The Edinburgh Town Council on Friday fired a former police officer who is facing child molestation charges.
The town council unanimously decided to terminate Michael Nunez’s contract on Friday during a special meeting that was scheduled in the wake of the allegations against him.
Johnson County prosecutors charged Nunez, 33, of Edinburgh, with two high-level felony counts of child molestation. He faces a maximum of 100 years in prison for the sexual abuse that occurred on a minor under the age of 14 over the course of six years, from 2014 to 2020, according to court documents and a joint news release from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested Nunez Tuesday. Police first found him at 2:59 a.m. Dec. 30 in the area of River Road and Triangle Road at Camp Atterbury, where he was sitting in his vehicle. He was taken to a nearby hospital for immediate detention. Later that day, the prosecutor’s office filed charges, and he was arrested upon his release from the hospital and taken to the Johnson County jail, the news release said.
He has since been moved to another county’s jail due to his previous role as a law enforcement officer in the county, Sheriff Duane Burgess said. His bond remains $160,000 cash, he said.
The court will work on remote hearing access, prosecutor Joe Villanueva said.
Nunez’s termination will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. He was suspended Dec. 30, and has not been paid since, said Dustin Huddleston, the town’s attorney.
The already strained Edinburgh Police Department had 12 full-time officers. Now, they’re down to 11, and six reserve, unpaid officers.
The department plans to train six more reserve officers in March, but will have to rely on online applications or hire a reserve officer full-time to fill Nunez’s spot, and that could take awhile, said Doyne Little, Edinburgh police chief.
Nunez’s firing is the department’s latest loss, although none of the three officers who left last year were fired. Two of the three officers who left the force last year were reserve officers, and could not commit enough time away from their paying jobs to do police work. The one full-time officer who left took a job with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, he said.
The police department found replacements for the two reserve officers from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy’s website and hired a reserve officer for the full-time spot. Still, finding new police officers is a tough task, he said.
“Across the state the amount of officers applying is way down,” Little said.
Officers who are hired were previously required to go through Indiana Law Enforcement Academy training within one year of employment, but proceedings at the academy have been shut down twice due to the coronavirus pandemic. Even with Gov. Eric Holcomb extending that period to two years, finding open spots for new officers in the academy remains a challenge, Little said.
“We have tried to schedule (training). Unfortunately, so many officers need it around Indiana that you have to be sitting at the computer when the academy date opens,” he said. “It takes about six minutes to fill an entire academy class.”
Full-time Edinburgh police officers go through the 15-week training one at a time, so as not to put a strain on the department while they’re gone. Reserve officers also are trained through Edinburgh’s reserve academy, and receive 200 hours of training over the course of a month and a half, Little said.
