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Inset: Miranda Brothers (WOIO). Background: The restaurant where deputies claimed she left her child unattended with a sex offender (WOIO).
A 29-year-old police officer in Ohio is suing the local sheriff’s office claiming she was arrested and her child was placed in foster care after she was accused of leaving her then-5-year-old unsupervised with a registered sex offender despite there being no evidence supporting the allegations. The officer also claims that after seizing her cellphone, investigators with the sheriff’s office accessed private, explicit photos of her which they shared among throughout the office and “potentially further.”
Mantua Police Officer Miranda L. Brothers last week filed her complaint against the Portage County Sheriff’s Office in the county court of common pleas seeking punitive damages in excess of $150,000. Among the causes of action included in the suit are allegations of malicious prosecution, violations of her Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and 14th Amendment rights, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and tortious interference.
Brothers was initially arrested in January 2024 and charged with one count of endangering the welfare of a child but the case against her was dropped in July.
According to the complaint, at least two detectives on Dec. 7, 2023, were assigned to observe Brothers and her child in connection with the investigation into her parenting. The detectives were positioned outside of a restaurant in Mantua, which is about 30 miles southeast of Cleveland. Both detectives later testified that the child never had “any unsupervised contact with a registered sex offender,” per the complaint.
Prior to the Dec. 7, operation, a third detective allegedly “investigated” the allegations against Brother and testified under oath that they were “unfounded” and “not accurate.”
“Without evidence” of a crime or her child being in danger, deputies on Jan. 1, 2024, conducted a traffic stop on Brothers where they removed her child from her care and seized her phone and her child’s tablet, the suit claims. Criminal charges filed the following day alleged that Brothers allowed a sex offender “to spend extended periods of time alone” with her child. She was immediately suspended from the police department pending an investigation.
“The criminal complaint directly contradicts the sworn testimony of the members of the Portage County Sheriff’s Office who personally observed Juvenile A on December 7, 2023,” the complaint states.
Brothers claims that a forensic search of her phone and the child’s tablet turned up no evidence of a crime, which detectives testified to during a motion hearing in April.
“The testimony at the April 15, 2024 Motion Hearing verified that no detective had witnessed Juvenile A engage in unsupervised contact with a registered sex offender,” the complaint says. “Despite the testimony at the April 15, 2024 Motion Hearing, the State continued to pursue criminal charges against Plaintiff Brothers.”
Brothers further claims that an unknown sheriff’s detective sent around explicit photographs of herself she had on her phone which were entirely unrelated to the case.
“Despite knowing that the digital images were not relevant to any criminal charge, Detective John Doe shared and/or disseminated these digital images within the Portage County [Sheriff’s] Office and potentially further,” the lawsuit says. “The Portage County Sheriff’s Office’s conduct of observing, sharing and/or disseminating the private digital images of Plaintiff Brothers was so extreme and outrageous that it went beyond all possible bounds of decency and is intolerable in a civilized community.”
In an interview with Shaker Heights CBS affiliate WOIO, Brothers’ attorney, Eric Fink, said they were still trying to figure out why the sheriff’s office even opened an investigation into Brothers. He also provided more details about the circumstances leading to her arrest.
“She took her child to her babysitter who was at a restaurant in Mantua, she was scheduled to work in Mantua. Her babysitter is an off-duty police dispatcher, background checked,” Fink told the station. “While she was there, the sheriff’s department set up a couple of detectives who were photographing and looking to determine apparently whether she left her child with a registered sex offender instead of the babysitter police dispatcher.”
He also spoke about the private photos that were allegedly disseminated.
“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 said. “They did however find several pictures which they then passed around themselves that had nothing to do with the case.
“They were explicit in nature?” the reported asked.
“Yes,” Fink responded.
Brothers returned to full-time duty after the charges against her were dropped.
The Portage County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime.