The 28-year-old emergency medical technician assumed her mind was playing tricks on her when she caught a glimpse of the police officer in the distance.

“There’s no way that’s him,” she told herself, as she tended to a patient inside the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in August. “There’s no way the man who raped me is wearing a badge and a gun.”

But when Baltimore County Police Officer Jared Cosby stepped closer, there was no doubt the man who admitted to assaulting her under oath was now a police officer.

In 2019, Cosby, then a Baltimore City firefighter, accepted a plea deal for assaulting the woman, who was then his coworker, and was required to register as a sex offender. But after Cosby’s successful effort to have the assault expunged from his record, the Baltimore County Police Department hired him five years later.

Cosby told The Banner that the woman filed a complaint with the department in August and its leaders fired him.

The woman and other experts say the case raises concerns about how individuals with expunged criminal records can become police officers.

“My biggest question was, how did this slip through the cracks?” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name. The Banner does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.

Police Department spokesperson Joy Lepola-Stewart confirmed Cosby is no longer employed there, but declined to elaborate, citing a policy of not disclosing personnel information.

“We can share that every applicant undergoes a comprehensive background investigation, which includes state-mandated fingerprinting and a review of the person’s criminal history,” she wrote in an email.

Despite his guilty plea, Cosby told The Banner he did not commit any crime and that the sex was consensual.

“The only thing I’m guilty of is cheating on my wife,” the father of three said. “I was fired because it doesn’t look good for the [Baltimore County Police] department, not because I did anything.”

To understand how the 41-year-old became a police officer, the Banner spoke with Cosby, the woman Cosby assaulted, Baltimore County Police, criminal justice experts and state officials. The Banner also also reviewed hundreds of pages of court records.

Hiring blind spots

Originally, Cosby said, he faced rape, assault and sex offense charges, but in November 2019 he pleaded guilty to two charges: second-degree assault and fourth-degree sex offense.

But any prospective employer performing a background check — including police — cannot look up Cosby’s criminal history because his record was expunged.

Maj. Paul Borowski, who helps run the department’s employment division, explained that Maryland law enforcement has two hiring blind spots: expungements and juvenile records.

“The only time that we ever learn about an expungement is if an applicant reveals it and they reveal it willingly without being questioned about their side of the story,” he said. “And we have no documentation to follow or to verify anything about the incident.”

Borowski said the department follows Code of Maryland Regulations hiring practices, which emphasizes that officers must have “good moral character.” The code does not explicitly disqualify applicants with a criminal history; however, the state — the licensing agency for every police officer — “may refuse to certify an applicant” based on previous felony or misdemeanor convictions for which an applicant could have been imprisoned for at least a year.

Based on those standards, an applicant convicted of assault and sex offense charges would not be hired as a police officer in Baltimore County, Borowski said. But applicants with expunged records, like Cosby, no longer have a criminal record under the law.

The woman Cosby assaulted gave The Banner a copy of a transcript from the November 2019 sentencing hearing where Cosby pleaded guilty. The woman explained that she purchased the transcript from Baltimore City Circuit Court before Cosby expunged his record.

It details how one of Cosby’s attorneys urged Baltimore City Circuit Judge Wanda Keyes Heard to make expungement possible by granting him probation before judgment — a court-supervised program in Maryland that allows a defendant to avoid a conviction if they successfully complete probation.

The sentencing hearing transcript shows Cosby pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and fourth-degree sex offense, which required him to register as a sex offender under Maryland law, avoid contacting the woman he assaulted and complete supervision screenings — designed to reduce repeat offenses — during his five-year probation.

Heard, who retired that year, referred Cosby’s case to Judge Karen Friedman.

“And I know Judge Friedman, to the extent that I think that she would be listening to what you have to say, and it would impress her if she heard some things that were indicative of someone that was truly remorseful,” Heard said to Cosby’s attorneys the day of his sentencing.

It’s unclear exactly when — because the records were expunged — but Cosby told The Banner that Friedman granted him a probation before judgment and another Baltimore City Circuit Court judge gave him permission to get his criminal record expunged.

Friedman, who now works for the New York State Judiciary, could not be reached for comment.

Keith Martucci, a Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesperson, confirmed Cosby is no longer on the state’s sex registry.

