CLEVELAND, OH — In the courtrooms of Ohio, a foundational and basic assumption is being dismantled, piece by fraudulent piece. Every day, men and women wearing law enforcement uniforms and carrying weapons take the stand, swear to the tell the truth, and then testify against American citizens they’ve stopped, detained, arrested and filed criminal charges against. Judges sign their warrants. Prosecutors rely on their sworn affidavits. Citizens lose liberty and lives based only on their word.
Thousands of American and Ohio citizens have died because they’ve been shot, beaten or chased to death by a law enforcer. Thousands more are wrongly arrested and imprisoned.
This criminal justice “machine” rests on one fact no prosecutor, defense attorney or judge ever questions. That the person behind the badge was “verified” to have been trained, competitively examined and legally certified as a peace officer operating in full compliance with all of the state’s laws for law enforcers. That’s not the case.
There are 253 Ohio cities and 673 villages with mayors who appoint police officers. The state has 1308 townships whose boards of trustees are the police appointing authorities. There are another 110 parks, universities, etc. that make up “special districts” under Ohio law whose boards and directors are authorized to appoint their portion of the 28,000 to 32,000 police officers living off taxpayer contributions and creating budget draining civil rights liabilities within their borders and limited jurisdictions.
What the “appointing authorities” don’t know, because of OPOTA’s concealment, is the “Officer training requirements” duties imposed on each of them by section 109:2-18-02 of Ohio’s Administrative Code. “(A) Every appointing authority shall require each of its appointed peace officers and troopers to complete up to twenty-four hours of continuing professional training each calendar year.”
Keep reading if you’re an appointing authority who appoints police, and you’ll learn how Attorney General David Yost, the Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy (OPOTA) and your police chief have violated laws like the one you just read to intentionally obstruct you from reforming the unconstitutional policing out of your police departments. If you’re reading about OPOTA for the first time, it’s because OPOTA and your police chief have not shared all this information with you and are doing your job “their way” without your knowledge. The shocking truth is that the state is contributing to the civil rights claims that are being filed against your cities.
No one knows how police are trained, what certifications gives them legal authority to arrest, when and how their legal authority to arrest ends
Attorneys, prosecutors and judges know nothing about how Ohio peace officers are trained or how to verify if they’ve been trained and properly certified. There is absolutely no mandatory training for the Ohio mayors’ voters elected to protect their constitutional rights from unconstitutional policing. The only mandated training for mayors is on public records laws.
An investigation by EJB News reveals that the foundational facts behind every Ohio peace officer’s training and certification are, indeed, an absolute lie on a staggering scale. Through administrative dereliction and intentional concealment at the highest levels of Ohio Attorney General Yost’s office, thousands of Ohio police officers have operated in a “statutory void.” They are, under the most simplistic reading of section 109:2-18-06(A) of the Ohio Administrative Code, private citizens in state-issued costumes conducting arrests that amount to kidnapping and carrying firearms as felons.
“(A) Pursuant to division (B) of section 109.803 of the Revised Code, any peace officer or trooper who… fails to complete and report continuing professional training… shall cease carrying a firearm and shall cease performing the functions of a peace officer or trooper until such time as evidence of compliance is filed with and approved by the executive director.”
Division (B) of section 109.803 of the Revised Code reads that, “the attorney general shall adopt … rules setting forth minimum standards for continuing professional training for peace officers and troopers and governing the administration of continuing professional training programs for peace officers and troopers.“
This is not about paperwork. It is about a captured regulatory agency running a multi-year, statewide fraud instead of living under “rules governing the administration of continuing professional training programs for peace officers and troopers.” It is about a clear “Light Switch” law that a state bureaucracy decided to bypass with a manual override instead of ensuring the untrained peace officers under the management of their appointing authorities, “cease carrying a firearm and … performing the functions of a peace officer.
The consequences are the arithmetic that follows a tsunami of civil damages that is poised to shift the liability from depleted city treasuries like East Cleveland’s directly onto the State of Ohio’s $90 billion budget. Ohio has giant law firms, like the 300-attorney DiCillo Law Firm, whose leadership has the mental capacity to see this information as a roadmap to the deepest pockets in the state. Between 2025 and 2026, two cases have been ruled on and filed in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas and Eighth District Court of Appeals where OPOTA certification was and is a controlling issue.
For every Ohio mayor, law director, prosecutor, public defender and judge, the information I’m sharing is a foreclosure notice on their local justice system. And for the state, it is a notice of the bill coming due for a conspiracy perpetrated by an errant employee, Thomas Quinlan, who thought he could lead OPOTA employees to conceal their making arrests after their certifications expired by altering training records in a peace officer training database.
