Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Cop Let Handcuffed Teen Be Whipped: Prosecutor

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Officer Jamie Patterson faces two misdemeanor charges of dereliction of duty for January 2026 incident she responded to while on duty. Patterson works for the Middletown Police Department. A local news station reported that the charges stem from Patterson handcuffing a teenager during a domestic incident and allowing a family member to whip him with a belt. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through what we know about the case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re dealing with IRS back taxes, your first move should be a free consultation, not a call to the IRS. Get a completely free, no‑obligation review of your situation from the experts at Tax Hardship Center by visiting https://taxhardshipcenter.com/taxreliefnow or calling [phone] to see where you stand before the IRS comes collecting.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Tom Smith https://www.youtube.com/@GOLDSHIELDSCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jamie Patterson is a police officer in Ohio who's now on leave and facing criminal charges. I'll tell you about the allegations involving a handcuffed teenager in her custody and how it was all captured on video. I'm Annionette Levy and this is crime fix. You know, I have to tell you about something. If you owe the IRS more than $25,000 in back taxes, you really need to listen up. Does the thought of your back taxes keep you up at night, wondering if the IRS is about to levy your bank account or garnish your paycheck? That's where the Tax Hardship Center comes in, the number one tax relief firm in the nation, with an A-plus rating that's settled hundreds of millions in tax debt for people just like you. Don't call the IRS yourself and poke that bear.

The experts at the Tax Hardship Center can find out where you stand without you lifting a finger and lay out a plan to fight for the best possible. resolution. You can even start your free, no obligation consultation right from your phone. So if you owe back taxes, go to taxhardshipcenter.com slash tax relief now or call 844-696-1311 now and let them show you a way out. Jamie Patterson was sworn in as a police officer back in April of 2021. She swore to protect and serve. She puts on a badge every day that she goes to work. And she took an oath to a. uphold the law. But now she's accused of breaking the law, committing misdemeanors, the accusation that she allowed a man to whip a teenager with a belt who she had handcuffed during a domestic incident. Now, just the thought of this is pretty cringeworthy and sickening. This case takes us to

Middletown, Ohio, about 25 miles south of Dayton. It's a small city. The population is around 51,000. On January 3rd, 2026, Jamie Patterson was on duty working a shift at the police department when she responded to a call for a domestic incident. Fox 19 in Cincinnati reported that Patterson went to the home and found a teenage boy who was not cooperating with his mother. Officer Patterson handcuffed the teen boy. That's when the news outlet, quoting the prosecutor's office, said Officer Patterson watched as a man in the house whipped that handcuffed teenage boy with a belt on the buckle side. Fox 19 reported the boy was left with visible marks and he was taken to the hospital but he was not admitted

so let me tell you this this entire thing it was recorded by Jamie Patterson's body worn camera the whole thing so I requested it along with the incident report and I was told it's not being released at this time and I covered news in Ohio for a really long time a long time and there's really no reason that this incident report in the footage

shouldn't be released right now A week after this incident, Jamie Patterson was notified that she was being placed on paid administrative leave. The letter reads, Dear Officer Jamie Patterson, you are hereby placed on administrative leave with pay, effective immediately pending the outcome of an investigation into alleged child abuse incident at the address, which is redacted. You are immediately suspended from any and all work duties. you are not authorized to undertake and may not engage in any activities on behalf of the city of Middletown unless specifically instructed to do so by me. You may not represent to others that you have any authority to act on behalf of the city. During this period of administrative leave, you are

directed to remain at home and provide us with a telephone number where you can be immediately reached during your normal work hours. This period of paid administrative leave and the directive have set forth above will continue until you are issued written notice stating otherwise. Please note that this administrative leave is not a disciplinary action or adverse employment action. You will be notified of any change in your status. You should direct questions you may have about your status to my attention or the attention of Deputy Chief Morgan. So you heard it right there. Jamie Patterson, she wasn't even placed on desk duty. She was told, stay home, do not come to work. The prosecutor's office in Butler County investigated and presented

