A Bowling Green judge on Monday effectively ended former Lorain police Officer Timothy Gerek Jr.’s efforts to eliminate his criminal record.

Bowling Green Municipal Court Judge Mark Reddin reinstated a 1987 conviction for making false alarms that he had thrown out in January 2008.

That means Gerek’s bid to expunge a 2002 assault conviction in Lorain County Common Pleas Court also will fail, because expungements are  granted only to offenders with a single criminal conviction, according to Bowling Green City Prosecutor Matt Reger.

Reger said Gerek, 42, didn’t tell Reddin during the 2008 hearing about the assault charge or a 1990 DUI conviction that Lorain Municipal Court Judge Mark Mihok reduced to reckless operation in September.

Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Peter Gauthier had argued during a hearing last month that Gerek shouldn’t have his 2002 case, which he pleaded down from rape and domestic violence charges, sealed because of the previous convictions, even if they were reduced or thrown out.

Gauthier also told Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Edward Zaleski that Gerek agreed in the plea deal to a lifetime ban on working in law enforcement and that agreement needed to remain public. Gerek, who spent 10 years as a Lorain police officer, resigned after the 2002 conviction.

Reger said he believes Gerek deliberately mislead Reddin.

“I’m more and more convinced he was trying to play a game,” he said.

Had he known about the other criminal cases, Reger said he would have vigorously opposed the request to throw out the 1987 case, which Gerek had described as a youthful indiscretion. Reger said he doubts Reddin would have granted the request if he’d known the extent of Gerek’s criminal record.

“The judge felt there had been a misrepresentation or a fraud on the court,” Reger said.

Gerek, who is now a non-practicing attorney and commercial airline pilot living in Texas, should have known better, Reger said.

“He’s an attorney,” he said. “He owes a duty to the court to reveal things such as this.”

Mark Guedtner, Gerek’s attorney in the Bowling Green case, said at the hearing Monday that he, too, hadn’t known about his client’s other crimes, Reger said, adding that he believed Guedtner.

Guedtner declined to comment on the case through his secretary.

Jack Bradley, the Lorain attorney handling the expungement case, said during last month’s hearing that Gerek needed to have his record cleaned up so he could fly into Canada in his capacity as a pilot, something made difficult because of strict immigration rules in place about who can enter Canada.

Zaleski had delayed a decision on whether to seal Gerek’s 2002 conviction until after the Bowling Green case was resolved.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

 

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