Thursday, May 17, 2007

Inappropriate touching

>An Ohio Sheriff's deputy pleads out for no jail time on a charge of sexual misconduct with a jail inmate.
A former Greene County Sheriff's Office lieutenant was ordered Wednesday to serve 100 hours of community service and pay a $500 fine for kissing and touching a female inmate's breast in the county jail.

During a hearing in Greene County Common Pleas Court, appointed Judge David A. Gowdown declined to sentence Francis A. "Tip" Link Jr., 44, of Jamestown to any jail time for sexual imposition and dereliction of duty, the misdemeanors agreed upon by Link, his lawyer and appointed Prosecutor Andrew Sievers.

However Gowdown warned Link he would wind up behind bars of the jail he supervised if he violated a set of rules governing his three years on probation.

Link, who also assisted the drug task force and provided training in special tactics and anti-terrorism to Greene County authorities, was indicted on sexual battery, a third-degree felony, like former Montgomery and Warren County Sheriff's Office employees charged in two other cases involving jail officials engaging in sexual conduct with inmates last year.

Link, who also trained officers in self-defense and weapons use at Sinclair and Clark community colleges and for the state training program, resigned in January after more than 12 years with the sheriff's office


Although the sexual touching sound kind of minor, the abuse of authority invovled in that kind of behavior on the part of a jail supervisor is very serious. The part I find really interesting isn't the minor sentence, that's probably pretty common for the first time offense of this kind of crime, but his resignation in January. He resigned. He wasn't fired.

I think that's probably significant. There's probably some pension money involved and I think allowing him to resign is a huge problem. Even if he doesn't do jail time, a cop that abuses authority in this way should never be allowed to draw any pension money. Not ever.

We give cops a lot of power and a lot of authority. When they abuse that power and authority we should have no mercy on them at all. None.

Labels: ,


Lifestyle and Political Blogs


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home