A police cadet in New England was fired and placed on a statewide blacklist after he was accused of groping a fellow trainee’s breasts during a handcuffing exercise, but the would-be cop now claims he was disoriented by pepper spray and thought he was patting down a man, according to court filings reviewed by The Independent.
In a federal lawsuit filed February 19 against the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, David Peters, 39, says trainers at the facility “knew that [pepper spray] exposure dramatically impairs vision, sensory-motor control, and judgment, yet they insisted that cadets immediately perform cross-gender handcuffing and ‘search’ tasks, including on a female in shorts and T-shirt, at a point in time when the likelihood of inadvertent or awkward contact was foreseeable and exceptionally high.”
Instead, Peters’s complaint argues the drill should have been structured “to minimize the risk that a split-second misjudgment by an impaired cadet would be mischaracterized as sexual misconduct and used to end that cadet’s career.”
“This case is about due process and fundamental fairness,” Peters’s attorney Walter Foster told The Independent.
Peters was “subjected to a training scenario” that stacked the deck against him from the beginning, according to Foster. And, he said, although no criminal charges were ever filed, the academy dismissed Peters from the program and later declared in official documents that his conduct “constituted assault.”
“Our lawsuit alleges that the process used to reach those conclusions was structurally biased and constitutionally defective,” Foster argued. “When the government publicly brands someone a criminal and strips them of their livelihood, it must provide neutral, fair, and conflict-free procedures. That did not happen here.”
Officials at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy did not respond on Monday to a request for comment.
In the past, the academy has been criticized for being too lenient on cadets accused of misconduct.
Exposure to pepper spray during training has been called vital, so that officers can understand first-hand the effects and, as one instructor in Washington state said, “learn not to fear” it.
“Every exposure sucks, but I truly believe every exposure was nothing more than a great training opportunity,” an Ohio cop said in a 2023 interview.
Peters, who lives in Penobscot County, began working as a part-time police and corrections officer in 2007, with stints in various departments over the next 16 years, his complaint states. In August 2024, it says he was offered the chance to become a full-time officer, and Peters began attending the 46th Basic Law Enforcement Training Program at MCJA’s Vassalboro campus.
Things were uneventful until the evening of October 29, 2024, when Peters and the rest of the class participated in an exercise called the Mechanics of Arrest, Restraint and Control, the complaint goes on.
“During this exercise, cadets were individually sprayed in the face with OC… and immediately tasked with completing several physically and cognitively demanding drills while suffering the intense burning, tearing, visual impairment, and respiratory distress that are inherent and well-known consequences of OC exposure,” the complaint states.
One segment of the exercise required cadets who had just been sprayed with “pepper spray” to handcuff and search a cadet acting as an “arrestee,” the complaint continues. The volunteer in this instance was a woman in shorts and a T-shirt, which, the complaint argues, “raised obvious privacy and dignity concerns, especially for cross-gender interactions.”
Cadets were reportedly instructed to tell subjects, “Spread your feet,” rather than “Spread your legs,” to avoid “suggestive language,” that they must “not touch bare skin” when conducting searches, and that when searching a woman’s chest area, to form their hand into a “knife edge” and move quickly down the center of the chest without “grabbing or cupping the breasts,” according to the complaint.
After being sprayed, Peters – while experiencing “severe burning and vision impairment” – went through the rest of the required steps before moving on to the handcuffing and search station, the complaint explains.
It says Peters approached, grabbed the training handcuffs, and instructed the volunteer to turn around, place her hands behind her back and “spread [her] legs.” The “verbal misstep” occurred under a “high-stress environment,” while disoriented by the spray, and admittedly, “could be perceived as suggestive when stripped of context,” the complaint contends.
Peters handcuffed the cadet and began the “search” portion of the drill, according to the complaint. The cadet would later claim that Peters “dragged his hands up [her] legs,” that he “grabbed [her] breasts and linger[ed],” and that he inappropriately touched her “groin and private area,” while an instructor “twice told him he was searching a female,” the complaint alleges.
Peters, on the other hand, insisted that, “in his haste and impaired state, he believed he was searching a male, that he followed his standard male-subject search sequence, and that any contact with [the cadet’s] breasts was inadvertent, brief, the overall search taking no longer than 6 seconds and was not sexually motivated.”
Immediately after the search, the female cadet vomited in a nearby bathroom, the complaint says. She initially dismissed the contact by Peters “incidental,” according to the complaint. However, it says, she changed her mind the next day and reported Peters to academy higher-ups, triggering a criminal investigation.
The complaint does not say if any other cadets were accused of inappropriately frisking the volunteer “arrestee.”
Peters was further accused of having made multiple “jokes of a sexual nature” in the weeks prior to the incident, such as telling one cadet who was eating a banana that it looked like she was “sucking d*** right now,” but was allegedly never disciplined for them. He was interviewed by the Major Crimes Unit, which reviewed footage from the handcuffing exercise in question, the complaint states.
Following a full investigation, the case was referred to the District Attorney’s Office, which declined to prosecute Peters, according to the complaint.
Still, the academy’s training coordinator recommended dismissal, and Peters was immediately terminated on grounds of sexual harassment and unprofessional conduct, the complaint says. A month later, the academy’s board concluded that his conduct during the training “constitute[d] the Class D crime of assault,” and in December voted to revoke his law enforcement and corrections certifications – permanently barring Peters from ever again working in Maine as a cop or prison guard.
Last week, a three-member panel conducted an adjudicatory hearing requested by Peters, and upheld the decision.
Among other things, Peters claims the makeup of the board, as well as dual-roles certain members performed, along with his purported inability to meaningfully respond to the charges, violated his constitutional rights.
He argues in his complaint that he has been branded, wrongfully, as a perpetrator of sexual assault, which continues to cause him “severe and enduring reputational harm in a close-knit professional community.”
Peters says he has also suffered “severe emotional distress” over the issue, including “humiliation, anxiety, depression, insomnia and other psychological harms, requiring ongoing care and adversely affecting his daily functioning and relationships.”
He is now seeking a declaratory judgment affirming that his rights were violated; an expungement of any findings labeling him a sexual harasser or criminal assailant; and reinstatement of his certifications or a new “constitutionally compliant” hearing; as well as compensatory damages for lost wages, future earnings, and emotional distress; punitive damages and attorneys’ fees and court costs.
“We look forward to presenting the full evidence in federal court,” Foster told The Independent.
The Maine Criminal Justice Academy, the academy’s board of trustees, and 10 academy officials named as defendants now have roughly 60 days to respond to Peters’s complaint.
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