YOUNGSTOWN — The attorney for Brian Flynn, fired as a Youngstown police lieutenant in December 2022, argued to the 7th District Court of Appeals that a judge made the correct decision when upholding an arbitrator’s ruling requiring the city to reinstate the officer with back pay and interest.

Kay Cremeans, Flynn’s attorney, wrote Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney “properly recognized (her) ability to vacate an arbitration award, limited to the very narrow and specific grounds set forth in (state law), the absence of which required the court to confirm the award.”

Cremeans also wrote: “An arbitrator does not exceed his authority when he interprets the just cause provision of a collective bargaining agreement and determines that the appropriate discipline is a two-week suspension.”

Arbitrator Jerry B. Sellman filed a binding decision Dec. 26, 2024, that the city shouldn’t have fired Flynn.

The city filed March 26, 2025, with common pleas court disputing Sellman’s decision that it should have suspended Flynn for two weeks without pay “in light of certain mitigating circumstances and the employer’s progressive disciplinary procedures” rather than fire him.

Sellman ordered Flynn be reinstated with no loss in seniority or benefits and with back pay though that amount should be offset by any compensation he’s received since his firing. Flynn was hired in September 2023 by the village of Poland as a police officer.

In her Nov. 20 decision, Sweeney wrote: “The court finds that there is a rational nexus between the collective bargaining agreement and the arbitration award. The collective bargaining agreement requires the employer to have just cause to discipline an employee. The arbitrator determined that the employer did not have just cause to terminate Lt. Flynn and modified the termination to a two-week suspension.”

Sweeney added: “There is no limitation on the arbitrator’s authority to modify the discipline. Since the award draws its essence from the labor agreement and is not unlawful, arbitrary or capricious, the court hereby confirms the arbitration award.”

The city filed an appeal Dec. 22 seeking to overturn Sweeney’s Nov. 20 decision in favor of the Fraternal Order of Police, Ohio Labor Council, which represents Flynn. The city wants the appeals court to remand the matter back to arbitration to consider whether Flynn’s conduct was serious enough to be fired.

Sellman determined Flynn “did engage in conduct that constituted neglect of duty, conduct unbecoming, incompetence and violations of standards of conduct for supervisors, managers and administrators,” but the city shouldn’t have fired him.

Flynn was charged with 14 misdemeanor counts of dereliction of duty, but all counts were dismissed.

In Cremeans’ response to the appeal, she wrote: “The court properly denied the employer’s motion to modify and vacate the award and granted the FOP’s motion to confirm the award. In its appeal to this court, the employer’s sole argument is that the arbitrator failed to make an express determination that Lt. Flynn’s conduct was not a ‘serious offense’ prior to reducing the termination to a two-week suspension.”

Flynn was fired Dec. 2, 2022, after an investigation determined he failed to assign detectives to about 40 referrals from the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force involving alleged child abuse and child pornography cases.

Flynn was the head of the Family Investigative Services Unit, now called the Special Victims Unit, and a Youngstown police officer since 1998.

Before his firing, Flynn was on paid administrative leave for more than 20 months.

A criminal investigation was conducted by Detective Brian Breeden of the Summit County Sheriff’s Office at the request of Jeff Limbian, then the Youngstown law director. Breeden turned over his investigation to the Youngstown Law Department, which filed the 14 misdemeanor counts in October 2022 in city municipal court.

Paul Siegferth, who was Flynn’s attorney in the Youngstown Municipal Court case, filed a motion to dismiss contending the city prosecutor’s office failed to prove at a May 2023 hearing that no information from the police department’s internal affairs investigation was used in the criminal investigation of Flynn.

A judge in Youngstown Municipal Court dismissed Flynn’s case in June 2023, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling — Garrity v. New Jersey — prohibiting the use in a criminal matter of any “compelled statement” taken from a public employee during an internal affairs investigation.

The 7th District Court of Appeals in March 2024 ruled against the city, which appealed the municipal court’s decision, saying the judge’s ruling “in this case was the proper remedy.”

Sellman wrote in his decision that there is no dispute that Flynn “intentionally failed to act upon or follow-through on” the referrals from the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

He wrote: “The arbitrator does not find from the evidence that (Flynn) purposefully flouted his duties to enforce the law. He clearly made incorrect assumptions and his reliance on those assumptions resulted in his violation of” city police rules.

In one case, Sellman wrote, a juvenile was sexually abused for more than 18 months before a county sheriff intervened and the perpetrator was arrested. Another case, Sellman wrote, involved six victims with the suspect sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Cremeans wrote Flynn “was not aware that he would be receiving tips for which he was responsible for investigating,” and his unit didn’t “have the dedicated equipment and workspace needed to investigate” the cases.

She wrote that then-police Chief Carl Davis drafted a letter on Aug. 2, 2021, suspending Flynn for two weeks, but it was never given to the officer.

Sellman wrote considering Flynn’s 26-year career and “his unfounded, yet mistaken, belief that others were handling” the cybertips as well as the lack of oversight from the state agency, he should be suspended without pay for two weeks, which was the initial decision of the city before filing criminal charges.

Sellman wrote the city’s contract with the police ranking officers union calls for progressive discipline.

The city argued the policy doesn’t apply if the conduct is serious.

Cremeans wrote: “There is no limitation in the collective bargaining agreement that precludes the arbitrator from modifying disciplinary action imposed by the employer. Thus, the arbitrator was free to determine the appropriate discipline to be imposed on Lt. Flynn. The arbitrator was well within his authority to fashion a remedy that he deemed appropriate.”