Chad Essert, the police chief of Bethel, Ohio, resigned Friday rather than face a village hearing that could have removed him from office, weeks after a Clermont County grand jury handed down a 70-count indictment charging him with sexual battery and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.
Essert's resignation takes effect July 9, the same date the Village Council had scheduled a removal hearing. Mayor Jay Noble said the resignation ends the need for "any further investigation or hearing at this time," a statement that will offer cold comfort to residents of the small Clermont County village now learning that the man entrusted with their safety had been terminated or forced to resign from three of his previous six law enforcement jobs before Bethel ever pinned a badge on him.
The indictment, returned June 11 by Clermont County Prosecutor Mark Tekulve, charges Essert with 56 counts of sexual battery and 14 counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, all third-degree felonies. The alleged offenses span from 2005 to 2010, a period when Essert served as an instructor with the Young Marines and as a teacher at Scarlet Oaks Career Campus in Sharonville, Ohio. The prosecutor's office said the alleged victim was Essert's student in both settings, WCPO 9 reported.
Arrested in Florida, facing up to 280 years
Essert, 44, was not in Ohio when authorities moved on the indictment. He was arrested in Seminole, Florida, by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and faces extradition back to Ohio, Fox News reported. If convicted on all counts, Essert faces a maximum penalty of 280 years in prison.
He was arraigned in Clermont County court on June 22. A judge set bond at $500,000. Essert posted bond and walked out the following day. His next court date is Tuesday, July 7.
Clermont County Sheriff Chris Stratton addressed the case in a statement carried by the New York Post:
"It takes tremendous courage for a victim to come forward, especially when the accused wears a badge and holds a position of authority. Today's indictment demonstrates that no one is above the law. Every victim deserves to be heard, and every allegation will be thoroughly investigated and pursued in accordance with the law."
Before the indictment, Mayor Noble had placed Essert on administrative leave. Acting Chief Donald Fourth has been leading the department and will continue doing so while the village searches for a permanent replacement.
A hiring decision that demands answers
The charges against Essert are serious enough on their own. But the deeper failure may be the one that put him in uniform in Bethel in the first place.
Essert was hired as Bethel's police chief in 2021. A 2023 investigation by the WCPO 9 I-Team found that he had been terminated or forced to resign from three of his six previous police positions. His personnel records from prior departments included allegations of dishonesty, disobeying orders, and sexual harassment. He had resigned from one police position in 2010 specifically to avoid being fired over sexual harassment allegations, Breitbart reported.
That record raises an obvious question: what kind of background check did Bethel conduct before handing Essert the top law enforcement job in the village?
Jeff Witte, a former Woodlawn police chief who spoke with the WCPO 9 I-Team during its 2023 investigation, did not hold back:
"Chad was in a position of authority as an instructor, as a teacher. He clearly abused that position."
Witte called the hiring decision itself a failure. "I think hiring this person as chief was inappropriate," he said. He urged the village to open up the next search to public scrutiny: "They need to be very, very transparent with their residents, with what the village is doing in that process. And I think they should probably consider including residents in that selection process."
The pattern of police chiefs facing severe criminal charges has become disturbingly familiar in recent years, and the common thread is often a failure of institutional accountability long before the indictment arrives.
Noble defends his decision, hours after the indictment
Mayor Noble's handling of the situation raises its own set of concerns. Hours after the 70-count indictment was announced on June 11, Noble appeared at a Village Council meeting, where the hiring of a new police officer was being discussed, and defended his decision to bring Essert on board.
Noble told the council:
"The decision that I made was based on the feedback I got from everyone to pick him. And then he did come back in and he did sit in front of all of council and interviewed with all of council and I made the recommendation and council approved it unanimously, everybody said yes."
That framing spreads the blame across the entire council. It may be politically convenient, but it sidesteps the core question: whether anyone in Bethel's leadership bothered to examine Essert's documented history of forced departures and misconduct allegations before voting "yes."
The Clermont County Sheriff's Office had released its own investigation report on Essert on May 15, which included allegations of misconduct while in uniform. Yet after releasing the report, the department closed its investigation. Chief Deputy Mike White said at the time that "no criminal act was found at this time." Less than a month later, Tekulve's office secured the 70-count indictment.
The gap between the sheriff's office closing its probe and the prosecutor's office securing an indictment weeks later remains unexplained. Whether the two investigations examined different conduct, different time periods, or applied different standards is unclear from available information.
A pattern across police leadership
Bethel is a small village. Its residents rely on a handful of officers to keep the peace. When that trust is broken by the person at the top, the damage extends far beyond the courtroom.
This case is hardly an isolated one. Across the country, communities have been forced to reckon with police chiefs who resign under pressure only after misconduct becomes impossible to ignore. The question that should haunt every small-town council and mayor is whether the vetting process was designed to find problems, or to avoid finding them.
Noble's statement that Essert's resignation ends the need for further investigation at the village level may be legally accurate. The criminal case now belongs to the Clermont County courts. But it is an unsatisfying answer for a community that deserves to know how a man with Essert's record was ever hired, what the background check missed or ignored, and whether any village official had access to the warning signs that the WCPO 9 I-Team found in 2023.
Similar failures of oversight have surfaced in cases from Indiana to Florida, where chiefs were removed only after criminal charges forced the issue. In each case, the institutional breakdown preceded the criminal one.
What comes next
Essert is expected back in court on July 7. He has not made any public statement regarding the indictment or his resignation. Whether he has entered a plea or retained counsel is not reflected in available reporting.
The village says it will conduct a new search for a permanent police chief. Witte's advice, transparency, resident involvement, and a real vetting process, would be a reasonable starting point.
The broader lesson extends beyond Bethel. When communities entrust someone with a badge and the authority that comes with it, the hiring process is not a formality. It is the first line of defense. In cases like those involving chiefs removed for disgraceful conduct, the warning signs were often there long before anyone chose to look.
Essert's alleged victims, a student under his authority, deserved better. The residents of Bethel deserved better. And the institution of local law enforcement, which depends on public trust to function, deserved better than a hiring process that apparently treated a record of forced resignations and harassment allegations as no obstacle to a chief's badge.
A background check that misses three forced departures and sexual harassment allegations isn't a background check. It's a rubber stamp.
