The dashcam was mounted just below the police cruiser’s roof captured a police officer threatening his daughter’s boyfriend on fake charges.
On April, 18 a Lorain office named John Kovach Jr. pulled over his daughter’s boyfriend, Makai Coleman, without any reason, and tells him he is ‘going to jail.’ Meanwhile, his daughter, Katlyn Kovach, 18, is in the back seat of Coleman’s car.
When Coleman asks Kovach why he is going to jail, he responds: Have a seat in my car. We’ll make sh** up as we go,’ with Kovach’s dashcam is picking up the full exchange.
The officer starts to speak with Gloria Morales, who has come out of her nearby home because two of her children are also in Coleman’s car.
The officer tells Morales that his daughter’s computer is in her house, and he wants to search her home.
Morales agrees but then officer threatens her, saying her he is going to give her daughter who was also in Coleman’s car, a $300 ticket for not wearing a seatbelt.
The mother tells him to go and get a warrant if he wants to come to check her house.
He releases his daughter’s boyfriend after three months from his cruiser, and then push his own daughter into the backseat of the cop car.
Katlyn begins screaming at him ‘’Why! Why are you f***ing pushing me! Why!’’
She starts crying and says: ‘’You can’t arrest me for no reason,’ then her boyfriend confronts her dad, saying ‘Why are you putting her in the car, she did nothing.’’
The officer says that his daughter was suicidal last Friday.
She says: ‘’I was not’’
Coleman says: ‘’I’m not harbouring her, she’s 18, she can do whatever she wants.’’
Kovach says to Coleman: ‘’She is going to the hospital because she said she was going to kill herself Friday.’’
Her boyfriend asks: ‘’Do you have any proof of that? Any text message?’’
Then officer drives off with his daughter objecting to him that she never said she was suicidal.
According to an internal investigation on May 11 from the Lorain Police Department, Katlyn’s father said he believed his daughter was going to kill herself because his ex-wife alerted him she and Coleman were engaged in sexual conduct in her home.
Later, when he talked to his daughter on the phone and she told her father ‘’If I can’t be with him, I don’t want to be here anymore,’’ which he took to be a suicidal threat.
The investigator’s reports also claim that Coleman, and his mother, had told investigators that the officer had called him, threatening to take out warrants against him and that he would go to his Army recruiter to stop Coleman’s enlistment.
Amid April 18, Kovach ignored a call from dispatch about a road rage incident. He used police sources to track his daughter’s computer through her IP address.
The officer told the investigators that he didn’t believe Coleman was a ‘good person’ as he was arrested for marijuana possession, and that his daughter was staying with Coleman against her parents’ wishes.
An interoffice memo said: ‘’’Since the chief of police can only discipline personnel by suspension to a level of three days, the board feels strongly that the matter should be moved to the level of Safety Service Director for disciplinary action.’’
‘’This is due to the very serious nature of the violations, which rise to the level of gross misconduct, place the Police Department in a position of liability, and could result in discipline up to and including termination.’’
Kovach was fired on May 11, he is appealing with assistance from the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 3.