Webb pleaded guilty to two counts of tampering with evidence and attempted theft, admitting to stealing cash from the property room of the New Miami Police Department and mishandling seized evidence. These actions violated the proper handling and destruction of evidence in criminal cases.
HAMILTON, Ohio - The village of New Miami’s former police chief admitted in court Wednesday to stealing cash from the property room and mishandling other seized evidence, including drugs.
Harold “Chip” Webb waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty through a “Bill of Information” to charges of attempted tampering with evidence, a felony, and attempted theft, a misdemeanor. That’s how much money the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation determined was missing from the New Miami Police Department’s property room after Webb was fired in 2024, according to Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser.
The felony conviction will prevent Webb from being allowed to carry a gun and work as a police officer again. Webb, 49, of Trenton, politely answered the Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Oster each time he was addressed in court. He is a father of five, a lifelong Butler County resident and is still employed full time for the U.S. Postal Service, noted his lawyer, Stew Mathew.
He declined to comment as he walked out with Webb once the hearing ended. Webb was permitted to plead out to reduced charges because he cooperated with prosecutors and admitted wrongdoing, Gmoser said. Had Webb fought the case and been indicted, he would have been charged with all felonies and higher ones like his former auxiliary officer, Casey Gilpin.
Two counts of tampering with recordsHis bond was immediately revoked, he was taken right to the Butler County Jail and faces years in prison when he is sentenced next month.
“If you accept accountability, you will probably get favorable consideration if you step up and accept responsibility. There will be plea negotiations. It recognizes you are coming forward to admit guilt,” Gmoser told FOX19 NOW.
“That only applies in process crime cases. This was not a violent crime. It was a process crime. There has to be a process to properly destroy police evidence in this country.
” Former New Miami Police Chief Harold 'Chip' Webb and his attorney, Stew Mathews in Butler County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday, May 20, 2025. Casey Gilpin, 48, of Mason, took the stand in his own defense, but the jury didn't buy it and convicted him of six felonies. The Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation began an extensive probe involving the New Miami Police Department in July 2024.
It came at the request of the acting police chief, Dan Bower, who was appointed when Webb was fired on June 24, 2024. Webb was terminated for refusing to take a drug test with a witness present - a nurse, which he called “belittling,” village records show. The village mayor at the time alleged the odor of marijuana reeked so badly inside the department on June 20, 2024, it could “knock you off your feet.
” Once Webb left the police department in the summer of 2024, the mayor and council ordered the acting chief to audit the property room and equipment. Bower’s preliminary review determined that more than $3,000 in cash was missing from the evidence room from a drug trafficking case, state records show. So was another $500 in cash issued by the village for criminal, and investigations and drug purchases, according to his email to BCI seeking their assistance.
Bower also raised concerns with a state agent over the way drugs and other seized police evidence were handled and destroyed, state records show. Webb testified under oath for two days during Gilpin’s trial. He told the jury that both he and Gilpin conspired to lie to destroy police evidence from the property room, which included small amounts of drugs. It happened as Webb suspected his time as New Miami’s police chief would be ending soon, according to Gmoser.
The men purposely misled a veteran assistant prosecutor on his staff, Brad Burress, chief of the criminal division, about how they planned to get rid of drugs and other evidence in the property room, investigators determined. His defense attorney argued he didn’t understand the legal process and requirements of legally disposing of police evidence well enough to know the difference between right and wrong.
Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser convinced the jury that Casey Gilpin was guilty of tampering with police records and evidence. Gilpin and Webb raised suspicions over how they disposed of drugs from the evidence room, court records show. On the police department’s behalf, Burress applied to a county judge for a court order disposing of drugs, drug paraphernalia and miscellaneous property at the police evidence room, according to a copy of the application.
The application to the court stipulated the items “should be declared contraband and be destroyed at the Incinerator at Children’s Hospital in Liberty Township before being disposed of pursuant to 2918.12, all under the supervision of the Village of the New Miami Police Department. ” The same day, on June 24, 2024, Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Noah Powers signed the order, saying the items would be “destroyed by the Incinerator at Children’s Hospital in Liberty Township.
” However, there are no incinerators at the hospital or in the entire township, according to township records, the township’s fire chief and a spokesman for Cincinnati Children’s. The hospital spokesman told FOX19 NOW in July 2024 that they were unaware of an agreement with New Miami police for drug disposal. Webb wrote a letter on village letterhead stating otherwise to the judge and an assistant county prosecutor who handled the application and court order for the drugs.
The letter has both Webb’s and Gilpin’s names signed on it, according to a copy of it. Webb’s letter explained that the drugs and other items were destroyed at a different location than called for in the court order, because “Children’s Hospital Liberty Campus rescinded their offer to utilize their facilities for destruction of the listed items attached to the Destruction Order....
” “I, Chief of Police Harold R. Webb II, do hereby state that with Property Room Manager Officer Casey Gilpin, who is in good standing with the Department, items listed in the Application for Disposition of Drugs, Drug Paraphernalia, and Miscellaneous Property. Now held by the Village of New Miami Police Department, was disposed of pursuant to O.R. C. 2981.12.
His letter goes on to say the “Controlled Items that could be incinerated” were “by fire in a controlled container” and burned at a private residence in Middletown by members of the New Miami Police Department.
“All other non-controlled items were disposed of in a secure dumpster,” he wrote, at a location that is where a public storage facility is located off Wilkens Boulevard near hotels, a motel called Mason Inn and a Home Depot store in Deerfield Township. A hospital spokesman would not discuss personnel matters or confirm to FOX19 NOW in our previous coverage whether Gilpin was a hospital employee or worked at Children’s for a third-party security firm.
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Webb Cheif Sentenced New Miami Village Theft Tampering With Evidence Drugs
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