Background: News footage of Tuscaloosa Police Captain Kip Hart leaving jail (WBRC). Inset: Kermit Thomas “Kip” Hart III (Tuscaloosa County Sheriff”s Office).
An Alabama police captain is on administrative leave after he spent 24 hours in jail and is charged with strangling his girlfriend.
Kermit Thomas “Kip” Hart III, 57, serves as a captain in the Criminal Investigations Division of the Tuscaloosa Police Department, but he was the one behind bars on a domestic violence charge. According to court documents obtained by local news outlet AL.com, police responded to an unnamed woman’s home after midnight on Sunday when she said that Hart allegedly strangled her. The woman, who reportedly fled to a neighbor’s house wearing just a shirt and underwear, told police that she and Hart had been in a relationship since 2019.
According to police, the woman believed Hart was texting another woman and, while he was sleeping, she went through his phone.
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The woman told police that Hart had previously been unfaithful to her, but they had moved past it until approximately three weeks prior. Police said the woman told them she caught Hart “deleting messages from his phone.” She said she also saw him texting another woman using a Google texting app.
Police said that when the woman reportedly went through Hart’s phone, he woke up and allegedly physically assaulted her by putting his hands around her neck. She told police that Hart allegedly threw her to the floor. When she got back up, he allegedly tried to choke her by putting her in a headlock.
The woman told police that she struggled to scream for help, but when she tried, Hart allegedly put his hands over her mouth and told her to “Shut the f— up.”
According to police, they saw red marks on the woman’s neck and “dried blood underneath her right nostril, possibly from Hart covering her mouth and nose.”
Police caught up with Hart around 3 a.m. and took him into custody. During his interview, Hart told police that he woke up to the woman hitting him on the head and accusing him of talking to another woman. Police wrote that they saw “redness and swelling” on the left sides of his neck and face.
Hart denied to police that he strangled the women, but admitted to “wrapp[ing] her up” and covering her mouth with his hands when she screamed.
Hart was arrested and charged with domestic violence strangulation. After spending 24 hours on a domestic violence hold at the Tuscaloosa County Jail, he posted $5,000 bond and was released early Monday morning. He was placed on administrative leave by the Tuscaloosa Police Department.
