A special prosecutor has been named to investigate allegations about an Indiana State Police trooper from Columbus trooper who was fired for conduct unbecoming an employee.
Senior prosecutor James F. Gallagher of Ellettsville has been named to investigate the case involving former state police Sgt. Matthew Simmons, who had worked in Bartholomew County for more than 10 years.
Senior prosecutors are retired or former prosecutors who are eligible to serve as special prosecutors in jurisdictions around the state. Senior prosecutors must have worked for eight years as a prosecutor or deputy prosecutor and remain in good standing as attorneys. It will be up to Gallagher to decide whether criminal charges should be filed against Simmons.
Bartholomew County Prosecutor Bill Nash requested a special prosecutor in the Simmons case after a communication mixup in September between his office and the state police.
A special prosecutor is often requested to eliminate the potential for a local conflict of interest. Simmons had an office in the detective division at the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department.
According to a document explaining Simmons’ dismissal from the state police, the trooper had been asked to distance himself from an investigation into a child molesting allegation involving a 14-year-old girl, who had reportedly been previously molested.
Simmons was not considered a suspect in the molestation, investigators said. However, Simmons was accused of continuing to meet and discuss the details of the child molesting with the victim in November and December 2016, an allegation he denied.
Simmons was also accused of conveying false information to a fellow officer when his conduct was the subject of a complaint to the Indiana State Police, according to the disciplinary action filing against the trooper.
Simmons was accused of telling a fellow officer in 2017 that he was mowing the lawn and put his cell phone in the pocket of his shorts, where the phone made contact and pressed the PIN code to do a factory reset, when in fact the phone did not reset itself, the disciplinary action document states. Simmons denies this allegation, according to the document.
The former trooper had been assigned to work out of the Indiana State Police Versailles district, which includes Bartholomew, Decatur and Jackson counties, among others.
The Columbus native is a 2001 Columbus North High School graduate and was promoted to the rank of sergeant in July 2015, serving as a cybercrimes forensic examiner. From 2014 to 2015, he was assigned to the Indiana Crimes Against Children Taskforce.
