Drop boxes netted big booty

FREMONT — The former Sandusky County sheriff targeted drop off boxes at area police stations to feed his drug habit when doctors he'd been using for years refused to write him any more prescriptions for opiate pain killers. "That was our theory. He was going to the police departments after doctors stopped writing him prescriptions," said Special Prosecutor Carol O'Brien.Reports released to the Sandusky Register in response to a public requests request show former Sheriff Kyle Overmyer began collecting drugs from the drop boxes in April 2015. Residents use the drop boxes to get rid of unused, unwanted medications. The first drop box the sheriff raided was in Bellevue."That was the first time that Sheriff Overmyer had stopped into the Bellevue police department," police Chief Mark Kaufman told Jeff Cook, a state agent assigned to investigate Overmyer.The sheriff told Cook he began stopping at the police departments to build better relations with the police chiefs. The police chiefs saw it differently, however, and said Overmyer mostly had nothing to say to them after he started collecting the drugs. He picked up drugs from drop boxes in Bellevue, Fremont, Green Springs and Woodville. Clyde Police Chief Bruce Gower said Overmyer never came to his department because the two did not have a good relationship.The timeline shows Overmyer started to use the drop boxes as a a way to secure drugs at about the time the numerous doctors he had who were prescribing him Vicodin and Percocet stopped giving him prescriptions. The last prescription for Vicodin he got was written in February 2015.The chiefs, at first, were not overly concerned Overmyer was taking the drop box medications. He was, after all, the sheriff, and he said he had an agreement with the Drug Enforcement Agency to pick up the drugs and store them at the sheriff's office. The DEA would arrange to pick up the boxes and destroy the medications, he claimed.But that wasn't true. There was no agreement between Overmyer and the DEA. 26 lbs. in small tabletsThe exact quantity that went missing is unknown. There was no inventory taken of what was in the boxes Overmyer picked up. The police agencies often weighed the contents of the boxes and bagged and sealed them. But seals were broken once the drugs got to the sheriff's office. The are no federal or state protocols dictating how medications from drop off boxes are collected, stored or destroyed.At times in 2015, Overmyer stopped every couple weeks to pick up the contents from the drop boxes. It's estimated the former sheriff took about 432 pounds of medications from the drop off boxes.Nobody knows what medications were inside the bags, but investigators and the chiefs all assumed there was narcotics among the meds discarded by residents.Chief Gower said he was told the percentage of narcotics placed in drop off boxes averages about 6 percent of the total weight. By that formula, Overmyer would have obtained about 26 pounds of narcotics from the bags he took.But "there is no way to prove who did what with the missing medication," Cook wrote in his report.It's unclear why other personnel at the sheriff's office failed to take any action after seeing the bags with the broken seals, and knowing multiple keys were available for the lockers where the drop-off drugs were kept. Often no receipts or release slips were filled out.With no way to prove if Overmyer in fact took anything from the drop boxes, state agents chose not to make it a focus of the investigation, or make any firm determinations about the drop-off program and the drugs that went missing. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine also took no action to stop Overmyer, saying it wasn't his decision to make.The police chiefs grew frustrated when they realized Overmyer was not going to be charged for the apparent missing medication. They also did not believe the attorney general's office was conducting a through or professional investigation. They went public with their concerns in an interview with the Register on Jan. 8, 2016. Less than a month later O'Brien, the Delaware County prosecutor, was appointed to act as special prosecutor. DeWine has refused to respond to questions about why he took no decisive action to stop Overmyer, or to those issues, for more than a year. A spokesman replies to inquiries from the Register, but his answers to the questions being raised are mostly non-responsive. The police departments have since put policies in place to document the handling, weight and location of the contents to be held until the DEA picks up the boxes. There is now a specific time and location where agents from the DEA picks up items from the drop off boxes.Could it be more obvious?Overmyer's friend and the former lead detective at the sheriff's office, Sean O'Connell, told agent Cook he had suspicions about Overmyer's drug use as early as January 2015, when Overmyer filed a theft report that his Vicodin pills were stolen from his SUV. It's not uncommon for addicts or others who are abusing drugs to contend their medication has been stolen in an effort to get more medication. The former detective, who quit the sheriff's office rather than face potential termination and is under investigation himself for alleged wrongdoing, said he also became more suspicious about Overmyer when he saw the drop box bags in the sheriff's office, with broken seals. But he did not file any report at that time, ask for, or start an official investigation.Once he learned in early August from an officer from another police department that the chiefs were concerned, however, he did take action. O'Connell told Cook he "re-packaged the pills because he felt that since the investigation was taking off, it would be a good idea to inventory the bags and boxes of pills, repackage the pills and place them into the secure evidence room," he told Cook, according tot the report. It's not clear why O'Connell didn't think that was a necessary, or a good idea, earlier, when he saw the contents from the bags with broken seals in Overmyer's office, or why he didn't think to properly inventory the drugs until after another police officer raised concerns to him. Crossing boundariesOvermyer went outside the county, at one point, to get drugs from drop boxes. He picked up drugs from the Wood County Sheriff office once under the guise of wanting to create a display board of various drugs for the Sandusky County fair to help residents learn how to identify drugs. He felt Wood County would have a greater variety of drugs.One employee at the Wood County Sheriff office wondered why Overmyer was taking bottles and not individual pills, Cook wrote in his report.Overmyer plead guilty to 13 felonies and one misdemeanor on Nov. 22, most of which were drug and theft-in-office related.Visiting judge Patricia Cosgrove in December sentenced him to four years in prison.Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer is escorted out of the courtroom at Terra State Community College on Tuesday after he pled guilty of 14 counts, including 13 felonies. Woodville police chief Roy Whitehead and Gibsonburg police chief Paul Whitaker talk to the Register's Melissa Topey following the sentencing of former Sandusky County sheriff Kyle Overmyer in Fremont on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016. Bellevue police chief Mark Kaufman and Clyde police chief Bruce Gower prepare to present their statements on Tuesday to the court during former Sandusky County sheriff Kyle Overmyer's sentencing hearing at the temporary Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas at Terra State Community College in Fremont. Evidence seized from former Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer's office.Evidence seized from former Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer's office.