By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
SOUTH WHITLEY — The officer who pulled a teenager from her car 90 seconds into a traffic stop and then faced a public outcry after a youtube video surfaced a week ago, has been fired.
Brent Augustus, the father whose 18-year-old daughter was pulled over in the Januaryol incident and who posted a video a week ago to raise awareness, said they were informed Friday of officer Brian Schimmel’s firing.
He told News Now Warsaw Friday they were also told a criminal charge of failure to identify — still pending against his daughter, Vivian Augustus — has been dropped.
The officer’s termination comes just days after South Whitley Town Council issued a statement saying Schimmel’s actions during the Jan. 24 traffic stop, while “flawed,” did not merit dismissal.
“Obviously, we are relieved,” Brent Augustus said Friday. “We were hopeful this would be the outcome that we would get eventually, but honestly, we … thought we’d have to take this to trial and that it would have to be the community that speaks out in a jury to get here.”
He also added that “It does not wash away the fact that it happened.”
“We are still adamant that there needs to be changes made. Changes in South Whitley, changes in Whitley County and frankly, changes in the state of Indiana,” he said.
Augustus also said he thinks community concern became a big factor in recent days.
Earlier this week, he and others in the community began a yard sign campaign, seeking “Justice for Vivian … Justice for All.”
And almost simultaneously, He said another “youtuber” posted something earlier in the week about the incident that gained 300,000 views.
“Forty five minutes after he made that post, the South Whitley Police Department and the town of South Whitley deleted their Facebook pages,” thus eliminating all of the public comments critical of the incident, Augustus said.
“I feel like just that public awareness finally pushed them to realize that this is a lot bigger than they initially thought it was. I think they initially thought it could be handled and resolved
“I don’t think that they expected this kind of public outcry in favor of us, and frankly, I didn’t expect this kind of outcry … It’s been heartwarming.”
News Now Warsaw called the South Whitley Police Department twice after 4 p.m. Friday, but nobody answered the phone.
Augustus told News Now Warsaw on Saturday — one day after posting his video — that his family thinks more training on de-escalation practices for police is needed for police officers and pointed out that more training hours are needed.
Augustus said he believes police only receive 600 hours of training once they get out of the police academy.
“A nail technician that does my wife’s nails gets 450 hours to be licensed and she’s not carrying a gun,” he said.
Soon after the South Whitley video came to light, another video of Schimmel surfaced when he was employed with the Monrovia Police Department in southern Indiana.
It shows him physically intervening with a race car driver while working security detail in his police uniform at a figure 8 race track. Shimmel is seen trying to break up a dispute between two drivers on the track and struggling to take one of the drivers down to the ground.
That incident happened in early 2023 and Schimmel joined the South Whitley Police Department in October of 2023.
“I feel like there was a failure of conducting an adequate background check because this officer had a violent history at his previous post at Monrovia,” Augustus said.
“If they knew that, why wasn’t that a problem?”
