The deputy who released video of the county’s suspended Sheriff dropping the “f bomb” has previously been reprimanded for using the same language.
Pike County Deputy Eric Zirneskie, who was hired by the Sheriff’s office in 2016, was reprimanded the same year of his hiring for calling a citizen “a fucking dumbass” at the scene of an arrest, according to his personnel file.
“I met with [citizen’s name]….during our conversation, several accusations were made against Deputy Zirneskie,” wrote then-Major Bob Barbee. “[The citizen] claimed Deputy Zirneskie was rude, used foul language, and threatened him.” The citizen was the subject of a DUI traffic stop and was believed to have been drinking-while-driving and was pulled over by Zirneskie.
Barbee, now Chief Deputy, said that Zirneskie admitted to calling the citizen a name before arresting him.
“I asked him if he had threatened [private citizen] by stating he would smack him in the mouth,” the chief deputy wrote in his report. Zirneskie replied no. “I then asked him if he had called [private citizen] ‘a fucking dumb ass,’ to which [Zirneskie] replied, ‘yes sir’.”
Another deputy, Paul Henderson, was also present at the DUI traffic stop where Zirneskie used the foul term. Henderson backed up the allegations and said that, indeed, Zirneskie used the word.
Zirneskie was given a verbal “counseling” by Barbee and the incident was documented in his personnel file.
The Cleveland-area native, who hired by the Sheriff’s office to work the road, is the subject of an ongoing internal investigation where he was involved in the leaking of a private body camera footage of suspended Sheriff Charles Reader using similar language.
On October 19, Reader was served with a civil subpoena to give a deposition in a lawsuit. The lawsuit involves former Pike County Deputy Joel Jenkins, who once was a deputy in Fayette County and a reserve officer for Washington Court House Police Department. In the suit, the family of then-Pike County citizen Jason Brady is suing Jenkins and others for wrongful death after Jenkins shot and killed Brady, who was his neighbor back in 2017. Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk is also being sued in the federal case because it is alleged that Junk provided Jenkins with the handgun used to kill Brady.
When Reader was served with the subpoena last week by Zirneskie, the deputy was wearing a privately owned body camera. In the body camera video released on social media on the same Saturday as the civil service of the document, deputy Zerneskie appears to ask Reader how he is doing.
“I’d be better if you’d get the f— off my property,” Reader tells him on the video. “Understood,” the deputy responds.
Later in the day, the video surfaced online and went viral, locally. In response, Reader released a statement apologizing for his words.
“I am under a lot of pressure and stress. I have built my life on criminal justice and on a law enforcement badge. I feel very hurt and broken through these recent happenings. As you can imagine, the respect I once had for the badge is dwindling each day as I fight everyday to find hope. I regret my words,” the statement read in-part.
The Pike County Sheriff’s office does not have county issued body cameras. As a result of the video being filmed on a private device used by the deputy, and released on a weekend without administration approval, the Guardian requested numerous public records surrounding the incident to see what happened, including the video, itself, as well as policies and procedures surrounding the use of body camera and the deputy’s personnel file.
In response to this publication’s request, the Pike County Sheriff’s office said the Reader-Zirneskie incident was under investigation.
Editor’s note: The Guardian’s interim editor-in-chief, Derek Myers, was the Pike County Sheriff’s spokesperson until July 2019. As stated in our Ethics (SciotoValleyGuardian.com/Ethics), we will use obscenities, vulgarities, or slurs only in direct quotations and only if the quote is essential to the story.
