Homicide in progress: Seconds later, Deputy Scott Sloan killed Barry Johnson. |
“They’ve laid us out,” Idaho State Police Trooper Sam
Ketchum reported in a text message to his superiors during an April 13, 2012
court hearing in Payette. The intended recipient
was Lt.
Colonel Ralph Powell, who would shortly be appointed ISP Director. “They” referred to ISP Corporals Quinn
Carmack and Brandon
Eller, who had – in defiance of expectations – testified truthfully in the preliminary
hearing for Payette County Deputy Scott Sloan, who was charged with vehicular
manslaughter.
Ketchum’s text message was part of a concerted campaign of perjury,
obstructionism, witness intimidation, and retaliation intended to insulate
Sloan from prosecution. Troopers Carmack and Eller, along with their
supervisor, Sgt. Fred Rice, would suffer official reprisals. The trooper who
committed perjury, Justin Klitch (who is no
stranger to those who regularly visit
this space), would remain a “valued member” of the agency – in no small
measure because of his
prowess in plundering motorists who wander into the ISP's Patrol
District Three, where pretext
stops and property seizures are commonplace.
“Unsafe
Operation”
On October 18, 2011, Deputy Sloan plowed into the driver’s
side of a jeep driven by 65-year-old New Plymouth resident Barry Johnson,
killing him instantly. At the time, Sloan was driving 115 miles per hour in
response to a 911 call. Johnson was turning left into his own driveway when he
was blindsided by Sloan.
Predictably, the ISP’s initial report suggested that
“alcohol may have played a role” in the crash.
A post-mortem of the victim confirmed that his blood alcohol level had
been within the legal limit at the time of death.
Spokesmen for both the ISP and the Payette County Sheriff’s
Office insisted that Sloan was entitled to travel at nearly twice the speed
limit as a matter of discretion. Corporal Carmack, an expert crash scene
investigator, produced a report concluding that Sloan had made an “unsafe pass”
that wasn’t warranted by the circumstances. Corporal Eller, who had been with
the crash reconstruction unit for seven years, concurred with Carmack’s assessment.
Those findings were submitted to ISP Trooper Justin Klitch, who in an email
instructed Carmack to include the phrase “unsafe operation” in the official
report.
After the report was submitted to Gem County Prosecutor
Richard Linville – who had been appointed special prosecutor in the case –
Sloan was charged with vehicular manslaughter.
“He is only allowed to exceed the speed limit so long as he
doesn’t endanger life or property,” explained Linville during the preliminary
hearing. He would soon learn that the ISP had arranged to throw the case by
having Trooper Klitch perjure himself on the witness stand.
Klitch
Commits Perjury
“To my surprise, after I had rested the State’s case,
Trooper Klitch volunteered to testify for the defense,” recalled Linville in a
March 11, 2013 letter to ISP Captain Steve Richardson. Klitch’s testimony was
intended to create ambiguity by describing “inconsistencies” in the ISP’s crash
report. Those inconsistencies did
exist; Klitch – who had been covertly collaborating with the defense for
several months – had helped to create
them.
In a lawsuit
filed in May 2014, Sgt. Rice – who supervised the accident reconstruction
team – describes how changes were made “in the Recon Report” and the direction
of his superior officers. The revised version deleted the statements “Sloan
made an unsafe pass,” and “Sloan was operating an authorized emergency vehicle
in an unsafe manner by driving without due regard for the safety of all persons
and reckless disregard for the safety of others.”
During direct examination in the preliminary hearing, Klitch
was asked about the final line of the initial report, which faulted Deputy
Sloan for “unsafe operation of an emergency vehicle.” After admitting that he
had inserted the words into the narrative Klitch immediately contradicted
himself:
“Correction – going back, I don’t believe that I put that in
there…. I’m almost positive I didn’t put that in there because I had no idea
what the speed of the deputy’s patrol car was at the time that I did this
narrative so I can honestly say that I did not put that in there.”
The problem with that testimony, as
a stunned Linville would later explain, is that Klitch had “specifically
requested” in an email to Carmack that the phrase “unsafe operation of an
emergency vehicle” be included in the report.
This was not the only unpleasant surprise Linville would
experience in the Scott Sloan case.
