Editor's Note: This article is updated with confirmation that Chief Lampela has been placed on paid administrative leave as of Saturday.

PUT-IN-BAY, Ohio — It wasn’t the litany of citizen complaints that led to criminal charges against embattled Put-in-Bay Police Chief Ric Lampela, but rather accusations made by other police officers.

Chief Lampela was charged Friday in Ottawa County Municipal Court in connection with an alleged cover-up of a rape, for threatening an employee with a firearm, and for lying to investigators over the incidents, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Chief Lampela is charged with one count each of aggravated menacing and dereliction of duty, and two counts of falsification. He had been investigated by the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office, which then forwarded its findings to the attorney general’s office.

A message left Friday with the police department for Chief Lampela was not returned. Put-in-Bay officials placed him on paid administrative leave Saturday. Last year, he had welcomed the investigation.

"Thank God. I say that because I'm confident I know what they're going to find," he said at the time. "I do not think there will be criminal charges against any officers."

Public complaints about what some citizens considered to be uneven enforcement or mistreatment by police led to a public forum last July about Put-in-Bay’s police department.

Margaret Tomaro, the special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Mike DeWine for the investigation into misconduct complaints in Put-in-Bay, determined those issues did not reach criminal proportions.

"The professionalism of the Put-in-Bay Police Department often fell far short of what should be expected,“ she wrote in a report about the investigation. ”However, it is not a crime to be unprofessional."

But troubles in the department apparently ran deeper than those complaints. Last year, a former Put-in-Bay officer told an Ottawa County sheriff's detective she was raped by a fellow officer in 2003, and Chief Lampela discouraged her from reporting the incident. The attorney general’s office said Chief Lampela allegedly refused “to allow police reports or an investigation to commence after two employees reported another employee” sexually assaulted them.

The police chief ignored the alleged assaults to prevent negative publicity about the department, according to the attorney general’s office. He also told investigators the two employees never officially reported the sexual assault to him. Investigators determined the chief’s assertion was false.

Another charge described alarming conduct by the chief himself.

On March 10, 2010, according to the criminal complaint, Chief Lampela held a gun — apparently unloaded — near the head of a police department employee while he questioned him about the Bill of Rights. An officer who witnessed the scene, according to the complaint, was so concerned he unstrapped his own gun, preparing to draw it on the police chief.

Business owners, former public officials, and residents had complained that Chief Lampela and his department targeted specific people and businesses for disparate treatment.

Some of the more high-profile claims included those by Dennis Rectenwald, the owner of the Harriet’s House guesthouse and a retired superintendent of the Port Clinton schools, and by workers at the Put-in-Bay Resort.

Three resort employees were charged in 2013 with obstruction of justice; they said they were arrested when they refused to speak with police officers out of view of the resort's security cameras.

Mr. Rectenwald complained about being placed in handcuffs over a traffic violation in July, with the officer claiming Mr. Rectenwald had “charged him.”

Mr. Rectenwald said Friday he recognized that the sheriff’s department and attorney general’s office don’t have authority over administrative matters, and had to focus on actions they found to be criminal. He also said he would not be surprised if more misconduct is alleged now that initial charges have been filed.

“This may just be the surface,” he said.

Though Ms. Tomaro’s report about the citizen complaints did not lead to charges against any police officers, it didn’t spare the department or city officials from criticism. While not illegal, for instance, to target individuals for disparate treatment over personal disputes, the department’s discretionary use of citations "was often unfair, unprofessional, and problematic, but not criminal."

Citizen complaints made to Mayor Margaret Scarpelli and her predecessor led to no "notable administrative action" against any officers, even though some could have been the basis for a criminal investigation, Ms. Tomaro wrote. Local policies and procedures were violated numerous times, and the mayor and councilmen should have known.

Attempts Friday to reach Ms. Scarpelli were unsuccessful.

Many of the department’s officers are hired as seasonal staff and are inexperienced. Ms. Tomaro also wrote that most of the officers she interviewed were fearful of being fired for small infractions, and expressed concern with the department’s culture.

Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: nrosenkrans@theblade.com, or 419-724-6086, or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.

First Published February 27, 2015, 9:53 p.m.