SUMMERVILLE — The officer under fire for arresting a 13-year-old rose seller earlier this month has a history of policy violations, complaints and lawsuits filed against him. He was even fired once for misconduct in office.
Public attention focused on Summerville Officer Dante Ghi on April 1 when a bystander posted a video of him pushing a teen’s head and neck toward the ground during what many contend was an unnecessary and racially charged arrest. The incident has since sparked outcry about excessive force and how young people are policed.
Dozens of people protested on April 6, attempting to persuade Summerville Police Chief Douglas Wright that Ghi’s behavior is part of a pattern that warrants termination.
The Summerville Police Department has not publicly commented since it pledged on April 2 to conduct a thorough review of the incident. A day later, it requested an investigation by the State Law Enforcement Division of the use of force incident.
It is unclear what disciplinary actions could come after the investigations conclude. But it’s not the first time Ghi’s actions have been reviewed for potential policy violations.
State Rep. Marvin Pendarvis (left) talks with the media during a press conference next to Alexis Depass, the mother of the 13-year-old boy who was forcefully arrested for selling palmetto roses outside of a Walmart in Summerville on April 1. Community members gathered April 3 for a press conference in front of the Summerville Police Department in response to the incident.
He has worked at three departments during his 25 years in law enforcement. He was fired from the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office for misconduct in 2003, and he resigned from the North Charleston Police Department during an internal investigation before being hired at the Summerville Police Department in 2018.
Personnel records obtained by The Post and Courier show Ghi routinely received praise for his tenacity on the job. But the words of affirmation are juxtaposed with internal investigations, lawsuits the state paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars to settle and two unhappy departures, blemishing his record and raising concerns from the community about why he was hired in Summerville.
The incident calls into question what conduct the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy tracks and how officers can tally policy violations at one agency and be welcomed into another.
And it came just 10 days after an off-duty Summerville police officer shot and killed a man. Anthony DeLustro was fired, arrested and charged with murder April 10.
"You have to judge the incident based on what happened," one law enforcement expert warned. "But you also have to judge the police department based on that information and their hiring practices. That also opens another question: Who else have they hired in their police department?"
Back to the beginning
Ghi’s first stint in the criminal justice system came in 1997, when he supervised inmates and junior officers as a correctional officer in an Upstate prison. He completed basic law enforcement training in 1999 and began working at the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s department no longer keeps records of his time as a deputy, but he wrote in an application that he had patrol duties and was a field training officer.
What does still exist are all his records from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, which requires law enforcement agencies to report when people are hired or leave their jobs.
A notification of employee separation/termination letter shows Ghi was fired in 2003 for misconduct, which are specific violations defined by state law.
It says that a supervisor was reviewing footage in July 2003 for an unrelated complaint levied against Ghi when he noticed another incident.
Ghi and another officer responded to a domestic call where the complainant, the husband, alleged his wife had stolen all of his money and left. When the officers were leaving, the husband allegedly made a comment about how the next time he would take care of his wife himself.
Footage allegedly showed Ghi turning around, grabbing the man by his arm and placing him in handcuffs. He repeatedly and forcefully pushed the man’s face down on the hood of his patrol vehicle, according to the letter. Ghi then let the man up, pushed him in the chest with his finger, made gestures indicating the man was “crazy or stupid” and called him a boy “in a very demeaning tone of voice,” according to the letter.
This event fell under the “physical or psychological abuses of members of the public and/or prisoners” category of misconduct and was determined to be founded.
Ghi was fired after an internal investigation, records show. Amid some confusion that followed, he was hired for a job with the North Charleston Police Department.
Slipping through the cracks
Today, when cops are accused of limited, legally defined misconduct, they must submit to a hearing before the academy's training council to determine if they can continue working or must put the badge down. But procedures were different in 2003.
Back then, officers had to be hired by another department and start work before requesting a hearing that would determine if they were allowed to work or not.
Records show the North Charleston Police Department believed Ghi was under investigation for improper language and rude behavior — not that he had been fired for misconduct.
The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office never responded to requests for information about Ghi’s departure, according to North Charleston police.
And when the new department decided to hire Ghi, they failed to submit his hiring paperwork to the academy. Records show the academy wasn’t aware Ghi was working in North Charleston until mid-2005.
15 years policing North Charleston
The majority of Ghi’s career was spent in North Charleston. He held various roles and even led teams, including the gang intervention unit. The department sent Ghi and another officer to Los Angeles in 2006 to witness street-level gang violence and learn ways to prevent it from taking root in North Charleston.
Performance reports often gave him positive and negative feedback in the same breath.
His 2005 annual review said he is “relentless and tireless” but that he has received an “unusually high number of citizen complaints.”
