Operation Revenue Stream: The Truth Behind Lorain’s Illegal Parking Enforcement

By Aaron Christopher Knapp, BSSW, LSW
Investigative Journalist, Court-Watch Reporter, and Editor of Unplugged.

🟡 REPORTING SPOTLIGHT:
Mark Puentes’ early coverage helped expose the cracks in Lorain’s ticketing system, making today’s accountability possible.

A Judge Who Saw Residents as Revenue

The moment Judge Mark Mihok opened his mouth and described parking enforcement as a “moneymaker,” the entire scandal snapped into focus. Those three words, casual and almost flippant, tossed out as if he were discussing a seasonal profit margin rather than the lives of real people, stripped away every excuse the city has tried to offer and exposed the truth far more clearly than anything uncovered in court filings or interviews.

Because once a sitting judge admits that the enforcement of criminal process is tied to generating income, everything that followed becomes predictable. It becomes inevitable. It becomes structurally explainable in a way no “mistake,” no “breakdown,” and no “unfortunate oversight” could ever justify.

Mihok’s statement was not an isolated slip. It was a window into the governing philosophy that allowed this system to thrive, a worldview in which court activity is no longer about the fair administration of justice but about the maintenance of revenue streams. Inside that worldview, a defective summons stops being a constitutional problem and instead becomes a lost opportunity. A void case stops being a due process concern and becomes an uncollected fee.

A confused resident trying to understand inconsistent notices stops being a person deserving clarity and instead becomes a delinquent account.

This is the mental framework that shapes every decision that follows, because when the primary metric is money rather than legality, the law itself becomes something that can be bypassed, shrugged off, or treated like a minor clerical suggestion rather than an obligation.

This is why auxiliary volunteers, civilians with no training, no certification, and no statutory authority, were quietly allowed to function as law enforcement officers. When the goal is revenue, qualifications become secondary. When the goal is revenue, no one slows down to verify whether a volunteer signing a summons is authorized under Criminal Rule 3 or Criminal Rule 4. When the goal is revenue, no one pauses long enough to confirm whether certified mail was actually sent as required by the ordinance. When the goal is revenue, no one asks whether jurisdiction actually exists. You simply move the case along because the machine depends on motion, not accuracy. That is exactly what happened. Over and over and over again.

Case after case crossed Judge Mihok’s bench, each stamped with the same glaring defects. A summons signed by someone who was not a peace officer under R.C. 2935.01. A complaint executed by someone who had no lawful authority to swear it. A service record that was incomplete, incorrect, or nonexistent. A defendant who had no notice of the hearing. And a Municipal Court still willing to advance the matter anyway. Instead of recognizing that jurisdiction never attached, the court treated each case as operationally valid. Instead of halting the process and demanding compliance with state law, the court permitted hundreds of residents to fall into a trapdoor built on unlawful process. Instead of protecting constitutional rights, the court protected its own financial metrics.

And throughout this entire period, Mihok spoke about these cases not in legal terms, not in constitutional terms, not in procedural terms, but in financial terms.

He was worried about collections going down. He was worried about losing revenue. He was worried that legislative reforms would shrink his “stream.” These are not the concerns of a judge committed to equity, fairness, and legal accuracy. These are the concerns of someone who views the bench as a cash register. These are the concerns of someone who sees the people before him not as citizens with rights but as walking balances in an accounting system. These are the concerns of a money changer, someone who treats the courtroom like a marketplace and the public like inventory.

When you view people as “revenue,” you stop viewing them as citizens with rights. You stop seeing defects in process as problems. You stop viewing unlawful cases as illegal. You start seeing them as income that must be preserved. This is why auxiliary volunteers were not questioned. This is why defective service was not caught. This is why legality was never verified. This is why hundreds of residents were suspended. This is why many only discovered their suspension when a journalist contacted them. The system was not designed to protect them. The system was designed to process them.

A judge with a revenue mindset will always place the priorities of the machine above the rights of the individual. And once the machine becomes the priority, the machine becomes the judge, the jury, and the silent architect of the harm. When someone who thinks this way holds the gavel, the machine always wins.

Judge Elwell’s Reversal Did Not Fix the Problem. It Deepened It.

When Judge Thomas Elwell first dismissed a batch of auxiliary-issued parking cases, many residents believed for a brief moment that the Municipal Court had finally recognized the depth of the legal failure in front of it. The dismissals gave the impression that the court understood that these tickets were never lawful to begin with, that the summonses were defective, that auxiliary volunteers had no statutory authority to initiate criminal process, and that the entire chain of cases had been built on a foundation that could not support any judicial action. For a moment, it looked as though the system had finally stopped the machine and acknowledged what The Marshall Project had exposed.

Then Elwell changed course. He walked into the courtroom the following week and informed residents that instead of dismissals, they would be given a choice. They could pay a fifty dollar fine or they could proceed to a bench trial. This pivot was not a small correction. It was a legally significant reversal that contradicted the basic principles governing criminal procedure. A judge cannot cure a void summons by offering a discount.

