The Cleveland Police Department building is on Second Street.Firing of Cleveland Detective UpheldA judge has upheld the firing of former Cleveland, Tenn., police detective Duff Brumley last year.Hamilton County Circuit Court Judge W. Neil Thomas, acting as special judge in the case, said Cleveland City Manager Janice Casteel had adequate evidence to uphold Brumley’s termination in August 2010.Brumley had called the firing arbitrary and capricious, but Thomas ruled Nov. 29 that the record showed testimony supported the charges that led to his removal.It was at a Nov. 17 hearing in the Brumley case that a witness said Cleveland police brass had heard of possible immoral and illegal conduct among some officers, including sex with underage girls, snorting crushed hydrocodone pills, porn on city cellphones and other offenses.
Cleveland police have said there was “no proof” that officers in 2008 were abusing prescription pills and having sex with underage girls before an investigation began late in the year.
But police department records show that one of the Cleveland officers now serving a prison term for two statutory rapes in 2008 and 2009 was known to be dallying with a teenage girl 10 years ago.
Files also document substance abuse by the officer, Nathan Thomas, in 2005 and 2007.
Another officer involved in the 2008 investigation, Dennis Hughes, was investigated twice in late 2007 for domestic altercations and harassing phone calls to a former girlfriend. The file notes that Hughes was intoxicated both times and when investigators came to question him.