“Ghi has a tendency to become condescending and/or rude,” the review continued. It said he received verbal counseling and was making an effort to improve.
A 2010 annual review applauded Ghi while simultaneously noting his tendency to be “very abrasive and sarcastic when talking to citizens.”
Current Summerville officer Dante Ghi poses for a picture.
The same pattern held true in 2015. Ghi was lauded as being “extremely dependable” and knowledgeable while it also warned him to mitigate his use of force.
A report compiled a month before he resigned in the middle of an internal investigation showed Ghi had been involved in two traffic accidents, received 12 complaints (only two of which were sustained) and 15 use of force incident allegations throughout his time in North Charleston.
Details outlining a few of his policy violations come from lawsuits filed toward the end of his time in North Charleston.
Several civil suits
Activists enraged by the April 1 use of force incident have threatened to sue Ghi over his conduct. But it would not be the first time he’s been dragged into litigation.
South Carolina has already paid out nearly a quarter of a million dollars to settle cases alleging Ghi wrongfully arrested young Black men, records show.
Three different people filed cases against Ghi in 2018, the year he jumped from the North Charleston Police Department to the Summerville Police Department.
Two of those cases stemmed from the same incident. In October 2016, two 17-year-olds were shopping at Northwoods Mall with one boy’s mother. The boys separated from the woman and planned to meet up at the food court in 30 minutes, records show.
A new Youth Escort policy had gone into place the month before in response to juveniles roaming the mall and causing trouble. It did not allow anyone under the age of 18 to be in the mall without an adult on weekend nights.
Because the boys had separated from their adult, a mall security guard told them they were trespassing and had to leave. As they headed to Belk to find their guardian, Ghi confronted them, according to court records and prior coverage by The Post and Courier.
He allegedly pushed the boys against the wall, searched them and handcuffed them. Ghi charged them with trespassing and arrested them.
The boys spent the night in jail and had to pay a fine to get out, records show.
Ghi said his body camera malfunctioned and did not record the incident.
The trespassing charges were dismissed the next year, and a civil lawsuit was filed in 2018. It alleged a violation of search and seizure, a violation of due process and “tremendous and irreparable emotional and mental harm.”
The complaint said the teens were singled out because they are Black.
The lawsuit was settled in federal court. Both victims received $62,500 and had nearly $27,000 of legal expenses reimbursed, according to records from the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund.
Meanwhile, a civil lawsuit stemming from an October 2017 incident also made it to court while the mall suits were playing out.
It alleged that the plaintiff, another 17-year-old Black teenager, was playing basketball in front of his house on Rio Street in North Charleston with his younger brother when a disgruntled neighbor called the police on him for allowing his basketball to travel onto her property.
Ghi suggested he move to a hoop at the end of the street so he wouldn’t bother his neighbor, records show. The 17-year-old did not relocate.
The officer attempted to grab the boy’s arm, which he pulled away, according to the lawsuit. The officer asked for his ID. When the teen asked “Why do I need to get it?” Ghi arrested him and charged him with breach of peace, court records show.
The teen spent 20 hours in jail. The disorderly conduct charge was later dropped. But the boy felt “great distress, fear, anxiety and embarrassment,” according to the suit.
An internal investigation into the incident found that Ghi violated the department’s search and seizure policy.
Ghi said he made the arrest because he was “very busy” that night and wanted to avoid responding to the scene multiple times. Charging the teen with a breach of peace was “a far stretch to say the least … (Ghi) Also didn’t use tact or patience … his tone is offensive,” according to the internal investigation.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2018, after Ghi began working at the Summerville Police Department.
It alleged Ghi falsely arrested the teen without probable cause or legal basis in violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be secured from unreasonable searches and seizures.
The case was settled for $40,000, and more than $41,000 in legal expenses were paid, according to records from the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund.
A fourth lawsuit alleging Ghi unnecessarily shocked a woman with a Taser and arrested her was also filed. But the suit came outside the statute of limitations and was dismissed, according to court records.
A pattern
Critics say these cases, taken in step with Ghi’s most recent arrest of a 13-year-old, show a pattern of him being quick to threaten young Black men with jail time and place them in handcuffs.
Donnimechia Singleton describes his negative experiences with Officer Dante Ghi at an April 6 demonstration demanding Ghi's termination. An April 1 video captured Ghi forcefully arresting a 13-year-old boy selling palmetto roses outside a Summerville Walmart.
North Charleston community activist Donnimechia Singleton grew up in North Charleston and encountered Ghi as a teen before founding the North Charleston S.C. Youth Resistance, an anti-violence nonprofit that mentors young people.
Singleton recalled friends warning each other when Ghi was patrolling. He was known to be confrontational, arresting people for jaywalking or loitering, Singleton said at a recent protest demanding that Ghi be fired.