A judge cannot revive jurisdiction that never attached by inviting defendants to select a cheaper option. A judge cannot move forward with a case that should have been dismissed the moment the court saw an auxiliary signature on a criminal summons.

The summonses issued in these cases were invalid from the moment they were created. Criminal Rule 4 identifies exactly who may issue a summons. Auxiliary volunteers are not included. Criminal Rule 3 identifies who may swear a complaint. Auxiliary volunteers are not included. R.C. 2935.01 and 2935.03 define who is a peace officer and who may execute the functions of one. Auxiliary volunteers are not included. These defects are not procedural quirks. They destroy jurisdiction entirely, meaning the court has no authority to act on the case in any capacity.

Once jurisdiction fails at the outset, nothing that follows has legal effect. There is no lawful arraignment. There is no lawful plea. There is no lawful trial. There is no lawful fine. There is no lawful suspension. The case is void from the first moment ink touches the summons. The court cannot breathe life into a void document simply because the docket is full and the city prefers closure. The law does not authorize judicial creativity in place of statutory compliance.

Residents walked into the courtroom expecting the judge to follow the same legal logic that produced the earlier dismissals. Instead, they encountered a compromise that attempted to preserve some portion of the revenue stream while avoiding the complete collapse of every auxiliary-issued case. It was a solution crafted to manage optics rather than uphold legal principles. Residents were left trying to navigate a judicial landscape that still refused to acknowledge the core problem: the court is advancing cases that should never reach the courtroom at all.

• In the process, an even more troubling question emerged. If the judge understands the defects in these citations, and if he has dismissed some cases because of those defects, then what principled explanation exists for continuing any portion of this process?
• Why are residents with the same defective summonses being pushed toward paying fines or enduring trials while their neighbors had their cases dismissed entirely?
• Why is the court choosing inconsistent remedies for identical legal defects?
• The answer becomes uncomfortable once you understand the way Lorain’s court system has been functioning. The court is unwilling to acknowledge the scale of its own errors because doing so would require confronting the reality that hundreds of residents were processed through an unlawful system and suffered real harm.

This reversal also raises questions about selective enforcement. When the first wave of dismissals occurred, they were quiet and quick, as though the court hoped the issue would resolve itself with minimal public visibility.

The moment the dismissals became public and the Marshall Projects’ reporting escalated the scrutiny, the court shifted toward a different strategy, one that appeared to balance public pressure against the city’s desire to retain at least part of the financial output from these cases.

The residents caught in this shift became the unwilling test subjects in a legal experiment that had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with institutional self-preservation.

A judge’s first obligation is to protect the rights of the individual who stands before the court. The role is not to protect the city’s revenue. The role is not to protect a flawed ordinance. The role is not to protect the legitimacy of a process that never had legitimacy to begin with. The role is to apply the law. And the law is extremely clear. When an unauthorized person signs a summons, the court has no jurisdiction. There is nothing to adjudicate. There is nothing to negotiate. There is only dismissal.

By reversing himself and offering residents a fifty dollar fine or a bench trial, Judge Elwell inadvertently highlighted the very mindset that created this scandal in the first place. The court is not asking whether the case is lawful. The court is asking how to manage it. The court is not ensuring compliance with state law. The court is seeking a middle ground that preserves order. But judicial order that rests on unlawful summonses is not order at all. It is a performance built on shaky legal ground.

Residents deserve a consistent application of law. Residents deserve a court that dismisses every defective case, not only the ones that happen to land on the right day. Residents deserve a judiciary that understands the limits of its own authority and respects them even when doing so is inconvenient for the city budget. Residents deserve accountability from the bench, not creative maneuvering to salvage revenue from void cases.

Auxiliary Volunteers Had No Authority. Not Limited Authority. Not Partial Authority. No Authority At All. The Process Was Flawed From the First Signature.

The most important fact in this entire scandal is also the simplest one. These auxiliary volunteers had no legal authority to do any of the things the City of Lorain empowered them to do. This is not a matter of training. It is not a matter of confusion. It is not a matter of interpretation. The law in Ohio is direct, unmistakable, and impossible to misread. These individuals had no police powers whatsoever. They were not peace officers under R.C. 2935.01. They were not certified under R.C. 109.77. They were not authorized to detain anyone under R.C. 2935.03. They were not allowed to compel identification under R.C. 2921.29. They were not permitted to swear complaints under Criminal Rule 3. They were not permitted to issue or sign summonses under Criminal Rule 4. They were civilians. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Once you understand that, the entire scheme collapses under its own weight. Because a criminal summons signed by someone who has no legal authority to issue it is not defective in the way a typo is defective. It is void in the way counterfeit money is void. It has no force. It has no jurisdictional effect. It carries no legal command. It is the equivalent of a blank piece of paper pretending to be a command of the State of Ohio. That is the level of authority these summonses possessed when they left the hands of auxiliary volunteers. None. And the moment the city allowed civilians to participate in criminal process, the court had an obligation to reject those filings outright.

