A prominent Ohio police union criticizes Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan for Senate, given his past comments critical of law enforcement — and his own history of disorderly conduct with officers.
With less than eight weeks until the November midterm elections, Ryan has tried to temper his image to appeal to voters in Ohio’s swing state. That means he presents himself as more pro-police than his Republican opponent, JD Vance.
But Ryan has had several run-ins with the law in the past. In February 1995, the would-be legislator was subpoenaed for disorderly conduct after a bar owner threw cups of alcohol at the police during a scuffle with police.
And in 2012, while already in the United States House of Representatives, Ryan was arrested for public intoxication in Virginia after an executive’s wedding — though that charge was later dismissed.
“Given Tim Ryan’s track record of calling police officers the new Jim Crow and voting to waive qualified immunity, it’s no surprise that this is how he deals with law enforcement,” Columbus told Fraternal Order of Police President Jeff Simpson to DailyMail.com.
‘This trend of confrontational police encounters is not limited to his earlier years. Unfortunately, this has been an ongoing problem with Mr. Ryan throughout his career in Congress.”
Simpson added: “It’s just another indication that Tim Ryan has no respect for the badge and everything it represents. He’s wrong for Ohio.”
Rep. Tim Ryan is running for the resignation of GOP Senator Rob Portman’s seat against Republican JD Vance. DailyMail.com recently uncovered a 1995 police report accusing a young Ryan of throwing beer at the police and hurling vulgarities as officers tried to restrain an unruly bar patron.
Ryan’s comments about “the new Jim Crow” were not specifically about the police, but about the infrastructure of the American justice system as a whole. Speaking at Paine College in Georgia in 2019, he said, “I believe the current criminal justice system is racist. I believe in my heart it’s the new Jim Crow, a new version of it.”
But decades earlier, Ryan was literally targeting the police.
In the early hours of February 11, 1995, Ryan yelled “vulgarities” at officers as they tried to drag an unruly woman off the property in Bowling Green, Ohio. Ryan accused them of violating her civil rights.
He also threw beer at officers during the ordeal, according to a time court file recently obtained by DailyMail.com.
At the time, he also tried “to get out of trouble by claiming that his father was a friend of a Bowling Green administrator,” according to an archived article in the Akron Beacon Journal.
In 1999, while in law school, Ryan tried to have his criminal record cleared – but he failed to convince a judge that he had been “rehabilitated.”
Columbus Fraternal Order of Police President Jeff Simpson told DailyMail.com: “Given Tim Ryan’s track record of calling police officers the new Jim Crow and voting to waive qualified immunity, it’s no surprise this is how he’s feeling.” behaves in law enforcement’.
He tried to argue that his community service and work for his local member of the US House, Rep. Jim Traficant, were reason enough to prove that his criminal record should be sealed and the charges dropped.
Just three years later, Traficant was convicted of ten charges, including bribery and racketeering. Ryan was elected as Traficant’s successor.
In 2012, there was another confrontation with the law after police in Virginia determined that Ryan was “shaky on his feet.”
The police report, obtained by DailyMail.com, states that Ryan and the people he was with told officers they were returning to their hotel from a wedding. Police reported that he smelled alcohol and that Ryan had “glassy, bloodshot eyes.”
“He stated that he had only had a few beers and that he had difficulty walking because he had back problems,” the police report said.
Ryan refused to take a breath test and was put in the back of a police vehicle, where he was “less and less cooperative” and complained that he was too tall for his seat.
The felony charge was later dismissed, according to a 10-year-old Washington Post story about the incident.
DailyMail.com has contacted Ryan’s campaign for comment on the allegations and the statement from the fraternal order of police, but has heard nothing.
Fast-forward to 2022, and Ryan is locked in a tight race with his Donald Trump-backed opponent to replace outgoing GOP Senator Rob Portman.
A new Emerson College Polling/The Hill poll shows author and venture capitalist JD Vance Ryan leads at four percent.
Both Vance and Ryan have traded barbs over the other’s comments about law enforcement.
Ryan has reprimanded Vance for calling for the alcohol tobacco and firearms bureau to “abolish” and equate it with Vance “wanting to downgrade the police force.”
However, the Republican author and venture capitalist has seized Ryan’s voting record, demonstrating his support for ending qualified police immunity protection.
He also criticized Ryan for initially falsely blaming the police for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger who was profiled and murdered by white supremacists earlier that year.
Ryan also voted against a resolution condemning “police defunding” calls that Republicans had attempted to introduce when the landmark George Floyd Justice In Policing Act was passed.