Circleville cop was investigated for domestic violence
Eberhard case raises questions about police hiring practices
Fueled by alcohol and rage, Erick E. Eberhard stormed down into the basement of his Pickaway Township home where the children had been playing to confront his 9-year-old son.
Moments earlier, his girlfriend’s daughter had come to Eberhard to say that the boy had grabbed her arm.
According to Pickaway County Sheriff’s office records, the boy would tell his mother the day after the Jan. 16 incident that the girl had been hitting him, and he had grabbed her arm because she wouldn’t stop.
But Eberhard, then a K9 police officer in the city of Circleville, is accused in sheriff ’s records of not being interested in any explanation, instead throwing his
son twice across the basement room. He then carried the boy upstairs, according to records, where Eberhard slammed him down on top of a glass cup on the counter hard enough to shatter the glass and visibly injure the boy.
Four months later, sheriff's records indicate that Eberhard's alcohol-induced temper once again flared when he was accused of slamming his 27-yearold girlfriend on the ground so hard during a domestic dispute on May 11 that she broke her wrist while attempting to brace her fall.
The two incidents became the subject of a criminal investigation by the sheriff's office in late August. They and other incidents in Eberhard's checkered personal life raise questions about hiring practices for police officers in some communities.
Circleville police, who had been conducting their own internal investigation of Eberhard until they learned of the sheriff's probe, took his gun and badge on Sept. 3 and placed him on administrative leave from the police department.
Lt. Johnathan R. Strawser, who led the sheriff's investigation, completed his report on Oct 12. and turned over the findings to the county prosecutor's office for review. The Ohio Attorney General's office agreed on Oct. 22 to a request from Pickaway County Prosecutor Judy C. Wolford to assign a special prosecutor to handle the case.
Two days later, Eberhard was found dead from a gunshot wound. Law enforcement authorities say the death was a suicide, though a final ruling from the coroner's office is pending.
Hundreds of public records obtained and reviewed by The Dispatch under the Ohio Open Records Act paint a picture of Eberhard as a man with a penchant for abusive behavior who had struggled with alcoholism, anger issues and suicidal thoughts for years even before he was hired in March 2020 to the Circleville Police Department.
Despite Eberhard's troubled history, he maintained a career in law enforcement for two decades — even after an arrest in 2016 during a domestic dispute with his father in which he eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge. Eberhard resigned from his post as a deputy with the Pickaway County Sheriff 's office days after the arrest, but he would go on to work as an officer for two other police agencies and hospital security before he was hired in Circleville.
Most states have laws regarding the decertification of law enforcement officers to prevent problem cops from returning to the profession. And while standards vary from one state to the next, a dismissal alone does not always meet a state's threshold for decertification.
In Ohio, law enforcement officers can lose their state certification only in the event of a felony conviction.
The occurrence of controversial officers who leave one agency only to be hired elsewhere is so common that academia has a term for it: “the wandering officer.”
“It's not intuitive that this would go on, but it's fairly common,” said Roger Goldman, an emeritus professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, who is an expert on police licensing laws. “Why is it the cops who do this can stay on the job?”
Eberhard's career in law enforcement began on Dec. 26, 2000, when he was hired as a corrections officer with the Pickaway County Sheriff 's office, according to personnel files. He worked his way up to the rank of corporal in charge of the K9 division, but resigned May 24, 2016 — days after he was arrested and charged in the domestic dispute with his father, himself a retired Circleville police officer.
During that incident, Eberhard was accused of assaulting a responding deputy, prompting another deputy to deploy a Taser on him, according to sheriff 's office records.
Eberhard admitted that he had been drinking that night in a letter dated Jan. 30, 2020, disclosing the incident to the Circleville Police Department when they were considering hiring him. In a disclosure email, Eberhard called the incident with his father on May 17, 2016, “totally out of character and against my morals.”
Eberhard said in the email that he was not given an ultimatum to either resign or be terminated from his position at the sheriff 's office, but that he did so on his own accord. However, in a recounting of the incident contained in a psychological evaluation Eberhard underwent in February 2020 as part of the hiring process to become a Circleville officer, it states that the resignation came “under pressure” from the sheriff's office following Eberhard's arrest.
Eberhard was charged with two counts of felony assault on a peace officer and misdemeanor charges of domestic violence, assault and resisting arrest. But he eventually pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor assault charge and was placed on probation, which ended after seven months, according to documents in his personnel file. The charge was later expunged from his record.
Pickaway County Sheriff Matthew Hafey, who was not elected to the position until November 2020, did not return a phone message from The Dispatch seeking comment about Eberhard and his office referred all questions about Eberhard to the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Steve Irwin, a spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, said that office has since closed its case because of Eberhard's death.
Following his resignation from the sheriff 's office, Eberhard worked as a reserve police officer with the New Holland Police Department between January 2017 and July 2018, according to his personnel file with the city of Circleville.