This was not a mistake that occurred halfway through the process. It was not something that became flawed when the clerk mishandled service or when the court failed to send certified mail. The flaw existed from the beginning. The entire legal sequence started in the wrong place. It started with a signature from a person who was legally incapable of signing that document. The process was structurally broken at the very first point of contact. Everything that came after that moment was not just questionable. It was invalid.

The city put these volunteers in uniforms and placed them in positions that signaled authority to the public. They stood at City Hall and questioned residents. They demanded identification even though the law gave them no power to compel it. They positioned themselves as gatekeepers for access to public meetings, something no civilian may control. They left tickets on windshields and signed the criminal portion of the citation as though they had personally served the driver. They acted in ways that belonged exclusively to certified law enforcement officers, even though the law never granted them a single fragment of that authority.

Residents had no reason to suspect that these volunteers lacked power. The city blurred the distinction intentionally. When a person in uniform with a radio and official stationery signs a document commanding you to appear in court, the average citizen assumes the command is lawful. Lorain exploited that assumption, then built an entire enforcement pipeline around it. The public was not informed that the person initiating their criminal case was legally prohibited from initiating anything. The city did not tell them that the summons was invalid from the moment it existed. And the court never told them that the case should have been dismissed without a hearing.

This is why hundreds of residents were harmed. They were not harmed because they parked incorrectly. They were harmed because the city built a criminal enforcement system on top of the signature of a person who had no power under state law. They were harmed because the court allowed the process to continue even though jurisdiction never attached. They were harmed because the city presented these volunteers as though they were officers, while state law clearly and unequivocally states that they are not.

No matter how the city tries to spin this, the truth remains the same. A criminal summons signed by an unauthorized person is void at creation. A void summons cannot be cured by payment. A void summons cannot be revived by a judge offering a fifty dollar resolution. A void summons does not become valid simply because many were issued. A void summons does not ripen into legitimacy because it was processed routinely. It remains void because the person who signed it had no authority under Ohio law. The entire legal scaffold collapses the moment you remove the false assumption of authority.

The auxiliary volunteers had zero legal authority. The process was fatally flawed from the first second of its existence. The court advanced cases that were void on their face. The city enforced laws it was not allowed to enforce through people who had no power to enforce them. And hundreds of residents paid the price for a system that was illegitimate at its starting point, illegitimate in its execution, and remains illegitimate in its outcomes.

The Law Leaves No Wiggle Room. What These Volunteers Did Fits the Definition of Impersonating a Peace Officer Exactly.

Ohio’s impersonation statute is not obscure. It is not vague. It is not the kind of law that requires expert interpretation or advanced legal theory. It is written in plain English because the conduct it targets is simple to identify. R.C. 2921.51 does not play games with definitions. The statute says that a person commits the offense of impersonating a peace officer when that person pretends to be a peace officer while performing an act that only a peace officer is legally permitted to perform. That is the entire framework. It is not complicated. It is not open to debate. It is one of the clearest sections of the criminal code.

ORC 2921.51

Now compare that definition to the actual conduct of the auxiliary volunteers in Lorain. Signing a criminal summons is an act that belongs exclusively to a peace officer, a magistrate, a clerk, or a prosecutor. It is not something a civilian can do. Initiating a criminal complaint is an act reserved by Criminal Rule 3 for individuals who are authorized by law. No auxiliary volunteer appears in that rule. Ordering a resident to appear in court is a command backed by the power of the state. It is not something a volunteer may impose. Demanding identification from residents inside a government building is a function of investigative authority. Auxiliary volunteers possess none of that authority. Controlling who can enter a public meeting or a public building is an act rooted in public safety powers that private citizens do not have. The volunteers attempted to do this anyway.

Every one of these actions is restricted by law. Every one of these actions can only be performed by certified peace officers or legally authorized officials. Every one of these actions was performed by auxiliary volunteers who had none of the legally required training or certification and none of the authority conferred by the Ohio Revised Code. And the situation becomes even more serious when you consider how the volunteers presented themselves. They wore uniforms issued by the city. They carried radios. They stood at official posts. They interacted with residents as if they were state actors. They delivered commands in an authoritative manner that conveyed governmental power. They held themselves out as officers because the city placed them in roles designed to make the public believe exactly that.

The impersonation statute does not require the volunteer to verbally declare, “I am a police officer.” It requires only that the person pretend to act with the authority of a police officer while performing police functions. The law is concerned with conduct, not slogans. When a volunteer signs a criminal summons, that is conduct. When a volunteer initiates enforcement interaction, that is conduct. When a volunteer represents himself as someone who can compel your attendance in court, that is conduct. When a volunteer tries to regulate public access to city property, that is conduct. When a volunteer demands your name, your identification, or your reason for entering a public meeting, that is conduct.

