Police get wrong guy twice Second encounter less than a week after $600,000 settlement

SOUTH PORTLAND – A man who won a record settlement after being chased and beaten by Portland police officers said law enforcement authorities barged into his hotel room and forced him to the floor last week.

Officers were looking for the same man Vincent Dorazio had been mistaken for when he was beaten and pistol-whipped last February.

“It’s deja vu,” said Dorazio’s lawyer, Daniel Lilley. “I don’t know what’s going on here. I’d like these people to leave this kid alone.”

Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department deputies and U.S. marshals assisted South Portland police at the hotel. Police say they did not touch Dorazio and that they were looking for a man named Frank Fournier.

The Portland incident resulted in Dorazio, 40, receiving a $600,000 settlement from the city last week. Doctors said it took eight staples to close a wound on his head and that he suffered a permanent brain injury.

The latest incident was on Wednesday. Dorazio rented the room to get some rest and was in his pajamas when police burst in, Lilley said.

Dorazio told Lilley that officers came through the door without a warrant and without knocking. He said they pinned him to the floor, searched the room and asked him where to find Frank Fournier.

South Portland Police Chief Edward Googins said Lilley’s account of the incident was not accurate. “There was no physical contact with Mr. Dorazio, no use of force on Mr. Dorazio, and he was not detained for 15 minutes.”

Googins would not provide details of the interaction, and would not say whether there was a search warrant for the room or whether officers searched Dorazio’s belongings. No affidavit for a search warrant was filed with Portland District Court.

Capt. Royce Bartlett of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department said officers entered the room when Dorazio opened the door for a hotel employee.

“He didn’t know it was police officers,” he said. Bartlett said officers ordered Dorazio to get down, but there was no physical contact. Once one of the deputies recognized him, they told him he could get up off the floor.

“We had reliable information there was a felon in the room,” Bartlett said, explaining the decision to go in without a warrant.

On Thursday, Googins said his detectives were looking into the possibility they were given intentionally misleading information.

Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood said the tip about Fournier came into his department and was passed on to other agencies. He said the information about Fournier came from a “fairly good source.”

All the departments are seeking Fournier, 35, on a variety of warrants for violating probation, burglary and theft, assault and terrorizing, and eluding police officers on several occasions.

Just last week a man police say was Fournier led them on a chase from Gorham to Portland before bailing out of his car along with a passenger, and then stealing a pickup truck from a construction site.

“Every time we go after him or see him, it turns into a chase,” Chitwood said. “The fear is if he is cornered or captured, what is it going to be like?”