Female cop claims sheriff shared explicit photos from her phone and placed son in foster care after arresting her ‘without evidence’

An Ohio police officer has filed a lawsuit against the Portage County Sheriff’s Office, alleging a chilling abuse of power.

Officer Miranda L. Brothers, 29, of the Mantua Police Department claims she was wrongfully arrested and her five-year-old son placed in foster care, while private explicit photos were taken from her phone and distributed to sheriff’s office personnel.

Brothers, a single mother, is now suing the sheriff’s office for more than $150,000 in damages.

Her lawsuit accuses the department of malicious prosecution, constitutional violations, intentional emotional distress and serious misconduct.

Brothers claims there is a complete lack of evidence to support the allegations against her.

According to the lawsuit, the nightmare began in late 2023 when detectives launched a secret investigation into Brothers’ parentage.

The investigation focused on unsubstantiated claims that she left her son alone with a registered sex offender.

Surveillance by two detectives on December 7, 2023 reportedly revealed no such contact, and a third detective’s previous findings confirmed the allegations were “unfounded” and “inaccurate.”

But less than a month later, on January 1, 2024, sheriff’s deputies conducted a traffic stop, seized Brothers’ phone and her child’s tablet and removed her son from her custody.

Brothers was charged with child endangerment the next day, with authorities alleging she allowed a sex offender to spend “extended periods of time alone” with her child.

Brothers’ lawsuit paints a damning picture of what happened next.

A forensic examination of her devices found no evidence of criminal behavior – a fact that detectives testified to during an April 2024 hearing.

“The testimony at the April 15, 2024 Motion Hearing confirmed that no detective witnessed Juvenile A engaging in unsupervised contact with a registered sex offender,” the complaint said.

Despite this, prosecutors pressed ahead, resulting in Brothers being suspended from her job for months and her son in foster care for months.

The most inflammatory claims in Brothers’ lawsuit, however, concern the sheriff’s office’s alleged misuse of her seized cell phone.

fcThe officer accuses a detective, identified as “John Doe,” of sharing explicit private photos of her with colleagues and possibly others outside the department.

“Despite knowing that the digital images were not relevant to any criminal charges, Detective John Doe shared and/or disseminated these digital images within the Portage County [Sheriff’s] Office and possibly beyond,” the lawsuit said.

Brothers’ legal team described the behavior as “so extreme and outrageous” that it “went beyond all possible bounds of decency.”

Her attorney, Eric Fink, did not hesitate in sentencing.

Speaking to WOIO, he described the allegations as an unprecedented abuse of trust.

“They went through it [the phone]found no evidence of wrongdoing and then shared private, explicit photos unrelated to the investigation,” he said.

When asked if the photos were explicit, Fink confirmed that they were.

Charges against Brothers were eventually dropped in July 2024 and she has since been reinstated, but her lawyer says the ordeal has left lasting scars.

“We are still trying to understand why this investigation was opened in the first place,” Fink said, adding that Brothers left her son with a babysitter — a trusted off-duty police dispatcher — on the day in question.

Brothers’ complaint details the emotional toll of her experience, along with the humiliation and devastation when she lost custody of her son and had her personal images shared by those sworn to uphold the law.

The case is headed to court, with the Portage County Sheriff’s Office yet to comment on the allegations.