Christopher Mercado, an adjunct assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said that individuals who receive probation before judgment and expunge their records should not be entitled to become first responders.

“Probation before judgment does not mean you have the right to be a police officer,” he said. “It is a privilege. It is a vocation.”

Borowski reiterated that the department cannot ask applicants about expunged records and, if an applicant’s criminal record has been expunged, it legally does not exist and cannot be used to make an employment decision, even if an applicant discloses that they have an expunged record.

“We can do everything in our power with all that background investigation and databases,” Borowski said. “But that court order removes official documentation of that incident.”

What happened?

Cosby and the woman who he pleaded guilty to assaulting recall the February 2018 night that changed their lives quite differently.

Both Cosby and the woman said Cosby’s wife kicked him out of their house because he was having an affair with the woman’s best friend — another Baltimore City Fire Department coworker.

The woman Cosby was having an affair with invited him to her apartment while the woman he later pleaded guilty to assaulting was there.

Both women were drinking and Cosby was sober. All three fell asleep on the same bed. While Cosby’s affair partner slept, Cosby said he had consensual sex with his then 22-year-old coworker.

The woman, however, said she awoke to Cosby assaulting her.

Cosby told The Banner he disclosed the incident, and the subsequent legal proceedings, to Baltimore County Police during the hiring process.

Borowski, who could not comment about Cosby specifically, explained that once applicants reach the polygraph test stage in the hiring process, they often disclose previously expunged criminal records, so as not to fail the polygraph.

“But again, it’s a ... basic version of the story without any documentation of the incident to verify one side or the other,” he said. “And again, they’re just telling us enough to let us know that this incident existed, or something existed, and not fail the polygraph.”

Brief employment and peace orders

The woman Cosby pleaded guilty to assaulting lives in Baltimore County. She said she filed a complaint with the department after she ran into Cosby at the hospital — just weeks after he graduated from the police academy in July.

“I could potentially one day need help, call 911 and he would respond,” she said. “That’s absolutely crazy work.”

Court records show the woman filed for a peace order against Cosby on Aug. 8, claiming she feared for her safety.

“He used to be a registered sex offender and now he’s a police officer with a gun and I’m terrified,” she told Baltimore County District Judge Kimberly Davis during a hearing.

Davis granted the woman a temporary peace order against Cosby, which a colleague later served him with at the Cockeysville precinct.

On Aug. 15, another judge, Jack Irwin Lesser, dismissed the case and did not grant her a permanent peace order because Cosby had not threatened her in the past 30 days.

A week later, records show Cosby filed a request for the court to shield the temporary peace order from public view, but he never showed up to the requested hearing, according to the audio recording of the court hearing. In September, after Cosby said he was fired, the former officer filed for a peace order against the woman.

“She found out that I was a police officer,” Cosby told county District Judge Karen A. Pilarski. “She went to internal affairs and used my expunged record stating that I am harassing her, I am stalking her, which wasn’t true.”

Records show Pilarski denied the petition and said that the woman obtaining a peace order against Cosby does not entitle him to do the same.

“A peace order is not an insurance policy,” Pilarski said. “She got you ultimately discharged from your role in the Baltimore County Police Department, so there were some teeth or merit to those reports.”

‘Doesn’t mean you have a right to be a cop’

Baltimore County follows Maryland regulations when hiring police officers, which stipulate that departments can disqualify applicants with criminal histories from becoming police officers.

But Maryland law does not allow police departments to make employment decisions about applicants based on expunged records.

Mercado, also a former New York police lieutenant, said Baltimore County Police should lobby Maryland lawmakers to grant first response agencies an exemption to review expunged records.

He added that expungements offer nonviolent, first-time or juvenile offenders a way to reintegrate into society.

“You shouldn’t be stigmatized for the rest of your life. Fundamentally, I agree with that concept,” Mercado said. “But if you did all that, it doesn’t mean that you have a right to be a cop.”

Lepola-Stewart said the department would support efforts to allow law enforcement officials to review juvenile and expunged records.

Cosby, who remains a state-certified EMT until January 2028, maintains he has nothing to hide.

“I contemplated filing for harassment charges [against the woman] but I’m just trying to live my life at this point,” he said.