2 Sandusky County Deputies fired, third resigns | News

FREMONT, OH (WTOL) – The Sandusky County Sheriff's Office has terminated two deputies for "gross or serious misconduct" at the Sandusky County Jail.  A third deputy resigned Tuesday afternoon. 

According to the Sheriff's Office, Deputies Charles Pump and Franklin Kaiser were terminated and Deputy Joshua Smith resigned for a incident that took place at the county jail last month.  The three deputies have been on paid administrative leave since January 11th.

According to public records, the three deputies were on duty on January 10th when a female inmate was brought to the jail and placed on suicide watch.  The inmate flushed her gown down the toilet, and according to witness statements, was left naked for at least four hours. During that time, an investigation revealed the inmate performed sex acts on herself and the deputies involved either encouraged the behavior, made lewd comments, failed to stop the behavior or failed to report it.

Other jail employees reported the incident to administrators, prompting an internal investigation. Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer requested the Fremont Police Department conduct that internal investigation.  A pre-disciplinary hearing was held last week.  The report from the pre-disciplinary hearing was complete Tuesday. 

According to Sheriff's Office, the two deputies who were terminated violated policy and committed several "Group III" offenses, punishable by termination.

"When you have these serious of offenses, involving an inmate, and their job is to take care of and keep safe and protect inmates here at the Sheriff's Office, we're not going to tolerate that. And so our only means of discipline was to terminate," said Overmyer Tuesday. 

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• Sandusky Co. deputies complete hearing on inappropriate behavior
• Three Sandusky Co. corrections deputies being investigated

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