A South Carthage police officer, caught on secret recordings making lewd comments to a convenience store clerk, has resigned, the town attorney tells NewsChannel 5.
Frank Geisenhoffer submitted his resignation Thursday to the town's mayor -- just three days after NewsChannel 5 Investigates first revealed the secret recordings.
"The problem has been solved," said town attorney Richard Brooks.
News of Geisenhoffer's lewd behavior had generated headlines in the New York Post, the New York Daily News and London's Daily Mail.
On the recordings, Geisenhoffer can be heard asking the store clerk for nude photos and acknowledging that he had shown her a video of himself masturbating. He also boasted about pressuring another woman to expose herself in the middle of a courtroom.
After a complaint filed by the clerk, Elizabeth Restrepo, the police chief and mayor had suspended Geisenhoffer for two weeks without pay and put him on probation for a year.
Mayor Jimmy Wheeler had told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that he had been reluctant to take Geisenhoffer's badge because he needed to work two more years before he could retire.
Restrepo questioned why town officials did not have the courage to deal directly with the problem.
"In a way, it gives me justice because I know he's not going to get up and put that badge on every day and bother women," she told NewsChannel 5 Investigates. "But in another way, it's still not justice because my own ... police -- that I'm supposed to trust -- couldn't do the right thing."
She added, "I think it's appalling that he himself had to resign only because the heat got so hot on him and because he knows that he is guilty -- and that they did not step forward and say, 'Frank, you're fired.'"
Geisenhoffer had worked for South Carthage since 2006. He had previously retired from the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Previous stories:
Cop's Indecent Requests Caught On Recordings
Cop Pressures Woman To Expose Herself In Court
