Just months after becoming the head of Ohio’s Kirkersville Police Department, Chief James Hughes Jr. is dead of an apparent overdose of fentanyl. Hughes was found in his home on May 25, next to two syringes. One was empty, and the other had traces of the opioid drug fentanyl. A baggie that tested positive for cocaine was also discovered near Hughes. According to authorities, Hughes took those drugs from the Kirkersville Police Department’s evidence locker.
Reynoldsburg Police Department Lt. Ron Wright said the department is still investigating, but evidence shows the drugs were possibly evidence in other cases.
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Hughes was named police chief on March 13 during a two-minute special village council meeting. His hiring came less than a week after the prior chief, Jeff Finley, had unexpectedly resigned, citing irreconcilable differences with Kirkersville Mayor Terry Ashcraft.
According to the Newark Advocate, Hughes was making just $14 an hour before his sudden promotion and had a very troubling history, raising questions of how and why he became police chief in the first place.
A check of Hughes' personnel records from the departments where he has worked show he has been the subject of multiple investigations and one former supervisor said he would "never be accepted or respected as a leader."
According to Hughes' personnel file from the 14 months he worked at the Fairfield County Sheriff's Office in 2012 and 2013, Hughes was the subject of at least three internal investigations. He resigned about six months after he was hired in October 2012, only to be re-hired in November 2012 as an employee in the jail.
According to the report, Hughes’s checkered history included a night where, while off duty, he got belligerent with an employee at a fast food drive-thru. In that report, Hughes reportedly flashed his badge and dropped a “racial slur.” Hughes paid a fine for disorderly conduct.
Police Chief James Hughes Jr.’s death is sad. Addiction is a terrible disease, and one of the many failures of a racist system of law enforcement is that everybody’s humanity takes a loss. Hughes should have not been in law enforcement, that is clear. The continued shuffling about—both laterally and then vertically—of Hughes did no one any good, least of all James Hughes Jr.
There are two things at work here. One is the need for more education in how to deal with and look for the signs of addiction. The second is creating a system where, if law enforcement insists on giving second and third and fifteenth chances to people, they must be able to provide those people with real rehabilitation resources and follow-through. That should consist of anger management training, racial sensitivity training, and addiction counseling.