Police arrest and weapons carrying authority is like a light switch
To grasp the crisis, readers must first understand the “Light Switch Theory” about police authority I discussed in my February 2, 2026, feature on the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA) under the daily management of ex-Columbus police chief Quinlan. The concept is so simple it defies the confusion “caught” and statutorily illiterate bureaucrats feign to deflect the criticism their misconduct earns them.
A peace officer’s power in Ohio is not permanent as I explained in my first story. It is a conditional, annual privilege. Under Ohio Revised Code 109.803 and Ohio Administrative Code 109:2-18-06, every officer must complete and report mandatory training by December 31st of each year.
The only extension comes from an “appointing authority’s” written request to OPOTA’s executive director by December 15th. A request from a police chief or another peace officer is not a request from the “appointing authority.” There is no “or his or her designee” language in any section of R.C. 109 giving the appointing authority the power to assign their training, requesting and signing authority to a subordinate chief of police. R.C. 109.803(A)(2) reads in pertinent part as follows.
“The executive director of the academy… may extend the time for a peace officer or trooper to complete the training… upon a showing of good cause by the appointing authority for the peace officer or trooper in a writing filed with the executive director no later than the fifteenth day of December of the year for which the extension is requested.”
R.C. 737.06 has strictly limited the chief of police to stationing and transferring peace officers “under the rules of the director of public safety.” It means every police department with rules written by a chief of police has rules that are void.
R.C. 737.02, which is found on OPOTA’s form SF400, instructs that the director of public safety also signs the police department’s contracts. The form SF400, and all other forms connected to OPOTA, are essentially contracts that can only be signed by an appointing authority.
Police chiefs under Ohio law, and East Cleveland’s charter, have no appointment or contract signing authority. That authority is given to mayors in cities like East Cleveland whose peace officer applicants are certified after a test administered by their civil service commissions. In some villages or “home rule” cities the authority is given to the director of public safety. In many cities, mayors also serve as safety directors.
OPOTA laws allow no grace period, no administrative “dimmer switch,” and no discretion for a peace officer who has failed to train and report by December 31st. The language in R.C. 109.803 and section 109:2-18-06 of the Ohio Administrative Code is conclusive whether the peace officer is the chief of police or a patrol officer.
At 12:01 a.m. on January 1, if training isn’t taken and reported to OPOTA, the peace officer’s legal authority ends as abruptly as a lighted room becomes darkened when the switch is turned off. The language of the code is explicit, unrelenting and mandatory as peace officers “shall cease discharging the duties of a law enforcement officer and wearing a weapon” for failing to take continuous professional training courses by the December 31st deadline. The use of the word “shall” in every law gives the official or person it instructs no choice but to obey it as written.
What remains after 12:01 a.m. on January 1st is a civilian in uniform who is legally barred from arrests, searches, or carrying a firearm. Every subsequent official act is a crime that exposes them personally. They are now impersonating peace officers with no qualified immunity under any Ohio law.
I’ve shared the language of the current and unsuspended annual training law. Quinlan exceeds the authority of his public office if he adds or deletes any words or chooses not to obey the words approved by the General Assembly of Ohio. On February 1, 2024, in a public meeting in London, Ohio, state employees admitted they had been running a separate, secret and insubordinate training record authentication system in direct disobedience to the laws they were mandated to obey.
OPOTA admitted to concealing from every appointing authority that the police authority light switch was turned off for their peace officers
OPOTA Compliance Manager Brittany Brashears stood before the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission and delivered a report that should have triggered a statewide criminal investigation. Minutes from the meeting document her as telling training commissioners that 1,081 peace officers from 38 agencies had entered 2024 in “cease function” status. The switch was “off” for them.
For the entire month of January 2024, these individuals patrolled, made arrests, worked with prosecutors, testified in court before judges with not even the legal standing of security guards. They were private citizens impersonating competitively examined and trained peace officers.
Brashears’ report contained the true bombshell, as she described the state’s remedy. She explained that OPOTA staff used “manual overrides” to backdate records for 310 of these officers, retroactively “laundering” a month of illegal police work. The digital evidence of the crimes they committed while impersonating certified law enforcers was wiped clean by keystrokes.
As of January 31, 2024, 771 officers remained private citizen peace officer impersonators. Instead of informing the mayors, prosecutors, and judges whose cities and treasuries from which they were polluting and receiving stolen wages, OPOTA said nothing to the appointing authorities their silence deceived into giving them the wages they were stealing for a public job they were disqualified from holding.
