CANFIELD — Lt. Eric E. Brown, former commander of the Canfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, was reassigned to other duties last fall, and he retired Jan. 7 after an investigation into allegations brought against him by several troopers at the post led the patrol to recommend Brown for termination.

A 147-page document the highway patrol provided to The Vindicator includes the contents of interviews conducted with six troopers in November and the responses Brown gave to allegations that his behavior was sometimes unprofessional and possibly abusive toward troopers.

Among the allegations were that Brown, who was promoted to Canfield Post commander Jan. 1, 2023, had made sexual gestures and remarks over the years about women, including the girlfriends of troopers working for him, behaved inappropriately toward a passed out female in her vehicle and “smacked” troopers on the back of their heads or with the back of his hand in their groin area.

When Brown was asked about the allegations, he responded that he “likes to have fun,” “finds humor in many things and explained how difficult the job is in law enforcement” and “likes to joke with people and believes it puts people at ease.”

He said he would “never do anything that would be considered harassment, and if he knew somebody did not like something he did, then he would … stop doing it.”

The investigation was carried out by Staff Lt. Ricardo Alfonso of the highway patrol’s Administrative Investigative Unit, who interviewed employees mentioned in an Oct. 8, 2024, email from Kari Root, president of the Ohio State Troopers Association regarding complaints about Brown. Also part of the investigation was Dr. Amy Banta, human capital management senior analyst, the document states.

Some of the complaints came from a trooper who said that while Brown was a sergeant at the post, about six years earlier, a woman was passed out in a vehicle and not wearing underwear.

Brown “would put his flashlight on her private parts and have a grin on his face,” the trooper told the investigator, according to the documents. Brown would frequently also make remarks or gestures regarding attractive women, but the most recent time the trooper could recall was “over two years ago” before Brown became post commander, the trooper said.

That trooper said Brown made sexual remarks a “handful of times” over about seven years about the trooper’s girlfriend, the most recent time being in 2023. The trooper said he never “discussed” his dislike for the remarks with Brown.

The trooper said Brown “smacked” the trooper in the head, the most recent time being about three weeks earlier. The trooper was on the phone speaking to individuals involved in a crash when he “got smacked in the back of the head by Brown, which caused his head to go forward. He turned to look at him, and Brown laughed, then walked out,” the trooper said, according to the document.

The trooper said the head-smacking happened 15 to 20 times. He said he had “no idea” why Brown smacked him or others that way. Brown never said he was joking, apologized or asked the trooper if he was offended by the smacking, the trooper said. The trooper never “confronted Brown” regarding the smacking, but he “felt his expression should have shown Brown that it was not OK.” The trooper said he was angry enough that he could barely stop himself from “doing anything back to Brown.” The trooper said he never observed any redness or bruising from being smacked.

The trooper said Brown also “smacked him in the groin” with the back of his hand one time while they were passing in a hallway. It was “hard enough that it actually kind of hurt,” the trooper said.

The smack took place around October 2024, he said.

Brown also pulled the trooper’s shorts and boxers down while the trooper was standing on a scale being weighed about six years earlier, the trooper said. The trooper “quickly grabbed his shorts so they did not go all the way to his feet,” the document states. Another trooper was in the room at the time also, the trooper said. “That was the only time it occurred,” the trooper said.

Brown became a lieutenant and commander of the Canfield post in early 2023 after more than 25 years of working at the post in various roles. Staff Lt. Nathan Dennis with the highway patrol Public Affairs Unit in Columbus stated in an email that the highway patrol “recommended” termination of Brown’s employment “as a result of the investigation, however (Brown) retired before he was served his discipline.”

In an interview Nov. 15, 2024, Brown said he did not recall making remarks to the trooper who complained of Brown making sexual remarks about the trooper’s girlfriend and the trooper taking offense.

As to the smacking on the head, Brown characterized it as a “tap” on the head with a comment like “get back to work.” Brown denied that any smack to the head was ever hard enough to “jar their head forward.”

