At left, Officer X’s Pittsburgh Police uniforms hang in her basement on June 30, 2022. At right, Officer X sits for a portrait as the day’s last light shines into her home. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Petitions under the Protection of Victims of Sexual Violence or Intimidation Act are rare in Allegheny County courts, and when a police officer stumbled upon it, she had to educate judicial personnel along her journey.
by Megan Harris and Rich Lord, PublicSource
Update (10/6/22): Aaron Fetty is no longer employed by the City of Pittsburgh, according to Department of Public Safety Deputy Public Information Officer Amanda Mueller, in an email to PublicSource and City Cast Pittsburgh. She declined to answer questions about the terms of his separation from the city. Nicole Nino, an attorney representing Fetty, declined comment. The Fraternal Order of Police declined comment.
Editor’s note: This story contains references to trauma and sexual violence.
Reported 7/25/22: Officer X’s Fitbit congratulated her on her workout.
She hadn’t exercised at all.
Her heart rate had reached 139 beats per minute in the middle of an afternoon mostly spent sitting — but also testifying, in a case against a fellow police officer, in a petition under the Protection of Victims of Sexual Violence or Intimidation Act.
“I remember lying on my back and feeling like my arms and legs were too heavy to move and looking up at light,” she told Allegheny County Senior Judge Kathleen R. Mulligan as Officer Aaron Fetty sat on the other side of the courtroom. “I remember Officer Fetty’s head looming over me and his mouth was moving. I don’t remember him saying anything,” except “you’re so hot … I remember being kissed.”
She’d tried not to look at Fetty as he provided his account.
“So she comes onto me, reaches around and tries to pull me in,” he told the judge. “I say, ‘No, no, no. I’m married.’ … She says okay. She literally rolls back over. … I go to leave. I walk out the front door of her house.”
That March 18 hearing came nearly nine months after an alcohol-soaked police party that ended with Officer X and Fetty — according to both of their accounts — in a Lawrenceville bar, in his car and then in her bedroom. During those nine months, their encounter was reviewed by the Allegheny County Police, and no charges were pursued. It was probed by the city’s Office of Municipal Investigations [OMI], but Fetty remained on the force.
Those results left Officer X — who asked not to be named in this story — wondering how she could continue to serve the city.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to [crime] scenes, how we’re supposed to work on the same force and I’m supposed to be assessing a threat and dealing with a threat from somebody harmful and to have to worry about [Fetty] and where he is,” she testified before Mulligan.
Officer X sought a civil protection order against Fetty, though not via the Abuse of Family code under which Protection from Abuse [PFA] orders are issued. That law applies only to family, household members or intimate partners – not colleagues.
Instead, Officer X sought court protection under a law that has been on the books for seven years, but is invoked much less frequently.
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