Departmental dysfunction: ongoing Ronan police problems result in federal suit
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
For the past several years the Ronan Police Department has not consistently met requirements spelled out in state law for hiring officers, and city councilmembers said on June 2 that they have no intention of making standards more stringent before hiring the town’s next police chief.
Councilmembers said they want to hire a new chief quickly to put the town’s recent police troubles behind them, but a police commissioner worried that without proper procedures in place the city is open to lawsuit and a revolving door of misconduct that has tarnished the department’s name in recent years.
Past employees of the department say the council’s decision to ignore the police commissioners’ concerns are par for the course. The former employees say the town’s leadership has known for more than a half-decade that minor crimes were taking place within the department and that poor leadership and incompetency led to major crimes going unpunished outside its doors.
On June 3, a lawsuit was filed in Montana Federal District Court accusing the City of Ronan, the Police Department, and Mayor Kim Aipperspach of being negligent in hiring, training, supervising, and disciplining its officers.
Attorneys are on the hunt this week for as many as 100 members of the public that they believe were wrongfully arrested by Ronan officers that weren’t hired within the purview of law.
Forewarned
Dave and Beth Bartholome moved to Lake County after what Beth calls a “good career” in law enforcement. The pair had done police work for decades, with most of that time spent in large agencies in California including the Los Angeles and Santa Ana Police Departments.
So when an officer and a clerk position opened up after the two moved to Mission Valley, the pair thought they would be a good fit for the jobs. The couple didn’t last long.
Beth said she became an office worker for the department in 2007 or 2008. She found a hotbed of irregularities.
Some the infractions she witnessed likely had minor impact on public safety: officers watching pornography in the office and the department leadership falsifying grant applications and signing off on officers’ psychological evaluations that were supposed to be completed by mental health professionals.
But other issues of incompetence resulted in criminals walking free. Most involved poor handling of evidence.
Beth recalled a rape kit that needed to be kept in a cold storage. Instead of properly storing the evidence at the police department, the officer took the specimen to his home refrigerator, a move that soured the chain of evidence and potentially gave the perp’s defense a good reason to have dismissed what could otherwise have been a damning DNA sample.
In another case Ronan officers were called to investigate a fatal overdose at St. Luke Community Hospital, Beth said. The pills had been mislabeled by the pharmaceutical company, and a class action suit was filed by the families of many victims. Beth had to call and tell the family of the Ronan victim the bad news: the evidence collected by Ronan officers was so poorly handled that it would be useless at trial.
One case of mishandled evidence made headlines. The suspect in a fatal 2009 Ronan bar stabbing was handed a suspended sentence after the suspect’s defense attorney claimed in court documents that Ronan investigators had botched the crime scene so badly it would have been easy to win if the case went to trial.
Beth said she blew the whistle on the missteps, first to then-Police Chief Dan Wadsworth, then to the mayor, and eventually to city councilmembers. Each time her warnings fell on deaf ears, and nothing changed in the department.
Beth eventually became a victim of a crime when then-Assistant Police Chief Art Walgren illegally audio recorded her in the workplace.
She told the mayor about the crime when Wadsworth wouldn’t pursue charges.
“The mayor was fully aware of it and it just completely disappeared,” Beth said. “When I bring it to the mayor and he buries it, I have problem with that.”
The statute of limitations for the crime expired, eliminating any hope Beth would ever get justice.
Investigation
Fast forward to 2011 when many of Lake County’s law enforcement agencies were embroiled in numerous corruption scandals that rocked the state. An investigation was opened into the Montana Law Enforcement Academy credentials of the Ronan department’s officers.
The Montana Public Safety Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST Council, could not find where appropriate paperwork had been filed for some officers. Wadsworth and the department were accused of skirting state laws in sending officers to the law academy and using reserve officers in the place of a full-time police force.
On July 16, 2013 Wadsworth’s higher level law certifications were stripped and his lower law credentials suspended by POST Council, effectively ending his career, which included 13 years as Ronan’s police chief. POST Council found that Wadsworth had falsified documents for his son Trevor’s law enforcement applications and the applications of other officers.
