An Ohio police officer has accused a sheriff’s office of wrongly taking her young child from her and then spreading “private” explicit images of her from her cell phone after she was slapped with a criminal charge that was later dropped, according to a bombshell lawsuit filed last week.
Mantua village cop Miranda Brothers, a single mother, lodged the lawsuit last Tuesday against the Portage County Sheriff’s Office a year after her life was turned upside down in what she claims was a stunning abuse of power.
The trouble for Brothers began on January 1, 2024, when sheriff investigators pulled her over and removed her then-five-year-old child from her car, accusing the mom of leaving the child alone with a registered sex offender, according to the lawsuit.
“You’re gonna take custody of my kid. “For what?” she said that day, according to bodycam footage obtained by WOIO.
The kid was placed in foster care and Brothers was charged with child endangerment. The complaint reportedly alleges Brothers allowed the sex offender to spend “extended periods of time alone” with her son.
But the lawsuit claims the allegations were unfounded, and the sheriff’s office had no evidence to charge her with a crime.
“Although she was charged with leaving the child alone with a registered sex offender, each of the officers that testified stated that they never saw any contact with the registered sex offender,” her lawyer Eric Fink told WOIO, which also posted the legal docs online.
The charge was reportedly dismissed over the summer. Brothers was initially suspended from work during the legal turmoil, but returned to duty after the case was dropped, the station reported.
“We are trying to find out what it is or what caused them to initiate this operation against her in the first place, and why they treated her so differently from any other parent in a similar situation,” Fink added.
Mantua is a village of about 1,000 people in Portage County.
As part of the investigation, the sheriff’s office confiscated her phone and while an unnamed detective combed over its contents, he found “private digital images” that were then shared within the department and “potentially further,” according to the legal action.
The suit calls the alleged conduct “so extreme and outrageous that it went beyond all possible bounds of decency and is intolerable in a civilized society.”
Fink said the photos were explicit when asked by the station.
“Law enforcement went through it, and they could not find any evidence of any wrongdoing on her cell phone or her child’s tablet,” Fink told the station.
“They did however find several pictures which they then passed around themselves that had nothing to do with the case.”
Brothers is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, including for malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The Post has sought comment from the sheriff’s office.
New York Post
