A man who cannot walk was arrested for “kicking down” a door and fleeing on foot.
Months later, the arresting officer is off the force.
But as reporter Andy Pierrotti and civil-rights attorney John Bryan both point out, not everyone responsible has been held to the same standard.
And the people who started the whole nightmare still haven’t faced charges at all.
A Home Invasion Story That Never Made Sense
Atlanta News First reporter Andy Pierrotti first brought Charles Read’s case to light back in April.
Pierrotti explains that College Park, Georgia, police obtained a warrant accusing Charles Read of breaking into his former girlfriend Katherine Jensen’s home on June 15, 2024, choking her, kicking in her door, and then fleeing on foot.
On paper, that sounds like a straightforward violent home invasion case.
But as Pierrotti reports, there was one huge problem.
Read has been paralyzed for 25 years and uses a wheelchair.
In his interview with Atlanta News First, Read puts it in plain language.
“She said I kicked in the door,” Read says. “I’m in a wheelchair and have been for 25 years.”
Despite that basic fact, Pierrotti notes that College Park police never called Read, never questioned him, and never tried to verify Jensen’s story before seeking an aggravated assault warrant.
Read says he was at a dinner party the night of the alleged attack and had no idea a warrant even existed until the federal government flagged it during a passport renewal.
That alone tells you how weak the original investigation really was.
Bodycam Video Shows Doubt – And Disbelief
When Read finally learned about the warrant, Pierrotti reports that he actually surrendered himself, contacting Officer Markenley (Mark) Belotte and agreeing to meet at the College Park police station in March 2025.
“I essentially surrendered myself because I was that innocent,” Read tells Pierrotti.
Bodycam footage, obtained by Atlanta News First, shows Belotte placing handcuffs on Read in the station lobby as he protests that he has no muscle control and could fall.
Moments later, Read falls out of his wheelchair onto the floor.
“They just watched me writhe on the ground,” Read says, describing officers standing over him instead of immediately helping.
Another officer’s comments, captured on that bodycam and highlighted by both Pierrotti and John Bryan, are even worse.
A supervising officer is heard saying, “It’s a ruse, man. It’s an obvious attempt not to go to jail.”
Yet another officer pushes back and says what everyone watching the video is thinking: “You may want to call the district attorney’s office, because if the door was kicked in, he didn’t kick it in.”
Bryan, on his YouTube channel The Civil Rights Lawyer, plays those clips and calls the situation outrageous.
He reminds viewers that Read has been in a wheelchair for more than two decades, and officers still insisted that he kicked down a door and fled on foot.
From a civil-rights perspective, Bryan frames it as exactly what the Constitution is supposed to prevent: arresting a man on a story that collapses the moment anyone applies common sense.
Red Flags Ignored Long Before The Arrest
In his follow-up investigation in October, Pierrotti digs into Officer Belotte’s background and finds that the problems did not start with Charles Read.
According to personnel records reviewed by Pierrotti, Belotte applied to the Atlanta Police Department in 2022 and was rejected.
Atlanta Police wrote that Belotte was “untruthful” about prior employment dates, deliberately omitted a termination, and even accused a training officer of telling him to lie.
Pierrotti reports that this information was shared with College Park Police before Belotte was hired anyway in July 2023.
Once on the job, records obtained by Atlanta News First show Belotte was disciplined at least eight times in two years.
Pierrotti lists the violations: falling asleep on an extra patrol, going AWOL while on duty, clocking more time than he actually worked, and accidentally firing a Taser inside the department.
None of those disciplinary actions, he notes, were tied to Read’s false arrest.
Former Dunwoody officer Austin Handle, now vice chair of the police-reform group the Lamp Lighter Project, reviewed the case for Atlanta News First.
“It’s mostly shocking because this officer didn’t look into it at all,” Handle tells Pierrotti.
Handle says all Belotte had to do was call around or actually meet with Read, and he likely would have learned that the accusation was physically impossible.
That’s basic police work, and Handle’s point is hard to argue with.
One Officer Fired – But His Boss Walks Away Clean
After Pierrotti’s original April story aired, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office moved fast.
He reports that the DA emailed College Park police the same day, dropping all charges and writing that Read “could not have been at the location on the date and time of the incident.”