Wadsworth adamantly denied the allegations in a July 22, 2013 interview with the Valley Journal.
In hiring Trevor, Wadsworth claimed, the Ronan Police Department followed long-established customs. During Wadsworth’s tenure as chief, the town was typically staffed with four full-time officers and a combination of part-time and reserve officers.
Wadsworth claimed that the city’s policies were set up to pinch every penny possible in a cash-strapped department. It takes $8,000 to fully train an officer, Wadsworth said. Often the officers trained at the academy were poached by higher paying departments after they graduated on Ronan’s dime.
Not utilizing a combination of full-time, part-time and reserve officers would have left the police force understaffed, which is illegal, dangerous, and a liability to the city, Wadsworth noted.
“I was trying to keep the citizens of Ronan safe with what little bit of money we have,” he said.
Full-time officers can work for up to one year in Montana police departments before they have to attend the law enforcement academy. Reserve officers are required to have 88 hours of in-department training per POST Council’s rules.
At the end of 2010, reserve officer Trevor Wadsworth was selected by the Ronan Police Department to go to the Montana Law Enforcement Academy. POST Council had begun investigating Ronan’s department at that time and two weeks before Trevor Wadsworth was set to graduate from the police academy POST officials asked to see Trevor’s pay stubs from the City of Ronan. Cities are required to pay a “regular” salary to officers during their time at the academy.
Wadsworth claimed that Trevor was a reserve officer at the time he was sent to the academy, which meant he was a volunteer whose “regular” salary was nothing. The police department had sent as many as 10 reserves to the academy before without pay and with approval of the city attorney, Wadsworth said.
But when the City of Ronan couldn’t produce the pay stubs, POST Council concluded that Wadsworth was intentionally breaking the rules. To make matters worse, POST Council could find no evidence that Trevor had ever been sworn in to office by the mayor, which broke more rules.
Wadsworth believes the paperwork was stolen by a former employee whom he disciplined in 2010.
“We just told them we didn’t have it,” Wadsworth said of Trevor’s paperwork. “All the mayor or I would have had to do to falsify it, if we wanted to, was go and back-date it, but neither of us are that kind of people.”
Trevor was still a member of the police force for a brief time after his father’s firing.
“The city’s going to have to decide what it wants to do with Trevor because there could be a problem if he doesn’t have the proper certification,” then-POST Council executive Allen Horsfall said in a July 22, 2013 interview with the Valley Journal.
What the city council decided to “do with” Trevor and other reserve officers could end up bringing a major cost to Ronan taxpayers if a recently filed lawsuit is successful.
The lawsuit
A federal lawsuit filed June 3 seeks to punish the city for negligently hiring and training officers. The suit alleges Trevor Wadsworth arrested a man in July 2013, even though the POST Council had written a letter more than eight months before that date to Mayor Kim Aipperspach that warned that Trevor "may not act as a peace officer" in Montana "until he successfully completes the Law Enforcement Academy."
According to the court filing, Anthony Chaney was hanging out with his brother on July 14, 2013 outside 2nd Chance Saloon on Main Street when the brother, a combat veteran, began to suffer a PTSD episode.
Chaney took his brother to Bockman Park and restrained the man for more than an hour during periodic outbursts. Three Ronan officers, including Trevor Wadsworth, and chief Dan Wadsworth approached the men in response to a reported fight in progress behind the bar.
The officers cuffed Chaney's brother before Trevor Wadsworth, who was not in uniform, told Chaney that he was under arrest. Trevor Wadsworth then cuffed Chaney, court documents allege.
Tribal officers responded because Chaney and his brother are members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The brother was taken to jail, and Chaney was driven home. Chaney was never charged with a crime for the incident.
The lawsuit claims that because Trevor was not allowed to be a peace officer at the time, Chaney's Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated.
"Defendants City of Ronan and City of Ronan Police Department were deliberately indifferent to and acted in conscious disregard for the need to train, supervise, and discipline their law enforcement officers and reserve officers with respect to the use of force, arresting individuals, and investigating misconduct of law enforcement officers," the suit alleges.
