Police officer fired after traffic stop with daughter's boyfriend

LORAIN, Ohio – A police officer in Ohio was fired after he was accused using the badge to deal with personal issues with his daughter's boyfriend.

The officer tried to arrest him during a traffic stop last month. The incident was caught on police cameras.

On April 16, Loraine police Patrolman John Kovach initiates a traffic stop that investigators concluded was purely personal.

WJW reported the driver pulled over by Kovach was his daughter's boyfriend. Kovach would later tell investigators that he did not approve of the relationship.

Lorain police say the 26-year veteran of the force traced his daughter's computer to a friend's home in the neighborhood. And when he threatened to give a friend who was a passenger in the car a ticket for not wearing her seat belt, the girl's mother confronts Kovach and said she is going to call 911.

Investigators say Kovach did not initially realize that his daughter was a back-seat passenger in the car that he pulled over. And when he figures it out, he orders her out of the car. It is then that Kovach's daughter confronted him about using his badge and uniform to intimidate her and her boyfriend.

Investigators say while the incident was unfolding, the dispatchers tried to send Kovach to a road rage incident in Lorain, but he did not respond to the call.

An internal investigation by Lorain police found that the traffic stop of Kovach daughter's boyfriend was unwarranted and that he violated the department's standards of conduct during the entire incident. As a result, he was fired. The investigation also found that Kovach lied to his supervisors about the incident.

Kovach is now appealing his dismissal.