Patrick Knight (police officer)

Patrick Knight was a Cincinnati police officer convicted in 1999 of [...] battery and two counts of bribery. The [...] battery conviction was the result of four African-American women from Cincinnati testifying under oath that the officer had forced them to have [...] with him in the neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine to avoid arrest. Nikia Mapp, a local prostitute, was the first woman to come forward in the case. Mapp was later found dead in 2003 in the same neighborhood, where her corpse was found burning in a parking lot. When testifying Mapp told the judge that Knight had threatened her on past occasions, saying if she ever told anyone he would kill her and her family. Police say Mapp was a fugitive at the time of her death, suspected of slitting another woman's throat.

This was not the first time Knight was the subject of controversy in the city. On January 27, 1996, Knight was accused of using excessive force with a fourteen year-old in Price Hill. The complainant, one Michael Steele, stated the officer struck his face into the concrete ground numerous times and kneed him in the ribs. Michael Stewart, who was a witness, stated that the officer grabbed Steele by the throat and slammed him face-first into the concrete, then kneeing him. In his own initial statement, Knight said, "I started bouncing his head off the concrete." He later retracted his initial statement. Ultimately a police investigation found no wrong-doing on the part of Knight.