Dan Wadsworth, Trevor Wadsworth, Aipperspach, the City of Ronan, the City of Ronan Police Department and 10 John Does are named as defendants in the suit, which is being handled by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' Public Defender's Office, the Public Interest Defense Center of Missoula, and the Bechtold Law Firm of Missoula.
Tribal spokesman Rob McDonald said the tribal Public Defender's Office got involved in the case because there was concern a number of tribal members may have been affected in the case. The tribal office defends members of federally recognized tribes, but tribal attorneys knew any misconduct likely impacted non-tribal members as well, so a partnership with non-tribal attorneys was sought in the case.
"The partnership consists of attorneys that can respond to members of the community outside the community who are not tribal members so all community members are served," McDonald said. "The attorneys involved are concerned there may have been others impacted by the deficiencies."
Mayor Kim Aipperspach had no comment on the suit, which seeks punitive damages to punish the city and its officials for alleged negligence. The state caps the amount of punitive damages that can be awarded at $10 million, although that cap is being challenged in court. A Lake County jury handed out a $248 million punitive damages award that far exceeded the limit in April. The aftermath
In the aftermath of Dan Wadsworth’s credential suspension, many police department policies were called into question.
Full-time officers had to be sent to the Montana Law Enforcement Academy to receive proper credentials. The department’s reserve officer program was suspended amid confusion about whether or not officers could be paid or not paid, how much training they had to receive, and how much the department could use the officers.
Payment for reserves was a major question.
In a July 18, 2013 email, Ronan City Clerk Kaylene Melton asked Assistant State Attorney General Stuart Segrest how the city could pay officers using the ‘stipend’ method.”
Segrest responded in an email the next day.
“ ... The City may not use a ‘stipend,’ or any other payment method, to pay its reserve officers,” Segrest advised the city.
In contrast to this advice, numerous departments across Montana stated they pay their reserve officers a stipend and claim they are a vital part of their force.
Mayor Kim Aipperspach later said POST Council was “picking on” Ronan’s reserve program because of the Wadsworth fallout, and the city council acted on the advice of its legal counsel in administering the program.
“We thought we were doing everything 100 percent right,” Ronan Mayor Kim Aipperspach said in an October interview with the Valley Journal.
The reserve program was suspended Sept. 16, 2013, with intent to reform at some point in the future.
The city council focused on finding the town a new police chief.
Valent Maxwell, 54, was brought in from Klawok, Alaska to fill the position and started work on Oct. 28, 2013.
Maxwell was chosen for the job to prove that the city council was steering itself away from the “good ol’ boys’ system,” City Councilmember Chris Adler said.
“I think the message we were trying to send was that we were going to bring somebody in from the outside,” Adler said in a city council meeting. “We were going to get everybody POST-certified. We were going to show Helena, as well as everybody in the public, that we were going to play by the rules.”
But Maxwell departed the department after 11 weeks on the job after an intense round of questioning by Adler about the chief’s alleged subpar performance.
The council then appointed John Mitchell as chief. He had served on Ronan’s reserve force for many years before being promoted to a full-time officer and then graduating from the police academy in December 2013.
Mitchell was hired on Jan. 21. His term was short lived as he was demoted during an April 21 executive session.
Mitchell’s demotion was not explained to the public.
The ensuing search for a replacement chief has raised many questions about the department’s hiring policies and procedures.
At the time of Mitchell’s demotion, the city was running a help wanted ad for a regular police officer. Instead of issuing a second want ad for police chief, the council decided in late May to begin the selection process for chief from the pile of applications for the open officer position.
This drew the ire of some former law officers.
“If you advertise for a police chief, you pretty much get a whole different set of credentials than you do if you advertise for a police officer,” former Police Chief Allen Corneliusen said.
Police Commissioner Mark Nelson said he was worried about the guidance police commissioners were given in reviewing the first round of applicants to send finalists on to be judged by the city council.
“Was I looking for a chief or was I looking for a patrol officer?” Nelson said. “I was told I was looking for a patrol officer.”
Nelson was also concerned about the unorthodox application process that doesn’t require potential hires to fill out the same forms.