Ohio’s continuing professional training laws had been subverted by duty-exceeding state employees using a self-created practice that operated as a “Manual Override” button. Brashears didn’t identify any “appointing authority” who had asked OPOTA by December 15th to extend the training deadlines of the 1081 non-compliant peace officers pursuant to R.C. 109.803(A)(2). She and Quinlan had created their own procedures instead of obeying the laws the General Assembly had enacted as written.
Instead of informing appointing authorities, Quinlan and Breshear laundered police cease function crimes out of the state’s computer systems
Without the authority of an enabling statute, Quinlan and Brashears were violating R.C. 2913.04 by using the state’s computers in a manner that was not authorized by law to cover for non-compliant cops whose appointing authorities had not asked them to do anything. The caption of the law explains what took place under Quinlan’s supervision. It’s a fifth-degree felony. “Unauthorized use of property – computer, cable, or telecommunication property.“
“No person, in any manner and by any means, including, but not limited to, computer hacking, shall knowingly gain access to, attempt to gain access to, or cause access to be gained to any computer, computer system, computer network, cable service, cable system, telecommunications device, telecommunications service, or information service without the consent of, or beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of, the owner of the computer, computer system, computer network, cable service, cable system, telecommunications device, telecommunications service, or information service or other person authorized to give consent.”
The culture of concealing police ‘cease function’ status across Ohio is not a glitch. It is a rot that took root in the mid-2000s during the scandal-plagued tenure of Attorney General Marc Dann. Oversight of police training was abandoned for his lust over a state worker he employed in 2006 during my term as East Cleveland’s mayor.
Career OPOTA bureaucrats, left without principled legal leadership, began treating certification as an internal “brotherhood” matter, not a public trust that required them to send notices to mayors, safety directors, prosecutors, judges, civil service commissions and government agency leaders who employed and interacted with peace officers the state knew were unauthorized to discharge law enforcement duties.
This vacuum bred a silent statewide conspiracy of silence that deprived thousands of Ohio mayors like me at the time of the civilian oversight we were mandated to apply to our management of peace officers the state was sanctioning and shielding without our knowledge. The law is clear: R.C. 737.02 establishes the Director of Public Safety as the executive head and contract signing authority for Ohio police departments.
I served as a mayor who OPOTA gave no notices about the status of cease function peace officers for all 4 years of my term in office
Depending upon the city’s home rule relationship with the state, cities like East Cleveland make mayors the sole police “appointing authority.” Yet, across Ohio, this statutory authority was obstructed by OPOTA officials. As East Cleveland’s former mayor, there is no notice to me between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2009 from Dann or his replacement, Attorney Richard Cordray, notifying me that Michael Cardilli, Paula Robinson, Scott Gardner and other law enforcement officers I supervised were in “cease function.”
Quinlan, OPOTA’s current Executive Director, has moved to institutionalize this bypass. A former Columbus police chief fired by Mayor Andrew Ginther for failing to reform the state’s largest police department, Quinlan was inexplicably placed in charge of reforming training statewide by Yost. In 2025, he issued memos that contradicted laws he was mandated to obey as he attempted to suspend them.
Quinlan rebranded the police chiefs he’d been unlawfully treating as “appointing authorities” as “Agency CEOs,” which is a fictional job title that is absent from the Ohio Revised Code. Through his “Training Option 3” described in an August 2025 memorandum he wrote, Quinlan granted his self-invented “Agency CEOs” power to create their own training, self-certify completion, and submit it to OPOTA with zero mayoral, safety director oversight. It is the ultimate closed-loop conspiracy, ensuring no mayor or official outside the police department ever sees or investigates the data proving their “police chief” is operating in a statutory void.
Mayors can exploit the state’s proximate cause for police damages
In the fall of 2025, inside the dilapidated city hall convicted ex-Mayor King created, a meeting took place that may become a turning point in the century-long war over police accountability.
As former East Cleveland Mayor Lateek R. Shabazz’s chief of staff, I participated in discussions with Director of Law Kenneth Myers and law firms seeking payment on their winning claims against the city. East Cleveland faced financial annihilation with an estimated $75 million to $100 million in outstanding and pending civil rights claims. The pattern was familiar. An uncertified and untrained peace officer or impersonator violates rights, and the city — the deepest pocket — pays. We just didn’t have the money but were able to settle three claims for pennies on what the plaintiff wanted.
During our conversations we discussed the theory that the city wasn’t the primary culprit. We began to see ourselves as a victim of a larger fraud as we uncovered evidence of the state’s dereliction in its interactions with the corrupt employees who were currently and formerly employed by the municipal corporation.
