Police officer fired after he detains daughter’s boyfriend and ignores 911 dispatch

The dash cam was mounted just below the police cruiser’s roof, in perfect position to capture the 26-year patrolman’s transformation from concerned father to authority-abusing police officer.

On that day in April, John Kovach’s 18-year-old daughter, Katlyn, was dating a man her parents didn’t approve of, an 18-year-old named Makai Coleman.

She wasn’t responding to her father’s attempts to talk, so Kovach tracked his daughter’s computer to a friend’s house on West 34th Street in Lorain, Ohio, he told investigators. Then he sat in his patrol cruiser, waiting.

When Coleman’s silver Pontiac drove past, Kovach flipped on his flashing lights and initiated the traffic stop that would end his two decades with the Lorain Police Department.

“You can get out,” the officer told Coleman, according to a profanity-filled video of the interaction. “You’re going to jail.”

When Coleman asked why, his girlfriend’s dad told him: “Have a seat in my car. We’ll make (expletive) up while we go.”

Lorain Police Chief Cel Rivera and Safety-Service Director Dan Given said those statements and several other things that happened during a nearly nine-minute stretch were violations of the department’s standards of conduct and policy procedures, according to the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram.