Franklin County Sheriff's Office Employee Resigns After The Sussi Report Exposes Security Breach
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office human resources department employee caught talking shop with her incarcerated husband, a former FCSO deputy, has abruptly resigned.
On February 10, just two days after The Sussi Report exposed the egregious breach of security and trust, Jennifer Heintz signed off on the county’s standard Settlement and Release Agreement. Heinz’s departure came one day after two FCSO deputies filed complaints and voiced their concerns about Heintz and the investigation.
Jennifer Heintz resignation (2-10-22)
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“I, as well as other employees of the Sheriff’s Office, do not feel safe with Jennifer Heintz having access to our personal information,” wrote one deputy. He added, “Jennifer Heintz has shown that she had no regard for the privacy of potential candidates for employment with the Sheriff’s Office. She has been caught sharing information of a personal nature with a convicted federal felon (Dan Heintz). What is to keep her from sharing information belonging to current FCSO employees with convicted felons?”
FCSO Complaints
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Jennifer Heintz is married to Dan Heintz. Last December, a federal judge sentenced the 39-year-old Heintz to serve eight years in prison for receiving child pornography.
Before the feds hauled him off to prison on December 17, Heintz was held at the Delaware County Jail. On the days Jennifer Heintz did not visit her husband, the two often spoke on the telephone over recorded lines monitored by the DCSO. Some of those conversations in November and December, in which the couple talked openly about DCSO deputies who applied or planned to apply for jobs at the FCSO, caught the ear of the DCSO.
The Sussi Report obtained copies of two of those telephone conversations through a Public Records request. Jennifer Heintz shared private information about candidates, where they were in the hiring process; she even shared her opinions if they were good candidates. In one telephone conversation in December, Dan Heintz asked his wife to contact one of the DCSO candidates and update him.
On January 21, the FCSO slapped Jennifer Heintz with a 20-day suspension for Unbecoming Conduct. Ten days were held abeyance, and Heintz was permitted to use vacation days to cover the other ten days. Heintz joined the FCSO in May of 2018.
One of the two deputies who filed complaints with their supervisors on February 9 wrote, “I feel that the ten-day suspension that she did not serve due to being able to use her vacation days to offset the discipline is not acceptable. “He added, “This needs to be addressed and taken more seriously by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, especially the Sheriff himself. Proof that this was not taken seriously is that this was not investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau. Instead, this matter was dealt with by her direct supervisors, and a deal was struck without further investigation. Deputies are not afforded these benefits.”
The Sussi Report filed a Public Records request and asked for copies of all reports, intra-office correspondences, and emails regarding Jennifer Heintz produced by Sheriff Dallas Baldwin. The records department responded that there were none. Yet, the Document Workflow History tracking the deputies’ complaints show that on February 10, Sheriff Baldwin “sent an email addressing the issue and notifying the department that Mrs. Heintz is no longer employed with the Sheriff’s Office.”
The Delaware County Sheriff's Office recorded these two telephone conversations between Dan Heintz and Jennifer Heintz on November 25, 2021 and December 1, 2021.
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