CHARGES DISMISSED AGAINST BLAKESLEE MAN WHO FOUGHT WITH POLICE DURING SUICIDE TRY

Disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges against a Blakeslee man who swore at and struggled with responding officers were dismissed last Wednesday.

Finding Edmour A. Giguere, 36, of Adirondack Drive, Blakeslee, was in need of mental health treatment not criminal charges, Judge Linda Wallach Miller of the Monroe County Court of Common Pleas tossed out the two misdemeanor charges arising from a September 14 incident at Giguere’s home.

“The district justice acknowledges that the defendant is in need of mental health treatment. The police believed the defendant was in need of mental health treatment, buy everyone connected with this case thus far is persecuting him as a criminal,” the judge said.

Assistant Public Defender Michael A. Ventrella argued the “fighting” charged by police was caused “completely by officers attempting to place handcuffs on a person they had been called to assist in preventing a suicide.” Police said the man was refusing to enter an ambulance to go to the Pocono Medical Center.

Ventrella acknowledged Giguere was drunk and had been threatening suicide with a large butcher knife. He said the defendant’s cursing at officers was not “disorderly conduct in itself. Officers have to have thicker skin then that,”

Ventrella said. Coincidently Judge Miller’s decision in a similar case, in which she dismissed charges against a man who swore at a cop, was upheld on a technicality by the Superior Court last week.

In that case Duane Sprovach Jr. called a Pocono officer an “asshole.”

Judge Miller, ruling in April, said the disorderly conduct law cannot be used “as a vehicle to protect police from all verbal indignities.” The district attorney’s office appealed Judge Miller’s ruling to the Superior Court.