the case to the grand jury. Earlier this month, the grand jury indicted Jamie Patterson on two second degree misdemeanors, dereliction of duty. The first count says on January 3rd, 2026, Jamie Patterson did as a public servant recklessly failed to perform a duty expressly imposed by law with respect to the public servant's office or recklessly do any act expressly forbidden by law. with respect to the public servant's office, which constitutes the offense of dereliction of duty, a second-degree misdemeanor in violation of Ohio's revised code. Count two is similar, but states that Jamie Patterson did as a law enforcement officer negligently fail to prevent or halt the commission of an offense or to apprehend an offender.

When it is in the law enforcement officer's power to do so alone or with available assistance, which constitutes the offense of dereliction of duty, a second-degree misdemeanor in violation of the revised code. Now, Count 2 raises a question, was the man who whipped the teenage boy charged with a crime? Again, the city of Middletown is staying mum. A city spokesperson sent a statement to me, it reads, The city of Middletown is aware of the incident involving a Middletown police officer. However, the city does not comment on pending legal or personnel matters. We are committed to being as transparent as possible while preserving the integrity of both the internal review and the legal process.

To that end, we have made available the personnel file of the individual who has been charged. So the city says that's all they're releasing right now. On Facebook, the city of Middletown posted a news story about Jamie Patterson back in 2021. The headline, she wanted to be a police officer because of the murder of George Floyd. you may recall Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of killing Floyd by holding him down while handcuffed back in May of 2020. The city has featured Jamie Patterson prominently on its website, highlighting a time when she competed in the World Police and Fire Games CrossFit competition last year. She placed 10th in the bracket, but now Jamie Patterson is bringing the wrong kind of attention to the city and the police department. All right. So to discuss this, I want to bring in Tom Smith.

He's a retired police officer. Also the host of Gold Shield Show on YouTube. Check it out. Tom, I need to know your first thoughts on this case as a retired police officer. I know you've probably slapped the cuffs on quite a few people over the years. But in this case, from what we know, we have a police officer responding to a domestic incident of sorts, an unruly teenager. And she puts him in coughs. We don't even know if the teen was charged with anything.

And then from what we do know, Jamie Patterson's accused of allowing a grown man to then whip him with a belt. You know, when I first saw this, as a retired detective, you know, for 30 years, you hope it isn't what you're reading or what you're looking at. But, you know, it's lining up that way. And you hold the DA's office to a level of, doing the right thing and apparently, you know, they're thinking they're doing the right thing. I don't understand it. I don't get it. You know, you are responsible for everyone that you're near as a

police source. Good, bad, indifferent color, doesn't matter. None of that is supposed to come into play. And when you see a story like this, you just shake your head at why. I mean, that's the biggest question I come up with. You know, when you look at it as doing what I did forever. Why? What was the point in that? And what were you trying to do or accomplish? None of it is going to be good. The end game in what was allowed is never going to be okay. So you have to have a conscious thought before you start doing things like this or get put into a situation like that. This is what gets me based on the facts that we know and as we know them right now. any police officer when they get on scene and you kind of just alluded to this right now, you mentioned this. But when you put those handcuffs on somebody, you're responsible.

And we learned this in great detail from the Derek Chauvin trial, the George Floyd case that I covered, gavel to gavel, that basically you're then responsible. I mean, that person is in your custody. You know, we don't know if this kid was going to be charged with a crime, but apparently he wasn't like doing what his mom wanted or whatever was going on. And she had him in cuffs. So he's technically detained in her custody. So she's then she is responsible. And as you mentioned, she's responsible for everything because she arrives unseen. And she's the one with the power.

