Indiana decertifies ex-South Bend cop who sexually abused teen
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Indiana officials revoked the law enforcement certification of a former police officer Monday after a Washington Post investigation detailed how he used his job to sexually abuse a teen girl in his patrol car.
Former South Bend officer Timothy Barber had kept his certification for more than two years, despite pleading guilty in 2022 to child seduction and official misconduct and registering as a sex offender.
Barber, 39, did not attend a hearing held by the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy before the agency voted to strip him of his police certification. The academy will now add Barber’s name to a public list of individuals whose certifications have been revoked.
“Our communities trust that police officers will be an example of honesty, integrity, respectfulness and professionalism,” Timothy Horty, executive director of the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy, told The Post. “When officers betray that trust, there must be a consequence; their certification revoked, and the community notified.”
Under state law, the South Bend Police Department was required to report Barber’s 2022 felony convictions to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy, but failed to do so, according to the state agency.
South Bend Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski noted in state licensing records that Barber had resigned after being convicted of a crime but did not seek his decertification.
Neither the chief nor Barber could be reached for comment Monday.
The state’s law enforcement training board initiated the decertification process in June, less than a week after The Post’s published its investigation into Barber’s case.
Asked in June why the police department did not seek Barber’s decertification, Ruszkowski said in an email, “decertification is state law.” He declined to answer other questions about the case, citing pending litigation.
Challenges around police certifications extend beyond Indiana. The Post found officers in other states who were accused of exploiting kids but kept their law enforcement licenses. Some were then hired by other police departments, where they were later charged with crimes against children.
In other instances, officers were charged with serious crimes involving child sexual abuse, but law enforcement agencies failed to notify state licensing boards, sometimes even after the cops were convicted.
Brian Grisham, deputy director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, said it could pose a danger to public safety to wait years to decertify an officer convicted of a crime, such as child sexual abuse. If the officer seeks employment at another agency, and the agency does not conduct a thorough background check, a predator could once again be handed a badge.
“If there’s been a conviction, there should be action taken,” Grisham said.
In Indiana, the 16-year-old who was abused in Barber’s patrol car said she is disappointed that it took years to have his certification taken away. With her permission, she is being identified by her middle name, Anne.
“South Bend knew what happened,” said Anne, who is now 20. “He pleaded guilty, and he still wasn’t decertified. It’s just ridiculous.”
Anne said she has been frustrated by the lack of serious consequences for Barber and other police officers who have sexually exploited minors.
The Post’s investigation, Abused by the Badge, identified at least 1,200 officers convicted of charges stemming from child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2020. Nearly 40% of those convicted—including Barber—avoided prison sentences.
Anne first met Barber in the summer of 2021 before her junior year of high school while she was working her first job at a Chick-fil-A in South Bend. The patrol officer, two decades older than Anne, learned the girl wanted to be a cop and gave her rides home in his police cruiser. He later admitted to sending the teen more than 1,300 messages in less than three months from his work laptop.
Anne reported that he abused her multiple times in his patrol car. He was charged in October 2021 with six counts, including child seduction, official misconduct, public indecency and public nudity.
Barber, records show, also used his work laptop to text multiple teenage girls and young women he had met on duty. These messages were never discovered by supervisors, according to Barber.
Jon Yoder, a detective with the St. Joseph County Special Victims Unit who reviewed the texts, told The Post it was obvious Barber had been abusing his position.
Barber faced up to 18.5 years in prison. But prosecutors offered a plea deal that limited his sentence to four years and stayed silent on how or where he should serve his time.
At his sentencing hearing, Anne asked for Barber to be put in prison, but a judge expressed concern about the officer’s safety behind bars and instead placed him on probation, according to a written transcript of the hearing.
“I’m giving you a break,” Judge Jeffrey Sanford told Barber.
Even after Barber pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child, South Bend allowed the officer to resign, rather than terminate him.
When contacted by The Post in April, Barber said he was working in construction. He said he understood that some people, including Anne, believe he should have received a harsher punishment.
“Things could’ve turned worse. I could have been imprisoned and come out of prison, be on the street, never get a job,” Barber said.
Anne’s civil lawsuit against Barber and the city of South Bend over what happened to her is pending.
In court records, the city denied “failing to investigate, discipline, or otherwise hold accountable its police officers whether on or off duty.” South Bend also claimed it wasn’t directly responsible for the harm that Barber caused Anne.
She is also seeking a federal criminal investigation into Barber’s conduct, according to a letter her attorney sent in March to the Justice Department. If the agency decides to pursue the case, Barber could be prosecuted on federal charges and again face the possibility of being sent to prison.
The Justice Department sued South Bend in October over accusations that the police department discriminated against Black and female applicants. But the federal agency declined to comment on whether it would open a criminal investigation into Barber.
Earlier this year, another South Bend officer, Rico Butler, was charged with sexually abusing a teenage girl. That officer’s trial is scheduled for January.
It’s unclear whether South Bend has notified the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy about the pending criminal charges against Butler, who has pleaded not guilty. The officer was placed on unpaid leave.
In South Carolina, a school resource officer pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two students in September. Jamel Bradley was sentenced to probation and ordered to register as a sex offender. The director of the state’s licensing agency, the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, told The Post that Bradley is internally flagged as pleading guilty to a crime that precludes him from serving as an officer. But because Bradley’s former employer, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, never formally reported any allegations of sexual assault or sexual misconduct to the agency, Bradley does not appear on the state’s list of decertified officers. The department did not respond to requests seeking comment.
The law enforcement decertification process varies across the country, but the success of the system largely relies on self-reporting from police departments, according to Grisham, of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training.
Grisham said the decertification process could be strengthened if there were repercussions for police departments that failed to report misconduct or were not transparent or truthful in the reasons that officers left their departments.