For some time in 2012, local
police looked for two suspects in a South Carolina armed robbery.
When they found them in the
home of a Cincinnati police supervisor, they – and then-Cincinnati Police Sgt.
Jeff Brunswick – were arrested.
Brunswick, 57, paid for that
Tuesday, well after he left the police force for the second time. He retired –
sooner than he planned because of the crimes, his attorney admitted Tuesday –
after the 2013 indictment and before he pleaded guilty in January to promoting
prostitution and two counts of unauthorized use of the police crime computer.
He was sentenced Tuesday by
Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge John "Skip" West to three
years of probation.
Brunswick previously admitted
he used police computers to see if the two men had warrants out for their
arrest. When he saw that they did, he tipped them off and allowed them to stay
at his house for a few nights. The men were Brunswick's girlfriend's brother
and the brother's friend.
Then, while he was out on bond
on that case, Brunswick had sex with a prostitute and paid for a hotel room for
her to service others.
"I've embarrassed my
family. I embarrassed myself. I embarrassed the city of Cincinnati,"
Brunswick said.
Those embarrassments were the
latest of several for Brunswick, whose base pay as a CPD sergeant was $74,000
per year when he was arrested.
Brunswick left the Cincinnati
police force the first time after was fired in 1990, when his supervisors
accused him of operating a vehicle in a reckless manner and lying about it. He
was also accused of firing bottle rockets in a Northern Kentucky parking lot
while intoxicated. After he was fired, he sued and got his job back.
Brunswick also pleaded guilty
to a 2011 charge for punching fellow Officer Jeff Ruberg even as Brunswick
tried to apologize for an earlier dispute.
John Geer
