Undersheriff's employment history investigated
According to Montana Public Safety Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council Executive Director Wayne Ternes, Lake County Undersheriff Karey Reynolds will be required to attend the Montana Law Enforcement Academy’s Basic course before January 2012.
Ternes and the 13-member POST council oversee all of the state-level law enforcement training and certification from the Montana Law Enforcement Academy in Helena. Another part of the council’s job is to ensure that law enforcement agencies in Montana are in compliance with training and certification requirements.
According to Ternes, despite Reynolds’ claims to have worked as a part-time police officer for the city of Ronan until 2008, there is no verifiable work history to back this up.
Complicating the matter is what the POST council is referring to as an “incident” at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy where falsified documents were provided by Ronan Police Chief Dan Wadsworth to sponsor a student at the academy when the student was not actually a police officer. Employment as a police officer is normally a requirement to attend the basic training.
It was this incident, according to Ternes, that prompted him to conduct a further investigation into Reynolds and Wadsworth’s claims of Reynolds’ employment with Ronan P.D.
Ternes wrote in a formal notification to Lake County Sheriff Jay Doyle that “we can no longer trust the documents previously provided by Chief Wadsworth” and that the POST council affirmed his decision on May 5, 2011 at its regular meeting.
According to Ternes, the POST council is a “quasi-judicial” independent board administratively attached to the Department of Justice.
The POST council meets quarterly and conducts reviews of complaints against officers throughout the state. The council also approves certification and decertification of officers according to special administrative rules.
In addition to the 13-member council, which is made up of law enforcement officials from across the state and three citizen members at large, which are all appointed by the governor of Montana, the POST council also employs a compliance and investigation officer. Although the council possesses no criminal prosecuting power, it does retain the administrative power to remove a person’s ability to act as a legal peace officer in the state.
Ternes also stated that the reasoning behind requiring Reynolds to attend the basic training is to “protect Lake County against liability from employing an undersheriff that does not have legal peace officer status in Montana.” Montana law currently requires that a peace officer complete the basic 12-week POST training in Helena within one year of being hired as an officer.
Ternes and POST Compliance and Investigation Officer Clay Coker both said that although their workload is seemingly high, they actually only have to investigate complaints on about 1 percent of all law enforcement officers in the state of Montana. Coker added that although it’s only 1 percent of the state, “a significant amount of that 1 percent are issues surrounding Lake County.”
What should be of particular interest and concern to the citizens of Lake County is the complaint of falsified documents by a local police chief, and the unverifiable claims of law enforcement experience by a county undersheriff, which are currently being investigated. Ternes and Coker refer to their job as “policing the police.”
Ternes also said that Reynolds is not in violation of any statute, as long as he meets the standards and requirements within the 12 month time frame currently required. As the executive director of POST, Ternes said that part of his job is ensuring “that the very people that are employed and they trust to protect them are meeting the standards that are outlined by law.”
Terry Leonard is a longtime resident of the Flathead Valley, a former Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy for seven years, and a military communications and intelligence specialist for more than 20 years.