Later, after months of public pressure and coverage, Pierrotti reveals that Officer Belotte resigned in lieu of termination in August.
College Park Police Chief Connie Rogers told Atlanta News First that he is no longer with the department, confirming that the false arrest played a role in that outcome.
From a public standpoint, that looks like accountability.
But attorney and YouTuber John Bryan points out that the story doesn’t end with the arresting officer.
In his update video, Bryan says Belotte has now been fired – “terminated, gone” – but the supervising lieutenant captured on camera mocking Read’s paralysis and declaring the incident “a ruse” has faced no discipline at all, as far as he can determine.
Bryan notes that the lieutenant dismissed concerns from other officers, insisted Read was faking, and refused to consider that Katherine Jensen might have made a false report.
Yet, Bryan says, that supervisor appears to still be employed and in good standing with the department.
This is where Bryan zooms out.
He tells viewers that this pattern is common: the lowest-ranking officer takes the hit, while the higher-ranking supervisor who shaped the culture and approved the decisions walks away untouched.
From a systems perspective, that’s a bigger problem than one bad cop.
The Accuser’s History – And The Missing Charges
Pierrotti’s original April investigation also raises serious questions about Katherine Jensen, the woman who accused Read of attacking her.
He reports that Jensen told College Park police that Read broke in, choked her, and fled on foot.
She gave officers his name, date of birth, a clothing description, and a general physical description.
But as Read’s attorney Andrew Fleischman points out to Atlanta News First, she never once mentioned that Read uses a wheelchair.
“That is probably the No. 1 thing you’d mention about somebody, especially if they’re running away on foot,” Fleischman says.
Pierrotti also found that Jensen had previously been arrested by Newnan Police in 2023 for theft, forgery, and filing a false police report.
That information existed in a statewide database but did not appear anywhere in the College Park incident report about Read.
Bodycam footage later captured Officer Belotte himself admitting, “Now it’s looking like she made a false report,” as Pierrotti notes.
Despite that, neither Pierrotti nor Bryan has found any evidence that Jensen was charged for making a false report in this case.
Pierrotti says Jensen wrote in an email to a detective that her “mental state and physical trauma” confused her and asked to “edit” the report and clear Read’s name.
Her mother told Atlanta News First that Jensen now acknowledges Read did not attack her.
Even with all that, both Pierrotti and Bryan report that Jensen has never been charged in connection with the false accusation against Read.
If we’re going to talk about accountability, that gap is hard to ignore.
Why This Case Should Worry Anyone Who Trusts “The System”
From my point of view, what makes the Charles Read case so disturbing is how easy it would have been to get it right.
As attorney Andrew Fleischman told Pierrotti, this was one of those rare cases where innocence was almost obvious on its face.
A few phone calls, a quick check of Read’s medical history, a look at his alibi, or even a genuine conversation before seeking a warrant could have prevented the whole thing.
Instead, a man who cannot walk was treated as if he’d kicked down a door and run away on foot.
He surrendered himself because he believed the truth would protect him—then got dragged out of his wheelchair and left on the floor while officers joked about a “ruse.”
Officer Belotte is now out of a job, as Pierrotti confirmed, and that’s something.
But as John Bryan warns, the deeper questions remain:
Why is the supervisor who reinforced this bad arrest still apparently untouched?
Why has the accuser with a history of false reporting not been charged this time?
And what does it say about hiring and oversight when a department brings on an officer with documented honesty issues and multiple disciplinary problems, then lets him handle serious felony cases with minimal supervision?
For Charles Read, an apology from the city still hasn’t come.
He told Pierrotti that an apology would at least show “room for growth and improvement.”
Right now, the only growth on display is from reporters like Andy Pierrotti and civil-rights lawyers like John Bryan forcing these details into the open.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that real accountability almost never happens on its own.
It happens when people pay attention, keep asking questions, and refuse to let a story quietly “fade through the weekend.”
Mark grew up in the heart of Texas, where tornadoes and extreme weather were a part of life. His early experiences sparked a fascination with emergency preparedness and homesteading. A father of three, Mark is dedicated to teaching families how to be self-sufficient, with a focus on food storage, DIY projects, and energy independence. His writing empowers everyday people to take small steps toward greater self-reliance without feeling overwhelmed.