Before he was hired March 16, 2020, as a K9 officer in Circleville, Eberhard was employed simultaneously at both the Harrisburg Police Department as a part-time auxiliary officer and at the Mount Carmel Health System as an armed security officer, documents show.
Circleville Public Safety Director Tony Chamberlain confirmed that the city was aware of Eberhard's previous arrest before it made the decision to hire him.
“We were aware of Officer Eberhard's history,” Chamberlain said in an email to
The Dispatch.
“After all aspects of the background and hiring process was complete, he was recommended for hire,” Chamberlain said. “He also fully disclosed the incident to the background investigator who deeply investigated the incident.”
When he was going through the hiring process to become an officer in Circleville, Eberhard was interviewed on Feb. 13, 2020, by Chief G. Shawn Baer and two other people, who all gave him above-average marks, records show.
Eberhard then underwent a polygraph test on Feb. 18, 2020, in Columbus, followed eight days later by a psychological evaluation, according to Eberhard's personnel file with Circleville.
The results of both the polygraph test and the psychological evaluation did not raise alarms with the tests' conductors. Following Eberhard's psychological evaluation, interviewers concluded that he was a low-risk for violent outbursts, that there was “no evidence of significant emotional or behavioral concerns” and that Eberhard displayed an “above-average psychological suitability.”
During the polygraph test, Eberhard admitted to feeling briefly suicidal following his 2016 arrest, stating at one point that he sat in his garage with the engine running for five minutes. Yet in the psychological evaluation, testers wrote: “it was a single incident and he appears to have learned from the experience, and has worked to remain in the law enforcement field over the last four years.”
Despite his checkered personal life, Eberhard's career as a law enforcement officer appears to be unblemished, according to a review of his personnel files.
In fact, among his accolades, Eberhard once drew praise from the Ohio Senate, Congressman Steve Stivers and then-pickaway County Sheriff Robert B. Radcliff for a Dec. 17, 2014, incident in which he responded to the scene of a car crash and performed CPR on a patient in cardiac arrest until medics arrived.
But trouble seemed to follow Eberhard in recent years, according to a review of calls for service handled by the Pickaway County Sheriff 's office. Those records show that beginning as early as June 2019, sheriff 's deputies were occasionally dispatched to Eberhard's home and other locations for domestic incidents and well-being checks involving him, his second wife (now his ex-wife) and later his girlfriend.
Earlier this year, two separate incidents were reported to police in which Eberhard was accused of first becoming physically violent against one of his sons in January and then, months later, his girlfriend in May.
Attempts by The Dispatch to reach his estranged girlfriend for an interview were unsuccessful.
It wasn't until Aug. 30 that the sheriff 's office appointed Lt. Strawser to officially head an investigation of Eberhard on suspicion of misdemeanor charges of domestic violence and assault for the January incident, and felony charges of aggravated assault and felonious assault for the May incident.
That's the day when, according to Strawser's investigative report, Eberhard's girlfriend messaged Sheriff Hafey on Facebook to tell him that she had been sending Circleville police Chief Baer messages about Eberhard's volatile, abusive behavior enabled by a drinking problem, but that nothing was done.
Chief Baer said in an email to The Dispatch that an anonymous email was sent to him on Aug. 22 that he later determined came from Eberhard's girlfriend. The email contained screenshots of a text message conversation, but nothing more.
Baer said he launched an internal affairs investigation into the allegations the next day. However, Eberhard wasn't interviewed by a Circleville detective until Sept. 1.
And when Circleville police learned on Sept. 2 that the sheriff 's office was already investigating a criminal case involving Eberhard as a suspect, it halted its internal investigation.
Circleville police placed Eberhard on administrative leave on Sept. 3 and ordered that he turn over his service weapon and police badge, according to a letter to Eberhard.
Lt. Strawser spoke to multiple witnesses throughout his investigation — including Eberhard's two sons, his girlfriend, the woman's friends and mother, and Eberhard's first ex-wife — who corroborated and added details to the earlier reports of alleged domestic violence. Many of those interviewed about Eberhard reported that he had a drinking problem that caused him to become emotionally and physically abusive when he was intoxicated, records show.
Strawser determined from records maintained by Circleville police that Eberhard took a sick day the day after the May 11 attack in which his girlfriend's wrist was injured. Witnesses confirmed that Eberhard took his girlfriend to the hospital that day, and persuaded the woman to concoct and spread a false story that the injury occurred after she had fallen, according to the investigative report.
Strawser attempted to call Eberhard on Sept. 29 to interview him, but that call was never returned, according to the investigative report.
During the reporting of this story, The Dispatch left messages with Circleville Mayor Donald Mcilroy and some members of Circleville City Council seeking to discuss Eberhard's employment. The calls were not returned.
Chamberlain indicated that Circleville had full confidence in Eberhard when he was hired as a police officer, and felt comfortable that his previous trouble was in the rear-view mirror when it took a chance and hired him.
“We have a very thorough hiring procedure,” Chamberlain said in an email. “But we are always looking for improvements citywide.”
elagatta@dispatch.com