“It’s the same guy who had me on the concrete, plenty of days, on my knees in 100 degree heat,” Singleton told The Post and Courier on April 9. “Searching us teenagers, ripping our pockets out, shaking us down. He came into the neighborhood one day and said, ‘You never get to go to jail when I come.’”
The Post and Courier has requested but not yet received Officer Ghi’s entire personnel file from Summerville. But The Post and Courier already had some of his work history in its possession, including his Summerville records from 2018 to 2021.
Officer Dante Ghi wrangled a goat during one shift at the Summerville Police Department.
Those records show Ghi received complaints about his use of force, unnecessarily arresting people and acting unprofessionally.
In one instance, Ghi responded to a home in April 2021 for a welfare check and was met with an argumentative family. An internal investigation determined he violated the department's general conduct policy by not maintaining an even demeanor, threatening arrest and presenting handcuffs without attempting to de-escalate the situation, records show.
Despite the complaints, he was nominated for employee of the quarter in 2019 and received praise in 2021 for “humanizing the badge” and helping “the people who are down on their luck feel special,” records show.
Bigger picture
Officers accused of policy violations who continue their careers by ping-ponging to different departments in the state has been a concern for decades.
Up until 2018, an officer accused of misconduct had to get hired at a new agency before requesting a hearing to affirm or dismiss the charge, according to South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy Director Jackie Swindler.
That meant an officer accused of a potentially career-ending violation had to continue working before the academy could determine if they were fit to stay in law enforcement or not. And only 11 actions are considered misconduct in South Carolina, a high standard defined by state law.
Departments had no responsibility to report any other policy violations, uses of excessive force or suspensions and terminations until 2018, Swindler said.
Now, anyone accused of misconduct must have a hearing in front of the academy's board and be exonerated of all counts before they can work again, Swindler said. If they are found guilty of misconduct, they cannot stay in law enforcement.
It’s not a catchall. Swindler admits that many actions that don’t fall under the definition of misconduct may be “bad” or not "cool or kosher.”
But different departments have different standards for what constitutes a policy violation and what actions they’re willing to tolerate.
Along with changing the rules surrounding misconduct, the academy in 2018 also added a new requirement that law enforcement agencies submit records every time an excessive force complaint is substantiated and every time a cop is suspended or terminated, Swindler said.
The goal is to give hiring agencies more information about potential new hires than they had in the past, he said.
“Is it perfect? No. Will agencies look at peoples’ work history and hire somebody who I wouldn’t hire? I’m sure, yes. That happens all the time,” Swindler said.
Ultimately, it’s up to the top cop at each department to decide who to hire and if someone’s actions need to be corrected or not, Swindler said.
That can cause a lot of variation in standards across departments.
A press conference was held in response to a 13-year-old boy who was forcefully arrested for selling palmetto roses outside of a Walmart in Summerville on Monday, April 1. Officer Dante Ghi, who arrested the boy, has a history of being written up for using excessive force, records show.
“A lot of it boils down to individual agencies doing their due diligence before they hire someone,” North Charleston Police Chief Greg Gomes said. “If we terminate an officer from North Charleston … each agency has their own threshold and their own tolerance on what they’re going to allow and not allow. I think we’re a lot more stringent.”
It’s common for working officers to end up on the wrong side of some complaints or even lawsuits, according to Swindler and Troy Riggs, a retired public safety leader with 30 years of experience across several states.
But hiring agencies need to dissect those complaints or lawsuits to make sure there isn’t a pattern of aggressiveness or unwarranted behavior, Riggs said.
Hiring an officer who has been fired from a department or left in the middle of a policy investigation could make new employers complicit in the violence toward someone in the future, Riggs believes.
But some departments are desperate to fill spots and will take a chance on an officer with previous run-ins, Gomes said. That’s why he wishes there could be more checks in place than there currently are.
“It’s a privilege to be a police officer in this state, and with it comes a huge responsibility,” Gomes said. “My belief is that if someone is unfit to police in North Charleston, they should be unfit to police” throughout South Carolina.
The Post and Courier was unable to reach Ghi prior to publication. However, he’s spoken publicly about policing before.
In 2005, The Post and Courier published a series of stories in a series called “Tarnished Badges” that explained how officers with potentially problematic pasts continued to find work by jumping from department to department in South Carolina. Ghi wrote a letter to then-Governor Mark Sanford, complaining about backlash he and other officers received as a result.
“Police officers are held to a higher standard,” Ghi wrote. “Every day that standard is raised for police while it is lowered for the populace. …(T)here are two sides to every story and somewhere in the middle lies the truth. We have not been afforded the common courtesy extended to even the most heinous of criminals.”
Jocelyn Grzeszczak contributed to reporting in this article.
