UPDATE@2:48p.m. Oct. 15
At the request of citizens at the meeting, village council members ended up voting to pay Heisler the same salary that Couch was paid, according to Councilman Kevin Martin.
FIRST REPORT Oct. 14
Village Police Chief Rick Couch, who had been fighting to keep his job, has been fired and the Harveysburg Village Council appointed an interim chief and swore him in almost immediately.
The interim chief is John Heisler, who retired in the spring prior to Couch's appointment.
Heisler is working without pay for now and the council is resuming its search for a new chief. The vote was 3-2 to terminate Couch.
Couch, shortly after the vote, walked to the council table and tossed his badge on the table and left without comment. A short time later, Council Member Jim Nelson stood to say he was walking out of the meeting and said he had had enough for the night.
Except for Council Member Faith Sorice, the five other council members and Mayor Dick Verga were at the meeting. The meeting was Verga's first since Friday, when he was given a suspended sentence of 10 days in jail and fined $500 after a Warren County jury exonerated him on a criminal charge involving sexual touching, but convicted him on a charge accusing him of violating a temporary protection order.
There were 40 or more village residents at the meeting, and many of them applauded Couch's firing as well as the appointment of Heisler.
Couch had been under scrutiny last month, less than one month after he was appointed chief, stemming from his involvement in an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations case. The Village Council voted 3-2 in August to appoint Couch, 51, as chief.
On Sept. 17, four council members voted unofficially to suspend Couch with pay for 15 days. On Feb. 28, Couch surrendered his peace officer certification after the Ohio BCI began investigating allegations of an illegal use of the state's law enforcement agencies data system, according to the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
He surrendered his certification as part of an agreement with the Montgomery County Prosecutor's Office. That agreement included his being placed on diversion in lieu of a fifth-degree felony charge, unauthorized use of the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway.
In a letter to the mayor, attorney Lucas Wilder wrote that Couch, his client, "mistakenly used his officer access to LEADS and OHLEG to assist a landlord in her attempt to combat criminal activity which was occurring at her complex." Wilder called the incident a mistake that was blown out of proportion.
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