“Some of the applications are pretty full-fledged apps that ask financials and other full-fledged questions,” Nelson said. “Other apps submitted were not different than what (we’d) give someone who was applying to mow our lawn.”
The standard application for employment with the city of Ronan is out of compliance with equal opportunity employment laws, because it asks discriminatory questions, Nelson said. He worried that a lawsuit might result.
“I want to know when I’m looking at these things that someone is not going to turn around and sue the city and me,” Nelson said.
Whether or not the city council properly screens officers was another concern for Nelson. After receiving little direction from the city’s government, Nelson tracked down the requirements set forth in state law for the hiring of police officers.
Background checks and physical and mental evaluations are all required. These required evaluation been sporadically followed in Ronan in recent years.
After Wadsworth’s departure, background checks that a former chief said were fairly rigorous and were done by the chief of police or police commission, fell to a rudimentary check done over the phone by the mayor.
Mental health examinations were completed in a “pretty funny” manner, according to Aipperspach who said that the police department’s leadership, and not a licensed health profession conducted the evaluations, if they were conducted at all.
Officers who have worked at the department in the past said a physical and mental exam were not always required, although Aipperspach disputes this.
The city required a physical exam, but it wasn’t required to be very rigorous until after Maxwell’s short-lived tenure last fall, when questions about a health condition’s role in the chief’s poor performance arose.
Aipperspach said limited resources were a primary driver of cutting corners. Psychological evaluations and health exams are expensive and professional staff required to conduct the tests were hard to come by in Mission Valley, he said.
The city has made some attempts to make the hiring process fair and more rigorous.
On June 2 the city council agreed to include people who have law enforcement experience in its hiring interviews, something officers had asked for since Wadsworth’s departure.
In an interview, Aipperspach said he believes the city has always followed the letter of the law regarding hiring policies and procedures.
“We’re looking to implement something better than the standards,” Aipperspach said.
Despite the concerns voiced by Nelson about the legality of the city’s hiring policies, the city council decided to move ahead with scheduling of interviews for police chief candidates.
“I’m tired of this getting drug out,” Councilmember Robert McCrea said.
Directionless motion
Without a police chief to lead them, strife between current police officers has garnered attention of the public.
Corneliusen said the night of John Mitchell’s demotion, an officer emerged and divulged details to people outside City Hall of what had happened inside executive session. The officer told Corneliusen that he wants two other officers fired, including then-Chief Mitchell. The night of the demotion someone drove by and shouted “Hey John, I hear you’re getting fired tonight,” Corneliusen said.
Officers trying to cut each other down is highly inappropriate behavior, according to Corneliusen.
A few weeks before the incident, county deputies were called to a residence where off-duty Officer Tim Case was staying, according to Lake County Undersheriff Dan Yonkin. Case reported that other Ronan officers were investigating the residence outside of their jurisdiction. Yonkin said the Ronan officers were investigating a possible crime.
“In this particular case Ronan officers were there acting in an official capacity and there was nothing we found that resulted in a criminal charge,” Yonkin said of the officers being outside of their jurisdiction.
Yonkin said the sheriff’s department doesn’t want to make a habit of prosecuting officers for investigating crimes, and that the punishment for missteps in investigations is usually suppression of evidence found during the investigation. Yonkin said the case was sent to the county attorney’s office for review, although the county attorney had not seen the case as of the end of May.
In a separate set of similar concerns, people have also complained to Dennis Lewis about officers spreading lies about civilians whose cases the officers worked. Lewis, a 74-year-old retired law enforcement officer, said he was told he had successfully landed the police chief position three times after Wadsworth left the department, but the city council reneged each time. A preliminary investigation by labor officials into whether or not the city council may have violated equal opportunity employment laws in Lewis’s case is under review.
As Lewis awaited word, people who saw Lewis’s name in the paper as a potential chief left complaints about misconduct with him, but without being hired, there was little Lewis could do.
As the department works out its problems, Police Commissioner Nelson said that he hopes city government and townspeople will become more open about the issues.
“I think government should be transparent, including the police force,” Nelson said. “If people have concerns they should take it to the council …. It’s better to get it out in the air, and see what the facts are.”