And under R.C. 2921.51, that conduct is not allowed. It is not tolerated. It is criminal.

There is no reading of the statute that excuses what the volunteers did. There is no creative interpretation that saves it. There is no legal theory in which a civilian can put on a uniform, carry state-issued materials, and initiate criminal process without triggering the impersonation statute. The volunteers may not have understood the legal consequences of their actions, but the law does not ask whether they understood. The law asks whether they did it. They did. The law asks whether the acts they performed belong solely to peace officers. They do. The law asks whether the volunteers acted in a way that caused citizens to believe they were officers. They did that as well.

This was not a small breach. This was not a misunderstanding. This was a complete and total collapse of lawful boundaries. It was civilians assuming the mantle of state authority, performing acts that only certified officers can perform, signing documents they had no legal power to sign, and doing so in a manner designed to make the public believe they were acting with the full backing of the City of Lorain.

This is impersonation. It fits the statutory definition perfectly. And once the public understands how direct the law is and how exactly the volunteers matched that definition, the city will not be able to hide behind excuses, explanations, or sudden claims of confusion.

SIDEBAR: Do Auxiliary Volunteers Have a Duty to Refuse Unlawful Orders? Ohio Says Yes

There is a persistent misconception in municipal government that if a city official or department head instructs someone to perform a task, the responsibility for the legality of that task falls entirely on the city. That belief does not survive even basic examination of Ohio law. When the person receiving the instruction is a civilian volunteer and the instruction involves performing an act reserved exclusively for peace officers, the law imposes a separate and independent duty on the individual to refuse.

Ohio does not recognize a defense of “the city told me to do it” when the conduct involves impersonating an officer or exercising law enforcement powers without legal authority. The impersonation statute, R.C. 2921.51, has no exception for volunteers. It has no exception for municipal directives. It has no exception for good intentions or mistaken assumptions. It prohibits any person from pretending to be a peace officer while performing functions that only peace officers may perform. The conduct itself is what triggers the offense, not the identity or motives of the volunteer.

Signing a criminal summons is a police function. Initiating a criminal complaint is a police function. Ordering a person to appear in court is a police function. Controlling entry into a government building is a police function. Demanding identification from a resident is a police function. These powers are limited by statute to individuals who meet the legal definition of peace officer under R.C. 2935.01 and who satisfy the certification requirements under R.C. 109.77. Auxiliary volunteers meet neither requirement. They are not recognized by the state as law enforcement, and no city can override that statutory limitation by internal policy or informal assignment.

The law has been consistent on this issue for decades. A person cannot rely on unlawful orders as a shield against criminal liability. Ohio courts have rejected the idea that someone can defend illegal conduct by claiming they were simply following instructions from a superior. The principle is simple. A government employee or volunteer may not do what the government itself has no authority to do. If the action violates state law, the individual who performs it remains accountable regardless of who requested it.

This means the auxiliary volunteers who signed summonses, demanded identification, or performed other police functions were not only acting outside their authority but were also required by law to decline those tasks. Their obligation to obey state law is not eliminated because the city normalized unlawful practices or created a false impression of authority through uniforms, radios, and official-sounding assignments. A volunteer cannot acquire police powers through implication. Those powers come only from statute. Without the statute, the powers do not exist.

Ohio law therefore places a clear duty on the volunteers themselves. They must refuse to perform actions that the law reserves exclusively for peace officers. If they perform those actions anyway, they assume the legal consequences of that decision. The city may face liability for creating the environment that encouraged the conduct, but the volunteers face liability for their own actions. The law is structured this way to protect residents from those who attempt to exercise government authority without meeting the state’s legal requirements for doing so.

In this scandal, the auxiliary volunteers were instructed to act like officers even though the law did not permit it. They were placed in situations where the public would naturally assume they had lawful authority. They were given tasks that only certified officers may perform. And they carried out those tasks without refusing, without verifying legality, and without recognizing the boundaries they were required to honor. Ohio law does not excuse that choice. It treats the conduct as impersonation because the statute is designed to prevent exactly this scenario.

A Judge Who Continued Accepting Guilty Pleas He Knew Were Illegal

There is a point in every legal scandal where the spotlight can no longer remain on the city, the policies, the volunteers, or the administrative culture. Eventually the focus must shift to the person sitting on the bench, because the judge is the final gatekeeper in the criminal justice process. The judge is the one who determines whether a case has jurisdiction, whether a summons is valid, whether service was lawful, and whether a charge can legally proceed. When a judge knowingly accepts guilty pleas on cases that were initiated without lawful authority, the weight of the scandal changes. It stops being an administrative failure and becomes a judicial failure.