She's the one with the gun and the taser and whatever is going on there. And she's the person in charge. And but this kid has nowhere to go. And so he, she is responsible for him, especially once those cuffs go on. And then to, as the allegation states, you know, she allows him to be whipped. Like I'm at a loss here for why anybody would think that that would be okay, even if it's like the stepdad or the step grandfather based on what the. the reporting is here. Like, how on earth would anybody think that that would be okay? Yeah, you're 100% right. But even before that, and you know, when you, when you show up to a scene,

there's sometimes that you don't play the role of just a law enforcement officer and someone's going to jail. There's situations that you become a moderator and you just show up to scenes to kind of help in a situation, not make it worse. You know, you want to leave there that the situation you're being called to gets extinguished, the temperatures get lowered, and everyone's okay. That's your job. Not automatically who's going to jail. You know, as a police officer, you wear a lot of hats. You're a mom, you're a dad, you're a priest, you're a counselor, you're a cop, you know, you're a doctor. You show up to scenes. You have to play all those roles. And when you're, especially when you're dealing with a kid and a juvenile when you show up,

you know, you have the authority that he's probably going to listen to you because you're in uniform, you're at the scene, and you want that. You want to be the moderator in something like this, not automatically, I'm just taking someone to jail. And then it doesn't matter, like you said, it doesn't matter the outlining factors in this of who anybody is or the relationships of the person that grabbed the belt. None of that matters. It should have never, ever gotten to that part of that scene. And again, you know, this is all caught on video. You know, her body camera was rolling. We know it's the whole thing is on video. They're not releasing it right now. They're like, you know, the city, they put out this statement saying, you know, we, we don't comment on these personnel

matters. You know, we don't do that. We're trying to be fair here. But it's a high. But it's a bio, okay? So they could release this video if they wanted to. They're just not doing it. And I'm thinking it must be that bad. And in her personnel file, they call this in the letter placing her on administrative leave where they said, don't even come to work. You're not on desk duty. You sit at home on paid administrative leave and give us a phone number where we can reach you during work hours. Don't even come to work. They call this. alleged child abuse. That's what they're calling this. So what I want to know was this man who whipped the boy, is he, because this is all captured on video, was he then charged with a crime related to whipping this boy, this teenage boy, because they're calling this in the letter placing her on leave, child abuse, alleged child abuse.

So, and in the charge, the one dereliction of duty charge, they say that she had, that she failed to apprehend an offender or to, you know, do something with an offense. That leads me to believe that that man eventually was potentially charged with a crime related to the whipping of that boy that she stood by and watched and enabled, allegedly. Yeah, there was one report that I read that. people were arrested, but it didn't go into who it was or what the charges were. And tried to look up again and just couldn't find it. So I don't know who else was.

If, you know, all of that is on body cam, you're absolutely right. If all that's on body cam and an assault is on body cam, that person needs to be arrested. And I hope he was because that makes it, listen, if he wasn't, that makes this just dramatically worse. if you could even get this in a worse situation. If he wasn't arrested and able to stay in the home, that's a bigger problem. You know, none of this is good. None of this makes sense.

And what it does, the other part of this, the view from the public, you know, police are held under the gun all the time about situations where they're involved in. When you have something like this that is so blatantly wrong, it just brings down the outlook of law enforcement in this country.

Because this is going to, at some point, that body cam, it's going to get be public, and everyone's going to see it, and everyone's going to comment on it, and they're going to remember it. And, you know, law enforcement officers need to know that when you respond to scenes and you take actions, the ramifications of those go across this country.

It doesn't just stay in the town you're in or the city you work in. That goes all over the country. And that's the bigger responsibility that we all have when you put that uniform on. We will get that body camera footage. It should be released. And, you know, why it's not, why not even a portion of it is not being released? I mean, you can say we're trying to be fair here, et cetera, but come on, it just doesn't look good that you're holding this back.

It looks terrible that you're holding it back because it's Ohio. and that's you could release a port at least a portion of this if you really wanted to be transparent. My other issue with this is the fact that this is a teenage boy. And based on the facts that we know right now, he's a minor. As far as we know, I mean, a teenager, you could be 18 or 19, but he's been described as a teenage boy. He's in cuffs. So we don't know what was going on, the dynamic in that house, other than mom calls the cops apparently. and says my kid won't listen to me or whatever is going on.

