Fired for a felony, again for perjury. Meet the new police chief.

AMSTERDAM, Ohio – In the days after they ousted their police chief, the leaders of this town realized that the real mess he’d made wasn’t the jumble of trash and misplaced evidence that cluttered his office. It was what was buried underneath.

There they found forms featuring the mayor’s apparently forged signature that David Cimperman used to add more than 30 officers to the town’s police roster – one for every 16 residents. Many never did any paid police work for the town, logging hours instead for a private security business that state investigators say Cimperman ran on the side. He tried to outfit them with high-end radios. The riot gear and other surplus military equipment he bought with taxpayer money are missing.

What they didn’t find was evidence that the police force built out of fear of being without help in an emergency did much actual police work.

Even now, the people who hired Cimperman don’t know the depth of what went wrong in the part-time police force of this small town in the hills of northeastern Ohio. The new chief says he’s consulted with state criminal investigators to help figure it out.

They could have prevented it all with a single phone call.