Judge Thomas Elwell reached that point the moment he admitted dismissing dozens of auxiliary-issued cases because of defects in the tickets and the process. The moment he made that acknowledgment, he confirmed that he understood the core problem. He knew these tickets were being issued by individuals who had no authority to initiate criminal process. He knew the summonses were invalid when they entered his courtroom. He knew that service was inconsistent and in many cases nonexistent. He knew that a case built on an unlawful summons cannot proceed. And despite knowing all of that, he continued to accept pleas from residents who were unaware that the charges against them were void from the start.

This is not a small procedural oversight. It is a fundamental violation of the duty of the court. A judge has an obligation to ensure jurisdiction before accepting any plea of guilt. This is not optional. It is the basic structure of criminal procedure. Jurisdiction is the first question in any case. Without jurisdiction, the court has no power to impose a fine, no power to accept a plea, no power to suspend a license, and no power to enter a conviction. Everything becomes legally meaningless the moment the summons is identified as unlawful.

Judge Elwell cannot claim ignorance. Once he acknowledged the defects and dismissed cases, he established that he knew the legal structure was broken. Yet he returned to the bench and began accepting pleas anyway. He allowed residents, many of whom arrived confused and intimidated, to plead guilty to charges that should never have existed. He permitted the entry of convictions that were void. He allowed the collection of fines that were not legally owed. He enabled the continuation of a process that he already recognized was unlawful.

When a judge dismisses a group of cases because the process is flawed, that flaw applies to every other case initiated through the same process. The defect does not magically disappear for the next defendant. It does not vary based on the day of the week or the number of people in the courtroom.

The legal defect applies universally, and a judge is obligated to apply it universally. Yet Elwell treated identical cases differently. Some residents walked out with dismissals. Others walked out with convictions. The only difference between them was timing, not law. That type of inconsistency is not lawful discretion. It is arbitrary enforcement, and it creates unequal treatment under the law.

The situation becomes even more troubling when we consider the power dynamics inside the courtroom. Residents often enter municipal court without legal representation. They trust the judge to explain the process and apply the law fairly. When a resident stands before the bench and hears a judge offer a plea option, that resident assumes the underlying case is legally valid. They assume the process is correct. They assume the judge would not be advancing a case that the judge knows is defective. They assume the court would not accept a guilty plea on an illegal charge. They make decisions based on the belief that the judge is acting within the bounds of state law. That belief is the foundation of public trust in the judiciary.

When a judge accepts guilty pleas on void charges, that trust collapses.

It is not enough for the court to say that residents had a choice. A choice that is based on inaccurate information is not a legally meaningful choice. A choice presented by a judge who knows the case is invalid is not a legitimate plea. It is a coerced plea. The coercion does not come from threats or intimidation. It comes from the imbalance of knowledge. The judge understands the legal defect. The resident does not. The judge has the power to end the case instantly. The resident does not. The judge knows the summons is void and that the case cannot lawfully proceed. The resident does not.

This is not a question of bad optics. This is a question of judicial integrity.

A judge cannot allow a person to plead guilty to a charge that the judge knows was unlawfully initiated. That violates due process. That violates the judge’s oath. That violates the entire purpose of the judicial role. The court is supposed to be the final safeguard. It is supposed to prevent unlawful prosecutions. It is supposed to stop cases that lack jurisdiction. It is supposed to protect residents from defective process. It is not supposed to continue processing those cases because it is easier, faster, or more convenient than fully shutting down an unlawful system.

Judge Elwell’s decision to accept pleas after acknowledging the defect did not just perpetuate the harm. It magnified it. It legitimizes an illegitimate process. It created convictions that should never have existed. It created fines that should never have been collected. It created long-term consequences for residents whose cases were void before they even reached the courtroom. And it created a deeper crisis of confidence in the court itself, because residents can no longer assume that the judge will stop an invalid case when the law requires him to.

SIDEBAR: What Judicial Conduct Rules Does This Potentially Violate

There is a point in every judicial controversy where the statutory analysis ends and the ethical analysis begins. The law determines whether a summons is valid. The rules of procedure determine whether jurisdiction attaches. The judge cannot change these principles. They are fixed and mandatory. When a judge proceeds anyway, the issue shifts from legality to judicial conduct. The Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct exists for this exact reason, and several provisions are directly implicated by a judge who continues to accept guilty pleas on charges he already knows were unlawfully issued.

The first and most immediate provision is Rule 1.1, which requires judges to comply with the law at all times. This rule is simple. It does not permit exceptions based on convenience, tradition, or pressure to keep a docket moving. When a judge understands that a summons is legally defective and continues to act as though it is valid, the judge is not complying with the law. A judge cannot knowingly advance a case that lacks jurisdiction. The obligation to follow the law does not dissolve because the resident is standing at the podium ready to enter a plea. Jurisdiction cannot be created by agreement. It either exists or it does not.

The next provision is Rule 2.2, which requires judges to apply the law fairly, consistently, and without favoring or disfavoring any party. A judge who dismissed some auxiliary-issued summonses on Monday but accepts guilty pleas on identical summonses on Wednesday is not applying the law consistently. The legal defect does not change based on the date of the hearing, the volume of the docket, the attitude of the defendant, or the administrative preferences of the court. The inconsistency alone raises serious concerns under this rule because it suggests that the outcome depended on timing rather than legal principle.