She puts him in cuffs. And then I'm like, is this, is this a joke that, that you didn't, like, you didn't protect the kid? Like, she had a duty to protect that child. So I'm trying to think of like now the ramifications of this because that kid is now going to view a police officer as somebody that they can't trust, that that person, that child's perception of police may be altered forever. Oh, 100%.

And even more than that, you know, now you have him, he's going to tell his friends and other relatives. And, you know, if he has any social media accounts, which everybody has, it's going to go on that. So it doesn't just stay, like I said, in that town. The ramifications of this go all over the place, and it's as easy as a click. You hit send on your phone and how many thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are going to see this and be influenced by it. But you brought up a great point.

That's the interesting part about not release the body cam. I want to see the second she walks in that apart. What happened? What drove her to handcuff him to begin with? Let's take everything else out of it. Why are you handcuffing a child? Right. You know, like I said, take away all the rest of things that happened.

What happened initially when you got there? Did he attack her? Did he jump on her? Did he have, you know, a weapon? You know, none of that's being talked about. Again, take away everything that happened, which is wrong. but I want to know what the initial scene was when she got there. I went to numerous jobs and calls when I was in uniform of, you know, arguments like this.

We went to one that, you know, he's not eating his vegetables. Can you tell him to eat dinner? You know, we get called to those all the time. And that's what I mean about not always just being a cop looking to arrest someone. You have to put on a different hat sometimes, but that's why it's so interesting. and important to view the video of what the initial confrontation was. And that's why I'm like, why can't we see that? Just show us what the initial issue was.

And then if you're worried about preserving her right to a fair hearing or a fair trial, then cut it off at that point or redacted or whatever. I'm still opposed to that as a journalist, but let us. see the beginning of it. It smells to me. It doesn't pass the smell test. I don't like it. There's also like several, many, many, many pages of her personnel file. It's like over 100 pages that are black that are redacted. Why? What's in there? I mean, she was like investigated at one point for driving 100 miles an hour with a with a prisoner in her car. She said like an officer needed assistance, but she had a prisoner in her car and she

was driving 100 miles an hour. She wasn't supposed to do that. Another time she got in trouble for like calling in sick when she wasn't really sick, stuff like that. But I'm like, what's all the redaction about? So what's going on here? Because it just looks like you're, it looks like you're hiding something. And you know what?

that's going to be, you know, up to her defense attorney. And that's the one who should be handling all this, not the police department. And that's the odd part of this. Yes, you want to defend your police officers. I get it or however they're being perceived to do this. But that's not their job. Their job is not to be her defense attorney. You know, that's why, you know, you have an obligation to kind of let things out there.

The redaction thing is very odd. I don't understand that. And I haven't seen too many personnel folders. that are that thick, which is very odd again to begin with. But, you know, all this, hopefully- Hasn't even been there five years and it's over 100 pages. Yeah, I don't get that. That's very odd. And that's why it's important to get this out there. And it's going to be very, very interesting to stay on top of this story to see actually what happens and where this goes. It's going to pique a lot of people's interest. I think this is only the beginning of this story getting out there.

I think it's going to pick up traction and we'll see where it goes. Yeah, we're going to certainly keep an eye on it. Jamie Patterson, like any other person accused of a crime, is innocent until proven guilty. But the facts, the allegations as we know them right now do not look good. And she is a police officer who's been charged with two misdemeanors. And so we'll see what happens and where it goes. Again, innocent until proven guilty. Tom Smith, thank you for your time and your expertise is always appreciate it. It's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. At the time of this recording, a court date has not yet been scheduled for Jamie Patterson to appear on these two misdemeanor charges. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Annette Levy. Thanks so much for

being with me. I'll see you back here next time.