Elkhart police officer Joshua Titus was scheduled to be in court this week for a trial on federal civil rights charges, after he was seen in a 2018 video repeatedly hitting a handcuffed man.
Instead, Titus agreed to a plea deal last month and will be sentenced to up to 18 months after he admitted to using excessive force during the arrest. Titus is the second officer to be convicted in connection to the incident after Cory Newland, who can also be seen in the video hitting the handcuffed man, pleaded guilty to a similar count in September.
Titus’ plea deal says he will face a maximum of 18 months in prison and it’s also possible he will be ordered to pay restitution. WVPE reached out to an attorney representing the officer, but they declined to answer questions about the case.
Titus and Newland were charged criminal after video of the beating surfaced in 2018 through an investigation by The South Bend Tribune and ProPublica. Newland received a 15-month sentence, though not all of that time was spent in prison.
Video from the arrest shows a man who had been in custody on suspicion of domestic battery, handcuffed and sitting in a chair in the detention area of the police station.
The man spits in the direction of Newland, and Titus and Newland immediately punch him in the face, knocking him backwards onto the floor. Titus and Newland then jump on top of Ledesma and hit him repeatedly.
In his plea deal, Titus wrote "I struck [the man] repeatedly in the fact and body while [the man] was handcuffed, despite knowing that this amount of force was not reasonable under the circumstances."
Former Elkhart Police Chief Ed Wingbigler gave both Newland and Titus reprimands around five months afterword but did not suspend or demote them describing the beating as a minor incident to the Board of Public Safety. Once the video was made public, the discrepancy between Windbigler's description of the arrest and the actions of the officers led to the city suspending Windbigler, who later resigned.
A police spokeswoman said Titus has been on unpaid leave from the Elkhart Police Department since April 2019. His sentencing is set for July.