Rule 2.6 is also implicated because the judge must ensure that every person has the right to be heard. This rule is not satisfied by simply allowing the resident to speak. It requires the court to ensure the resident understands the legal framework that governs the case. A resident cannot meaningfully be “heard” if they are making decisions based on incorrect assumptions about the legality of the charge. The judge cannot fulfill this duty if the court withholds the information that the summons is unlawful. Without that knowledge, a resident’s choice to plead guilty is not truly voluntary or informed. It is a decision made in the dark.

Rule 2.9 prohibits judges from allowing outside pressures, political considerations, or administrative concerns to influence judicial decisions. If the judge continued accepting pleas because dismissing every defective case would overwhelm the docket, create administrative inconvenience, or generate political frustration for the city, then the judge allowed external pressures to override legal duties. Judicial independence is not a slogan. It is a functional requirement. The judge must apply the law even when the result is administratively unpleasant or publicly unpopular.

Rule 2.16 requires judges to take corrective action when they learn that court personnel or other system actors are engaging in misconduct. Once Judge Elwell recognized that auxiliary volunteers were unlawfully initiating criminal summonses, the court had an affirmative duty to intervene. This could include notifying the city administration, halting all cases arising from the flawed process, or issuing a formal order clarifying the court’s jurisdictional limits. Continuing to process defective cases while taking no meaningful corrective action conflicts with this rule because it allows a known legal violation to continue harming residents.

Perhaps the most significant rule is Rule 1.2, which requires judges to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary. Confidence in the judiciary depends on the belief that judges apply the law objectively and protect citizens from unlawful government action. When the public witnesses a judge dismissing dozens of cases as unlawful and then turning around days later to accept guilty pleas in cases with the same defect, the court’s integrity is called into question. The public cannot distinguish between cases dismissed because they were defective and cases the judge decided to advance despite the same defect. The inconsistency damages the perception of fairness and undermines trust in the system.

The Ohio Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that judicial ethics are not aspirational ideals. They are mandatory rules that safeguard the legitimacy of the courts. A judge cannot selectively apply the law. A judge cannot continue processing cases that the judge knows cannot proceed. A judge cannot accept pleas on charges that would be dismissed if the resident had not chosen to plead guilty. A judge cannot sit silently while residents unknowingly admit guilt to a charge that is invalid from the moment it was written. These actions raise serious and unavoidable ethical concerns.

It is not the responsibility of the resident to identify jurisdictional defects. It is not the responsibility of the resident to know the limitations of auxiliary volunteers. It is not the responsibility of the resident to challenge the legality of the summons. The responsibility belongs to the judge. When the judge fails to uphold that responsibility, the issue does not remain a simple administrative oversight. It becomes a matter of judicial conduct that strikes at the core of public trust.

SIDEBAR: How Residents Can Move to Vacate These Pleas Immediately

There is a crucial distinction between a court’s authority and a defendant’s decision to plead guilty. A guilty plea does not magically cure a jurisdictional defect. A guilty plea does not transform an invalid summons into a lawful one. A guilty plea does not repair a process that was broken from the moment the auxiliary volunteer placed the ticket on the windshield. When a summons is void, the entire case is void. That principle remains true even if the resident chose to plead guilty believing the charge was legitimate.

Ohio courts have long recognized that a judgment entered without subject matter jurisdiction is void. A void judgment is not simply incorrect. It is legally nonexistent. It carries no legal force. It produces no lawful consequences. It can be challenged at any time. It can be vacated years after it was entered. There is no time limit. There is no procedural barrier. A resident does not need to prove innocence. They only need to prove that the court never had jurisdiction. That is exactly the situation created by Lorain’s auxiliary ticket program.

Residents can move to vacate these convictions immediately by filing a motion arguing that the summons was unlawful because it was issued and signed by a person who lacked the statutory authority to initiate criminal process. The Ohio Revised Code is unambiguous. Only certified peace officers, clerks, magistrates, judges, and prosecutors may issue criminal summonses. Auxiliary volunteers are not listed anywhere in these statutes. They are not eligible. They do not qualify. They do not possess the training or certification required by law. This means the summons is invalid on its face.

If the summons is invalid, the court lacked jurisdiction from the beginning. Without jurisdiction, the court could not accept a plea. Without jurisdiction, the court could not impose a fine. Without jurisdiction, the court could not suspend a license. Every action that followed was built on a foundation that did not exist. A resident does not need to argue complicated constitutional theories to challenge this. The argument is simple. The court never had the authority to act.

The standard motion to vacate a void judgment is direct and straightforward. It asks the court to acknowledge that the case could not lawfully proceed. The judge cannot deny the motion by claiming the resident waived the defect through a guilty plea. Jurisdiction cannot be created by waiver. Jurisdiction cannot be created by consent. Jurisdiction cannot be created by silence. This principle is foundational. The Ohio Supreme Court has reinforced it for decades.

