TOLEDO, Ohio — A couple of years ago, Metroparks Toledo officials were in the final stages of hiring a new ranger for their department when Brad Navarre, chief of rangers, called the candidate's current employer.
“They said, ‘you better come down to view his file.’ I said, ‘can’t you just email it to me?’ And they replied, ‘No, I think you’ll need to come in.’” Navarre said.
The file was so extensive that the candidate was quickly eliminated from consideration.
It’s stories like these that led Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost in November to make police records more accessible to departments and to the general public through the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy database.
Punch an officer’s name into the OPOTA portal and you can see an officer’s training, job history, and reason for leaving jobs. It can be the first red flag for potential employers.
As Yost told WTOL 11 earlier this month, his office has heard for years about bad officers jumping from department to department with little scrutiny.
"Somebody that is in one jurisdiction, maybe has a bad use of force or something else bad, rather than being fired, they resign and go work for somebody else," Yost said. "And the new jurisdiction has no idea that there was a problem with this guy.”
The accessibility of the portal has simplified the screening process for departments but has also made it easier to scrutinize records of police officers.
For the last several months, 11 Investigates has analyzed records going back to June 30, 2021, which was the first time that the state began assigning a reason for an officer’s departure from a job. Rather than a simple “resignation,” a record may now say, “resignation – under investigation” or “resignation – in lieu of termination.”
Our analysis found that during that time, 868 officers have been forced out of a job – either by resignation or termination. Of that total, 385 have been rehired, and 46 have two or more “forced separations.”
In some cases, departments have looked at an officer’s record and decided that his or her experience and accomplishments outweighed the offense that caused them to leave a job. But in other cases, we discovered systemic issues that contributed to the movement of officers with discipline issues.
Issue No. 1: Confusion with how to operate the OPOTA portal database.
Departments have expressed frustration that the promised changes from Yost had not yet taken place.
As Navarre told us, “so when we go through and look at the roster, it doesn’t have any explanation about why they separated.”
Actually, the portal does include that information, though it can be hard to find. It’s a two-step process. There is one tab where you can do an officer search. Once you pull up the officer’s record, you can see training and work history. If they have left a department, you can see the separation date. You then need to go under a separate “separation” tab, punch in the separation date, and a reason for that separation will be listed.
When we brought that issue to Yost, he said he would look into making training videos for departments. However, multiple chiefs told us that it would be simpler to make just one tab, not two.
Issue No. 2: Inaccurate information in the portal database.
Delta officials hired Robert Austin as the community's new police chief in August, not knowing that he was under investigation in Sylvania Township.
11 Investigates reviewed the form that the township filled out for the state, and the box for retirement in good standing is clearly marked. This is what appears on the portal's database, even though there were notes on the form that indicated that he resigned in lieu of discipline.
Delta administrator Andy Glenn has been happy with Austin’s performance, but he’s disappointed in the questions around his hiring.
“Why did they check retirement in good standing?" Glenn asked. "None of this is going to work if the agencies don’t use this form properly.”
Yost agreed with Glenn’s comment.
“You know, there's an old thing from, I think, software development back in the 80s or 90s: garbage in, garbage out,” Yost said. “On our website, I'll be candid, it's first of all incomplete. It's better than what we had, but it's incomplete because there are things that don't get reported accurately.”
Issue No. 3: Differences in the way communities handle disciplinary records.
In Delta, Austin was protected by a nondisclosure agreement that he signed when Sylvania Township allowed him to retire. An internal report recommended he be fired. The nondisclosure prevents him or officials with the township from discussing the investigation.
“There are some things we’d like to ask Chief Austin,” Glenn said. “The nondisclosure agreement prohibits him from talking to us at all about the investigation.”
But another element of the NDA was that the investigation was to be kept in a separate file than Austin’s personnel file. When Delta asked for his file, they were not given the report. Several departments have the same practice, maintaining a personnel file and a disciplinary file, and the latter will only be provided if specifically made in a request.
This is a different approach than Oregon takes when a potential employer asks about an officer.
“Whatever they ask for, we will provide, including any previous discipline that we have on file, any performance evaluations, the personnel file,” Oregon police Chief Brandon Begin said.
It is also different than how Metroparks Toledo handles reference checks.
“If someone from another agency wants to look into the background of one of my former officers, I refer them to our HR department and they will basically say that he worked here or she worked here at a certain point in time,” Navarre said.
The easiest solution would be for the attorney general’s office to have access to disciplinary records, but Yost confirmed that his department does not typically have those records.
Issue No. 4: Police officers are not licensed in Ohio.
Police officers receive training certificates from OPOTA. They are not licensed.
In response to questions about their hiring of officers who were forced out of other departments because of discipline issues, officials in Fayette and Swanton told us that the officer had no disqualifying issues in their background.
No license means there is no board to determine if a license should be revoked.
“I proposed to the legislature a couple of years ago that we should look at licensing for police officers. Lawyers have to be licensed, doctors, nurses, electricians, plumbers,” Yost said. “The nurse's aide who changes the bedpan has to be licensed. Why don't we license police officers?”
Issue No. 5: Recruitment is at nearly all-time lows.
In October, a U.S. Justice Department report said that the nation is experiencing a “historic crisis in recruiting and retaining police officers.”
Yost called recruiting issues in Ohio are a “crisis.”
It is a sentiment that we also heard from several department.
“When I was hired in 2000, over 900 people applied to be a ranger,” Navarre said. “There are not pages and pages of people applying now, and that's true across Lucas County. The people that I talk say like that, it's we're struggling and for the most part, you're stealing from departments almost. But you want good officers, and if you see somebody, you're going to go after him.”
Begin said his department currently has two openings that he hasn’t been able to fill.
“Looking back on the last 10 years of civil service lists, we were at about 55 nine years ago. Our most current civil service list has 11.”
Nine of those candidates were not able to pass the physical test.
All of these reasons contribute to 385 officers being given a second chance, and in some cases, third and fourth chances.
“I don’t doubt that departments are hiring people that they would rather not,” Yost said, “that 10 years, 20 years ago when they had thousands of people applying for jobs, they might not have accepted those folks.”
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