Officer botched traffic tickets for years, letting drivers off the hook, Ohio cops say

An Ohio officer resigned after an internal audit showed he had been mishandling traffic violations for more than four years, police said.

Eric Holmes, formerly an officer for the Lebanon Division of Police, is now under criminal investigation by authorities in Warren County, according to the chief of police. Lebanon is about 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

“An administrative investigation revealed (Holmes) had over the past four years conducted traffic stops where no citation was issued to the driver and later (Holmes) would complete a traffic citation form and submit this citation to the agency for internal accountability only,” Chief of Police Jeffrey Mitchell said in a news release.

The drivers whose tickets Holmes mishandled did not have to pay any fines, nor were they cited in court. Mitchell told WCPO the people who were improperly cited “have no liability with the court.”

The audit revealed 140 traffic citations issued by Holmes from 2018 to 2022 were missing from court records, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. This accounted for nearly a quarter of his citations during the period.

Asked during the investigation why he did not submit many of the tickets to the municipal court, Holmes said he “was rushing,” WLWT reported.

“I was doing things incorrectly because I was trying to move too quick, and there would be tickets. I’d start writing and I couldn’t read, I couldn’t read it,” Holmes said in a police interview, the TV station said. “I’m like, ‘This is embarrassing now.’ That’s the God’s honest truth.”

Police in Lebanon do not have a “ticket quota system,” city attorney Mark Yurick told WCPO.

Mitchell said the department has reviewed its policies to ensure traffic citations are properly documented in the future.

“The actions of this former employee does not reflect the values and character of this agency,” he said.

This story was originally published April 8, 2022 at 8:55 AM with the headline "Officer botched traffic tickets for years, letting drivers off the hook, Ohio cops say."