Residents who paid fines, reinstatement fees, or court costs may additionally seek reimbursement once the conviction is vacated. A void judgment cannot serve as the legal basis to extract money from a resident. When a payment was made as a result of a void proceeding, the resident is entitled to restitution. If the city refuses, the resident may pursue civil action to recover the money and may also seek damages for unlawful seizure, denial of due process, and related harms.

The process is not limited to people who pleaded guilty. Residents who missed hearings or had warrants issued may also file motions to vacate because the underlying summons was invalid. The entire chain of events is flawed by the same jurisdictional defect. Residents do not need the assistance of an attorney to file the motion, although representation is beneficial. They can file a written motion with the Municipal Court requesting that the judgment be vacated on the grounds that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the summons was issued by someone with no statutory authority.

The moment the city allowed auxiliary volunteers to impersonate police authority, it created a legal risk that extends far beyond parking tickets. It created a system in which residents were induced to stand in front of a judge, admit guilt to invalid charges, pay fines that should never have been assessed, and suffer consequences that had no lawful basis. A motion to vacate is the first step in undoing that damage. It is the mechanism by which residents can reclaim their rights and force the court to acknowledge what the law already makes clear.

Residents do not need permission from the city to file these motions. They do not need a policy change. They do not need a legislative fix. They need only the law that existed the day the auxiliary volunteer placed the ticket on the windshield. That law has not changed. The court’s jurisdiction has not changed. The defect that destroyed these cases is as present now as it was then.

A resident who wants to vacate their conviction can begin the process today. The law is on their side. The defect is undeniable. The burden rests on the court to explain why it continued to accept guilty pleas on charges it knew were invalid. The resident does not have to defend their choices. The court must defend its own.

SIDEBAR: Potential Class Action Exposure and Why Residents Should Consider Speaking With a Qualified Attorney

The scale of the auxiliary ticket scandal raises a question that Lorain officials will desperately try to avoid. That question is whether the city has exposed itself to a level of liability that can no longer be addressed on a case-by-case basis. When hundreds of residents are affected by the same unlawful practice, when the same legal defect exists in every citation, when the same unconstitutional process is applied across months or years, and when the harm is not isolated but structural, courts begin to evaluate the situation through the lens of collective impact rather than individual grievance. That is where the possibility of a class action enters the picture.

A class action becomes viable when a government’s conduct harms a large group of people in the same way, and when the claims arise from an identical or nearly identical set of facts. Lorain’s auxiliary ticket program created exactly that circumstance. The tickets were issued the same way. The summonses were defective for the same reason. The due process violations occurred across the same procedural stages. The injuries were nearly identical. Licenses were suspended based on void proceedings. Residents paid fines and reinstatement fees for charges that had no legal foundation. Defaults were entered in cases where residents were never properly notified. The city benefited financially from a system that never had lawful jurisdiction. That is the very definition of a uniform harm.

Courts evaluating class action claims look at whether the legal issues are common to all affected individuals. In Lorain, the central question in every auxiliary ticket case is whether a summons issued by a person with no statutory authority is valid. That question has one answer. It is not valid. Once that defect is confirmed, every case begins to unravel the same way. Jurisdiction is absent. The charges are void. The fines are unenforceable. The suspensions are unlawful. The damages are measurable. This uniformity greatly strengthens the potential for a certified class.

The city’s financial exposure does not stop at refunds or reinstatement fee reimbursements. Class actions involving improper criminal process often include damages for lost wages, transportation expenses, emotional distress from unlawful suspensions, costs associated with reinstating driving privileges, and civil rights violations stemming from the misuse of government authority. When officers or volunteers impersonate law enforcement, the harm is not limited to the cost of the ticket. It expands into constitutional violations that carry their own statutory remedies.

Lorain’s conduct also raises questions about “policy or custom” liability under Monell, which determines when a municipality can be held responsible under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Under Monell, a city is liable when the constitutional violation results from an official policy, a widespread practice, or a failure to train that rises to the level of deliberate indifference. Lorain allowed auxiliary volunteers to act as police. Lorain accepted their summonses. Lorain processed their charges. Lorain suspended licenses in cases that had no legal foundation. The practice was systematic and lasted for years. This is the very pattern that establishes municipal liability.

Residents who believe they were harmed by this system should understand that class actions require experienced civil rights counsel to coordinate the litigation, gather records, interview affected residents, identify all categories of damages, and determine whether the Municipal Court, the city, individual officials, or the auxiliary volunteers themselves may be liable. This is not a situation where residents should rely on online templates or casual legal advice. This is an instance where professional representation matters, because the potential claims are complex and the stakes are high.