We thought to engineer the ultimate shift in liability from our treasury to the state’s. We decided the week after former Mayor Shabazz’s July 17, 2025 victory over Mayor Sandra Morgan’s usurpation of his office, we’d position the city as a whistleblower against the state’s misconduct instead of its punching bag. That’s when Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber asked OPOTA overseer and Ohio Attorney General Yost to contract with the city’s law firm, Ice Miller, to file a request to place its client in receivership. The conflicts in Ohio government run deep.
Both Faber and Yost are attorneys who know the state’s exposure is obvious, which makes their receivership push look like another act of concealment. There’s an argument to be made that they didn’t want East Cleveland detailing Yost’s incoherently derelict oversight of OPOTA’s directors.
The theory was correct but, at the time, we lacked a critical component. Proximate cause. We could argue the state was negligent in its interactions with the private citizens we discovered impersonating law enforcement officers on the city’s police department, but to hold it liable for the city’s damages, we needed to prove the state’s actions were the direct, foreseeable cause of the harm.
We needed to show the state didn’t just fail to act. We needed to show its derelict actions cost the city in ways that made it helpless. Back then, we had a theory. Now, I know the evidence is in OPOTA’s digital receipts.
OPOTA provided the receipts of its concealment of unlawful cop arrests
The “receipts” include the February 1, 2024, OPOTA meeting minutes. In them, Brittany Brashears made two admissions that transformed a political argument into a prosecutorial brief.
She stated that 1,081 officers were in “cease function” status. Then she admitted OPOTA used “manual overrides” to backdate records for 310 of them, with 771 still impersonating peace officers with no notice to mayors, prosecutors and judges.
This was not passive negligence. It was an affirmative and deliberate act of concealment. Federally, pursuant to 18 USC 4, Brashear, under Quinlan’s direction, was engaging in “misprision of felony” on a mass scale. Her admission established the legal bridge to the state’s proximate cause as a state employee.
The State’s Duty. Under R.C. 109.803, OPOTA has the exclusive duty to maintain certification integrity.
The State’s Knowledge. On February 1, 2024, the state knew of 1,081 specific individuals operating illegally.
The State’s Affirmative Breach. Instead of notifying the Appointing Authorities (the mayors of municipal corporations in home rule cities), the state concealed the violations and manually laundered records.
The Proximate Cause. By actively hiding each municipal corporation’s disqualified peace officers from the responsible appointing authority, the state rendered mayors powerless to mitigate risk. They couldn’t remove officers they didn’t know were uncertified. The state’s fraud directly caused the East Cleveland’s continued liability.
The Damages. The result was the constitutional violations of the rights of the city’s citizens. In East Cleveland its $75 million to $100 million in claims is part of the deficit that’s led the same derelict attorney general, Yost, to file a claim to place the city under a receiver.
The state wasn’t just asleep at the wheel. It was in the back seat, secretly cutting the brake lines and telling mayors the car was fine. The mayor gets sued for the crash caused by the failed brake lines, but the proximate cause was the lying state saboteurs. The underlying reality of Breshears’ testimony is she told investigators where to look for the paper trail.
An obvious digital paper trail
To “manually override” the state’s OPOTA system requires the creation of Database Audit Logs. Breshears’ testimony confirms that mayors and attorneys should request server logs, database transaction histories, or audit trail reports generated by the OPOTA training portal or its backend systems for the period January 1, 2020, to present, which document any entry, modification, or deletion of Continuing Professional Training (CPT) completion records. The digital or electronic is described as a “pre-existing electronic record of system activity pursuant to R.C. 149.011(G)(2). OPOTA can’t deny the record by claiming any “Confidential Law Enforcement Investigative Record” exemption.
There should also be Manual Entry Documentation for any CPT record manually entered or modified by OPOTA staff after the annual system lockout of January 1 for the years 2020-2026. The digital records should include the specific data field entries made that include the peace officer’s name, PID, course, completion date entered.
The OPOTA staff User ID associated should be associated with each entry that includes a timestamp of the entry and the source record (email, form SF400, other document) that provided the basis for the manual entry, attached as recorded by the OPOTA employee.
OPOTA’s evidence confirms the state’s proximate cause as tortfeasor
When we met with attorneys at East Cleveland city hall last year, we were looking for the ‘how. Thanks to Brashear’s published February 1, 2024, public statements, the specific keystrokes that turned a local police error into a state-sponsored conspiracy with the state as the primary tortfeasor.
If the state’s actions are the proximate cause, East Cleveland’s financial “death sentence” is put on hold. The state’s General Revenue Fund — not the city’s empty coffers — becomes the settlement source.
The fraud extends beyond state law into federal felony. Every police department is a gateway to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and Law Enforcement Automated Data Systems (LEADS) — the nation’s most sensitive criminal records history databases. Access is granted only to legally certified officers. The moment certification expires, so does the legal right to access the databases.
Every query by a private citizen impersonating a certified peace officer is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 1030 (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). When OPOTA staff manually override records, they are not correcting errors — they are potentially obstructing justice and acting as accessories to federal computer fraud, digitally erasing evidence of unauthorized access. Minimally, they are violating R.C. 2913.04, “Unauthorized use
This transforms the scandal from a state administrative failure into a potential federal conspiracy case. The manual override logs could become federal exhibits.
Vacating a generation of verdicts
The most terrifying prospect is the “Post-Conviction Avalanche.” How many American citizens serving time in Ohio’s prisons were convicted based on the testimony of private citizens impersonating peace officers? Every such conviction is now constitutionally suspect. The courts could face an existential logjam, forcing mass amnesty or a state review panel — a humiliating and correct admission of systemic failure.
While civil attorneys see dollar signs, criminal defenders see case-killing arguments. The core principle is that an arrest by an uncertified officer is void ab initio and a legal nullity. This is the part that scares the courts because strict constitutional enforcement could result in all of the following:
Suppression of All Evidence. The “fruit of the poisonous tree” applies absolutely. If the officer’s authority was dead, all evidence is suppressed.
Impeachment of peace officers as felons. Cross-examination becomes about the officer’s criminal liability: “You were not a peace officer that day. You were committing a felony by carrying that firearm. You’ve lied under oath about your authority.”
Brady/Giglio avalanche. Prosecutors must disclose an officer’s “cease function” status. The State v. Newberry ruling — that data was “publicly available” — collapses when the state was actively altering it.
The true cost is not just money, but the legitimacy of criminal justice in Ohio itself.
The State of Ohio faces a choice. Continue the concealment, defend Quinlan’s indefensible memos, and watch as cities are swallowed by lawsuits that will climb to the state’s doorstep. Or do something radical. Enforce the law. Revoke “Training Option 3.” Disclose every manual override. Notify every appointing authority of every “cease function” officer. Submit to the same transparency it demands of citizens.
-
The Receivership Crisis is Stayed: If the state’s actions are the proximate cause, East Cleveland’s financial “death sentence” is put on hold. The state’s General Revenue Fund—not the city’s empty coffers—becomes the settlement source.
-
It Becomes a Template: Every Ohio municipality facing “ghost officer” lawsuits now has a blueprint. The liability virus jumps from city limits to the state’s balance sheet.
The message to affluent suburbs is clear: if your officers were “cease function,” your city’s deep pockets aren’t the only target. The state’s are. The defense is no longer “the officer made a mistake.” It is “the state enabled a criminal impersonation.”
Vacating a generation of verdicts
While civil rights attorneys see dollar signs, criminal defenders see case-killing arguments. The core principle is that an arrest by an uncertified officer is void ab initio (void from the beginning) — a legal nullity.
-
Suppression of All Evidence: The “fruit of the poisonous tree” applies absolutely. If the officer’s authority was dead, all evidence is suppressed.
-
Impeachment as a Felon: Cross-examination becomes about the officer’s criminal liability: “You were not a peace officer that day. You were committing a felony by carrying that firearm. You’ve lied under oath about your authority.”
-
Brady/Giglio Avalanche: Prosecutors must disclose an officer’s “cease function” status. The State v. Newberry ruling—that data was “publicly available” — collapses when the state was actively altering it.
The most terrifying prospect is the “Post-Conviction Avalanche.” How many in Ohio’s prisons were convicted based on “ghost officer” testimony? Every such conviction is now constitutionally suspect. The courts could face an existential logjam, forcing mass amnesty or a state review panel—a humiliating admission of systemic failure.
The true cost is not just money, but the legitimacy of justice itself.
Foreclosing on corrupted state authority
Mayors, law directors, and judges can no longer be “uninformed.” To protect their communities and coffers, they must bypass “Agency CEOs,” demand forensic audits, and secure server logs. Their liability is now married to the state’s malfeasance.
The State of Ohio faces a choice. Continue the concealment, defend Quinlan’s indefensible memos, and watch as cities are swallowed by lawsuits that will climb to the state’s doorstep. Or do something radical: enforce the law. Revoke “Training Option 3.” Disclose every manual override. Notify every appointing authority of every “cease function” officer. Submit to the same transparency it demands of citizens.
