Cleveland police officer pleads guilty to soliciting prostitutes

CLEVELAND — A Cleveland police officer pleaded guilty Thursday in Municipal Court to soliciting prostitutes while on duty.

Sgt. Michael Rybarczyk, 58, pleaded guilty to five counts of the first-degree misdemeanor charge. Seven similar charges were dropped as part of a plea agreement.

Judge Joseph Zone set a sentencing hearing for Aug. 22 and requested a pre-sentencing investigation by the probation department.

Rybarczyk was sentenced on July 2 in a related case in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court after pleading guilty to two counts of misdemeanor attempted unauthorized use of a computer system.

He was sentenced in that case to two years on probation and ordered to surrender his Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy license, meaning he can never again be a police officer in the state.

Rybarczyk was a police officer for 29 years.

Between July 28 and Dec. 2, Rybarczyk admitted offering women 18 to 25 years old between $40 and $100 for sex acts.

He had made 11 attempts to hire a prostitute while on duty at the First District police station, investigators said at the time of his Jan. 31 arrest.

Rybarczyk also used the national Law Enforcement Automated Data System to look up information and state identification photos of two women, on Dec. 22 and Jan. 13. The charges say he looked up the women for personal reasons, which is a felony under Ohio law.

Rybarcyk sent messages not related to his work through an unidentified social media platform to 2,300 women while he was on duty between June 1 and Jan. 31, according to charges in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

The court documents also say that doing so while on duty cost Cleveland at least $1,000 because he wasn’t working while he was clocked in.