Hempstead cops suspended over grenade pranks

Seven of Hempstead's 13 police officers have been suspended for setting off SWAT team grenades for fun back in 2004, KPRC reports. All we can say is: "Wow."

The first grenade prank happened when reserve officer Gene Williams, set off one of the explosives under a police car at a Hempstead truck stop. Police say he later set off another grenade at a backyard party, causing one of the guests to lose a foot. As if that wasn't enough, two full-time police officers and four other reserve officers tried to cover the incidents up by removing evidence and cleaning up the crime scenes, Montgomery County Fire Marshal Jimmy Williams said. He said 91 grenades were confiscated from a Cy-Creek fire station where most of the suspended officers were on a tactical medic team; the grenades were either unregistered or were registered to random law enforcement agencies as far away as Connecticut. "[The agencies] never had possession of those and had no knowledge of why they'd be registered to them," Williams said.

Gene Williams turned himself in to police Monday; reserrve officers Wren Nealy, Leeland Miller and Nick Robbins followed suit yesterday. Warrants are out for Cy-Creek EMS head Brad England and full-time Hempstead police officers Jason Martinez and David Schmidt. Hempstead police officials are trying to figure out how to deal with so many suspended officers and said the cases may take a while to make their way through the court system.