Residents should consider reaching out to a qualified attorney who has experience in civil rights litigation, unlawful process claims, and municipal liability. Attorneys with this background understand how to evaluate systemic harm, how to measure damages across a large group of residents, and how to challenge a city that has allowed a defective enforcement system to operate unchecked. In Lorain County, one such attorney is Robert J. Gargasz, who has extensive experience litigating government misconduct cases and who understands the legal framework necessary to bring unified claims when an entire community has been affected by the same unlawful practice.

A class action does not just compensate residents for what they lost. It also forces a government to answer for systemic failures that it otherwise would ignore. Lorain did not catch this problem on its own. Lorain did not correct this problem until outside pressure forced acknowledgment. A class action is one of the few tools available to residents that compels transparency, accountability, and reform when a government has already proven it will not correct itself voluntarily and will only change course when its misconduct is dragged into the light.

This Is Not The End Of The Story. It Is The Moment The Story Becomes Impossible To Ignore.

At some point, the pattern in Lorain stops looking like a series of unrelated problems and starts looking like exactly what it is, a method of governing. A city that uses auxiliary volunteers as fake police is the same city that treats parking tickets as criminal cases, the same city that allows a judge to talk about residents as “revenue,” the same city that lets a clerk ignore certified mail requirements, the same city that pretends a void summons can be rescued by a fifty dollar plea deal, and the same city that only adjusts course when outside journalists drag everything into daylight. None of this is random. It is a culture that has grown comfortable ignoring the law and then acting shocked when someone finally notices.

Every resident who lost a license, every resident who paid a fine or reinstatement fee, every resident who walked into that courtroom believing the charge was valid was not simply unlucky. They were processed through a system that never bothered to ask if it had the right to touch them in the first place. The tickets were unlawful at the moment they were signed. The summonses were void at the moment they were issued. The court knew, or should have known, that jurisdiction never attached. Yet hundreds of people were pushed through anyway, treated not as citizens whose rights needed protecting, but as units in a predictable stream of money flowing from the public into a machine that was never supposed to exist in this form.

Part One of this exposé has been about proving that the system itself was illegitimate at its starting point. The auxiliary volunteers had no authority at all. The summonses they signed carried no lawful power. The Municipal Court advanced cases that were void on their face. Judges who should have been the final line of defense became participants in the problem, either by viewing residents as financial inputs or by accepting pleas on charges they already knew were rotten at the core. The law in Ohio is clear. The process here was not law. It was theater with real world consequences.

The question now is what Lorain intends to do about it. A city that actually respects the law would move to vacate these cases, restore licenses, refund every dollar, notify every person who was harmed, and begin a full and public investigation into how this happened and who allowed it to continue. A court that respects its own oath would stop accepting a single additional plea until every auxiliary issued case is identified and addressed. A government that truly sees its citizens as more than “revenue” would not wait for another lawsuit or another headline to force its hand. It would act because what happened here is wrong, and because correcting it is not optional, it is mandatory.

That is what a healthy system would do. Lorain has not shown yet that it is that system.

So this is where Part One ends, not with a bow tied neatly on a scandal that has somehow “resolved,” but with a clear record of what has actually occurred. Auxiliary volunteers impersonated powers they never had. The city allowed it. The Municipal Court processed it. Judges either looked away or leaned into the stream. Residents paid the price. The story does not stop here because the harm has not been undone and the accountability has not begun. It stops here because the next chapter belongs to you, the people who were dragged into this machine, and to the lawyers, advocates, and investigators who now have to decide what to do with what has been exposed.

In Part Two, we are going to talk about that reckoning. We are going to talk about how residents can move to vacate these cases, how judicial conduct can be challenged when judges knowingly advance void charges, how impersonation of a peace officer is not a theoretical concept but a crime with real consequences, and how a city that has treated its own citizens as a revenue stream may now find itself on the receiving end of something it thought it could avoid forever, a full scale legal and public accountability process that it does not control.

About the Author

Written and reported by Aaron Christopher Knapp, BSSW, LSW, investigative journalist, editor of Lorain Politics Unplugged, and independent researcher focused on public government accountability, Ohio civil-rights litigation, and systemic transparency breakdowns inside municipal systems. My analysis is drawn entirely from public records, sworn statements, statutory texts, case law, and firsthand interviews, all of which are documented throughout this series. I stand on the side of evidence and recordkeeping, not political convenience.

Legal and Ethical Disclaimer

This article is a journalistic analysis based solely on information contained in public records, statutory provisions, publicly available case law, and interviews. It reflects investigative reporting and commentary only. Nothing in this publication should be interpreted as legal advice, guidance, instruction, or the formation of any attorney-client relationship. Readers who believe they may have been harmed, misled, or affected by any of the issues described in this investigation should consult directly with a qualified attorney licensed in the State of Ohio who can evaluate their specific circumstances. All individuals discussed in this reporting are presumed innocent of wrongdoing unless proven otherwise in a court of law. This investigative series exists for the purpose of public understanding, government transparency, and community awareness.

About The Author