker’s podium at a Tuesday council meeting while arguing for transparency around the municipality’s dealings with ICE. On Thursday, the county’s acting chief public defender said he’d push for the seven related charges to be lessened or dropped.
“I have great confidence that when the District Attorney’s Office gets an opportunity to review all of the facts here, they’re going to see how inappropriate these criminal charges are, and resolve them swiftly thereafter,” said Andy Howard, Allegheny County’s interim chief public defender, in a statement to Pittsburgh’s Public Source.
Defendant William “Danny” Rosenmund, 36, faces two counts of aggravated assault and five misdemeanors, including disorderly behavior and disrupting a public meeting.
A spokesperson for District Attorney Stephen Zappala declined to comment on a “pending case,” adding, “But as with all cases, we will review all the facts and circumstances surrounding the case.”
Rosenmund was speaking about concerns over the borough’s 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other public safety issues before he was arrested by Springdale police during council’s April 21 meeting.
Rosenmund made “derogatory statements” against public officials during public comment and exceeded his allotted three-minute speaking time, according to a report filed by arresting officer Theodore Bajak.
He was ordered to stop, according to the report, and arrested after he continued speaking.
Video taken during the arrest shows four officers surrounding Rosenmund, who is lying on the floor screaming for help. Rosenmund was later taken to a hospital for reported breathing problems, according to the police report. One of the four arresting officers also went to hospital for “difficulty breathing, bleeding and a possible head injury,” according to the report, and Chief Derek Dayoub received treatment for bite marks on his hand.
Dani Jameson, who attended the meeting, said Rosenmund did not escalate the situation but continued reading from his statement after he was told his three minutes were up. She said he raised his volume but kept to the script he had written.
“He was reading loudly so that he could be heard,” said Jameson. “He didn’t say anything that wasn’t on [the script].”
Pushing for transparency
During the arrest, Jameson said Rosenmund made multiple pleas for help while officers pinned him down, and she said she feared for his safety. She did not see him do “anything that would be combative” during the arrest.
Rosenmund is the director of programs and outreach at Not One More Vet, a nonprofit organization that promotes the mental health of veterinarians. He serves on the Springdale Free Public Library board. He has been a frequent speaker at meetings since Springdale approved a 287(g) agreement formalizing a task-force partnership with ICE in November.
During a public meeting the following month, he suggested the state’s Sunshine Laws require council to have voted on the agreement in public, and said in failing to do so, borough officials “may have been ill-advised.”
According to a draft of his Tuesday statement shared by Howard, Rosenmund began his speech with the same issue. “I’ve been asking for accountability and transparency from the Springdale Borough Police Department since mid-December, when it was first reported that Dayoub entered into a 287(g) Task Force Agreement without public comment or vote. I stated then, and repeatedly since, that I believe this violated the Sunshine Act.”
According to the draft, he raised further questions about the police department and its funding, which he said costs the borough comparatively more than neighboring departments, and urged Springdale to consider joining the Allegheny Valley Regional Police Department.
The draft does not include vulgar language other than alleging that Council President Mike Ziencik called him a vulgar name for refusing to fight earlier this month.
Ziencik and multiple other council members did not respond to requests for comment.
Councilor Joe Kern declined to comment, saying he and other borough officials had been advised not to weigh in on an “ongoing investigation.”
Springdale issued a statement on its website Thursday evening defending the actions of police as “a professional and controlled effort to manage a dynamic situation while ensuring the safety of all individuals involved.” The statement, signed by Springdale’s mayor and council, said video circulating on social media “capture only a limited and selective portion of the overall incident … As a result, any conclusions drawn from these partial depictions are incomplete and misleading.”
Rosenmund’s draft concludes with a list of incidents involving Springdale police which he said amount to “27 years of bad and dangerous policing.” None of the officers he named appear on an online list of borough officers.
He also claimed he was threatened with violence by Dayoub. The chief did not respond to email and voicemail outreach Thursday.
ICE arrest raises community fears
Pittsburgh’s Public Source recently filed requests for records of communication and other transactions between ICE and eight local police and sheriff departments with whom they have signed agreements. Of those, only Springdale Borough initially denied the request in full. After Public Source appealed to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, the department disclosed five emails, including a one-line message (and ICE’s acknowledgement) forwarding a memorandum of understanding without the attached document, and three short messages about logistics for a virtual payroll training session. The appeal remains ongoing.
Jameson said fear has heightened in the community since Springdale assisted ICE with the Feb. 10 arrest of Peruvian born Randy Cordova Flores, who does not have a criminal record. Jameson, of Harmar, said she has attended Springdale meetings since Flores’ arrest because her kids attend Allegheny Valley School District with Cordova Flores’ kids, and she is concerned about the wider safety fallout from the borough’s ICE agreement.
Just days after the arrest of Cordova Flores, a man protesting his detention was punched by a passerby who drove through and then got out of his truck. Officers reportedly took statements but the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office told Public Source this week that there’s no record of charges filed against any offender in relation to the protest.
Following Cordova Flores’ arrest, Allegheny Valley board member Amy Sarno introduced a “Welcoming Schools” policy to prep the district for possible ICE presence. The board voted it down in March.
Sarno, a family friend of Cordova Flores, did not attend the Tuesday council meeting but released a statement on her public Facebook page stating she is “extremely disturbed” after seeing video of Rosenmund’s arrest.
She said school board members are frequently confronted during meetings by unhappy residents, but those incidents never require a physical response from law enforcement.
“The details from the criminal complaint as published in the Trib contradict what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears,” Sarno wrote, “and only reinforce my impression of a toxic culture that pervades our municipality and public safety sector.”
In their Thursday statement, borough officials maintained Rosenmund escalated by defying instructions to stop talking, and noted some officials and police have recently received unspecified threats from the public.
“The Springdale leadership does not take these threats lightly and police officers are present to ensure that both the elected officials and the community members who attend the meetings are safe,” according to the statement.
Jamie Wiggan is deputy editor at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at jamie@publicsource.org.
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