When asked about the smacks to the groin, Brown said the trooper who complained about it had done it to Brown also. Brown “made the motion of covering his groin area and explained that he would walk by and act like he was going to do it. He said it happened so much between them all that it became almost a habit.” Brown said he did not recall pulling the pants down of the trooper during a weigh-in.

When asked if he could have stopped everyone at the post from using a derogatory nickname for one of the troopers, Brown said the investigator was “probably right” and that as the post commander, Brown could have. Brown “said (the nickname) went back to when Brown was a sergeant, and it was just (the trooper’s) nickname.”

In a Dec. 30 followup interview, Brown was asked about the allegation that Brown “put the light from his flashlight on (a passed out female’s) private parts and was grinning,” and Brown said he “honestly did not recall” that. When asked if he thought such an action was inappropriate, Brown said “he did not know if that was inappropriate.”

In the Nov. 15, 2024, interview, Brown was asked if he remembered making a remark to a trooper about the body of a woman at a gas station, and Brown agreed he made the remark.

But Brown said it was made because that trooper had just been in an accident in his cruiser and was “distraught over the crash and thought he would get fired over it. To break the ice … (Brown) made a comment about an attractive female as he was pumping the gas,” Brown said.

Brown denied making several other sexually oriented remarks that were reported. When asked another way — “if those comments sounded like something he would say” — Brown said “It could be, and it could not be. I don’t know without being there.”

Brown told the investigator, “If I am guilty of anything, it is letting (down) my guard and becoming one of them.”

When Brown was asked if he routinely makes sexually oriented jokes, he said no and knows that as a lieutenant he “has to hold himself to a higher standard.” He said he would not “come into a room and make inappropriate comments to people he does not know.” Brown said there is a lot of “locker room talk, especially in law enforcement,” the document states. Brown said he found that such conversations were “everywhere” when he was transferred to the highway patrol Warren District Headquarters in Southington after the allegations surfaced.

Brown told the investigator that the investigator would need to talk to more than just the six people to get “the full view of him.” Brown read written remarks from a 2023 “audit” that were favorable to him and the rest of the supervision team at the post. One of them stated that employees felt that “supervision is available to speak to if there is a problem at the post.” An April 2024 “audit” stated that “morale increased from last year,” Brown said.

Brown also read some emails to “show the opposite of what was being reported” about him. The emails showed Brown “thanking and complementing some” troopers, the report states. Brown said he held one supervisory trooper “accountable,” and “sometimes they do not like that.” He suggested that that trooper “got the (troopers) on board” to “recall things from years back.”

He admitted that he should have “squashed” remarks made about a specific trooper, who was called a derogatory nickname that the trooper did not know about for a long time because it was not said to the trooper directly.

OTHER SUPERVISORS

Separate documents were provided to The Vindicator regarding disciplinary action taken against two other Highway Patrol supervisors, Capt. Jeffrey S. Greene and Lt. Brian M. Vail.

A Feb. 11, 2025, letter to Greene informed him that he was being demoted from captain to a patrol staff lieutenant and was being transferred from the Warren District Headquarters in Southington to the Cleveland District Headquarters for violations of Highway Patrol rules and regulations, specifically for “conduct unbecoming of an officer and military courtesy and respect for rank.” The issues arose in relation to the investigation into Brown.

Specifically, it was found that Greene engaged in on-duty conduct “which would bring discredit to the division. You were also verbally abusive towards your subordinates,” the document states.

Vail, who is assigned to the Warren District Headquarters in Southington, received a written reprimand for “conduct unbecoming of an officer.” That also arose from the Brown investigation.

Mahoning County saw a dramatic decline in the number of traffic fatalities in 2023, Brown’s first year as commander. The number of county fatalities was about 10 in 2023, a steep drop from about 34 in 2022, according to the state patrol’s OSTATS website and Brown.

Brown said in January 2024 some of the factors responsible for the drop might have been a large decline in fatalities in Youngstown that year, the new texting and driving law that took effect in April 2023, “luck, and the enforcement blitzes we ran.”

erunyan@vindy.com