By Cory Shaffer
Advance Ohio Media, Cleveland
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A former Euclid jail supervisor who resigned after he pleaded guilty last month to using a law enforcement database to stalk his ex-wife and her boyfriend faces new charges after police said he contacted his ex-wife again last week.
Steven Key, 50, was arrested Friday and charged with a misdemeanor charge of violating a protection order in Euclid Municipal Court.
Key was sentenced to a month’s probation on Sept. 6 after he agreed to resign his position as a corporal at the Cuyahoga County Euclid Jail Annex as part of a plea bargain. He promised to never seek a job as a police or corrections officer again, and Cuyahoga County prosecutors reduced the felony charge to a misdemeanor, allowing him to avoid jail time.
Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside ordered Key to stay away from his ex-wife, who obtained a five-year protection order against him earlier this year.
Key was arrested in the new case after Euclid police said he saw his ex-wife while driving on East 222nd Street and yelled at her.
Key appeared in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday for a probation violation hearing. Burnside found he did violate his probation. She extended the supervision through January 2018 and ordered him to report to his probation officer every month. He was released Tuesday after posting 10 percent of a $3,000 bond.
Key’s probation was set to expire on Friday.
Key was first indicted in May, three months after Euclid police and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department discovered that Key, then a corporal at the county’s Euclid Jail Annex, ordered a subordinate to run the boyfriend’s license plate number through the LEADS database to find out his name and where he lived.
Key showed up at his wife’s house and “aggressively confronted her boyfriend,” a police report says.
He was charged with misdemeanor menacing by stalking in Euclid Municipal Court the day of the encounter. Sheriff’s investigators looked into how he got the information on the boyfriend and found surveillance videos showing him writing information down on a piece of paper behind the corrections officer, who was seated at a computer.
The sheriff’s department did not refer the case to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office to review possible felony charges until after a May 3 cleveland.com story detailing the case and Key’s long disciplinary history.
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