WARREN — Noah Linnen, a former Warren police officer who lost his job after making up a story about being shot at in January 2020, is back at the Trumbull County jail on a parole violation, jail records show.

Linnen, 24, was booked into the jail Friday afternoon, but records don’t show what the parole violation is. According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Linnen was paroled on June 11. He was sentenced in March to nine months at the Toledo Correctional Institution, and could be ordered to finish that sentence if he is found guilty of violating his parole.

On Jan. 13, 2020, Linnen told investigators that a black man in a hoodie shot at him following a traffic stop. The claim resulted in multiple police agencies searching for the suspect, who it later turned out did not exist.

During his sentencing in March, Linnen apologized for his actions.

“I had been experiencing a great deal of stress from my personal and professional lives that I clearly could not cope with,” Linnen said at his hearing. “I thought I could handle everything on my own. I was wrong.”

Seeking help from doctors and psychiatrists, Linnen said he was diagnosed with what he described as a serious disorder, which he did not specify.

“All of those factors led me down a path of mistakes, deceptions and extremely poor judgment,” Linnen said. “I know my actions cannot go unpunished. I caused panic in the community. I caused citizens of the African-American community to be part of it.”

While recognizing that Linnen did not have a criminal record prior to last year’s incident, Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court emphasized that Linnen’s actions could have caused serious injury or death.

“There were people arrested at gunpoint,” Logan said. “The allegation of a black man in a hoodie is pretty unbelievable, especially in the light of what is happening across the nation at this time.”

Logan said it was only through the swift and efficient investigation done by area law enforcement officers that someone — whether it was a police officer or a black man — was not hurt.

Logan sentenced him to nine months in prison for tampering with evidence and six months each for inducing panic and disrupting public services. Because the sentences were to run at the same time, Linnen would have only spent nine months in prison. The ODRC website indicates Linnen was released on good behavior.

Linnen, however, also was ordered to pay a fine of $10,171, which is the cost of the investigation.

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