“When I initially asked Trooper Klitch to meet with me to
discuss filing the case, he made a recording of our meeting without my
knowledge or consent,” Linville
wrote to Captain Richardson. “I don’t know why Trooper Klitch would make
such a recording. His duty at the time was to present to me all of the evidence
he had collected regarding the Sloan case. He was meeting with me to present
evidence, not to create it.”
“Never in my 25 years as a prosecuting attorney have I had a
law enforcement officer secretly record discussions during case preparation
that are otherwise privileged and protected work product, then hide the
existence of such a recording from me,” Linville told Richardson.
Klitch “was communicating and cooperating with the defense
attorney, unbeknownst to the prosecutor,” observed Erik
Strindberg, an attorney representing Corporal Eller. In the fashion of a zampolit in the Soviet KGB, Klitch was informing on the
prosecutor to his superiors – just as Trooper Ketchum informed on Corporals
Carmack and Eller during the April 2012 preliminary hearing.
The
Reprisals Begin
While that hearing was underway, Lt. Col. Powell summoned
Sgt. Rice, Coordinator of the Crash Reconstruction Program, to a meeting that
included Captain Richardson and several other high-ranking ISP officers. Rice
had just been promoted to that position a few days earlier, with the clear
expectation that he would keep a tight rein on Carmack and Eller – whose insistence on telling the truth under oath had produced an unwelcome
complication.
“Rice was told that Corporals Carmack and Eller `have laid
us out’ and that they might be removed from the reconstruction team,” recounts attorney
Strindberg. Three days after that meeting, Rice was summoned before his
superiors again and informed that “because of their testimony, Corporal Carmack
and Master Corporal Eller could not be trusted, that they should be taken off
of the [team] and that they might not even have a job,” continues Strindberg.
“Importantly, there were no accusations that either Corporal Carmack or Master
Corporal Eller had lied during their testimony; rather the sole issue was that
the administration did not like the substance of their testimony.”
Three ISP troopers testified during that April 13 hearing.
Two of them, Carmack and Eller, testified truthfully, and their accounts were
corroborated by the preliminary draft report and official email correspondence.
The third, Klitch, committed perjury. The ISP dealt with this problem by
issuing an order requiring that officers assigned to the CRU destroy all “draft
copies of their reports.”
Plans were also made to punish those troopers who valued
truthfulness more than tribal solidarity. Rice, Carmack, and Eller, reported
the Idaho Statesman (in an uncharacteristic specimen of actual
journalism), suffered official retaliation in “myriad ways” – including
punitive reassignments, “rejected pay increases, denied promotions and poor
evaluations.”
In March 2013, Linville dropped the vehicular manslaughter
charge against Sloan. A few weeks later, Sgt. Rice was suspended for supposedly
“withholding exculpatory evidence” in the case. This charge makes sense only if
one assumes that Rice knew of Trooper Klitch’s intention to perjure himself on
the witness stand, and had tried to discourage him from doing so.
By this time, Corporal Eller had received the first negative
evaluation of his career: He was accused of causing “dissention” and displaying
poor “communication skills.” On April 24, 2013 – the day the case against Sloan
would have gone to trial, had Linville not been forced to dismiss it – Carmack
was placed on administrative leave for unspecified reasons. He, too, eventually
received an official rebuke for “failing to maintain a high standard of integrity,
honesty and respect for others, and for inefficiency, incompetence or neglect
of duties.”
“His new supervisor … criticized him as not being a team
player … told him he needed to stop more cars and write more tickets and if he
did not make the changes it would be reflected in his 2013 evaluation,”
summarized attorney Strindberg. Carmack
and Eller,
who are still employed by the ISP, have filed whistleblower
lawsuits. Rice, who resigned, has filed a lawsuit of his own that is
scheduled for trial in October.
“Blue
Privilege” Uber Alles
Scott Sloan was spared prosecution, but he was fired by the
Payette County Sheriff’s Office. In January
2014, the Idaho State Industrial Commission ordered Sloan to remit $5,606.23 in
worker’s compensation he received following the accident. Between October
2o11 and Sloan’s termination the following February, Sloan “received workers’
compensation income benefit payments from Surety while also receiving his
salary from [the] Employer.”
As it happens, I visited Payette County Sheriff Chad Huff’s
office in January 2014 on a morning that found him immersed in paperwork
arising from his former deputy’s case with the Industrial Commission. To his
credit, the sheriff radiated disgust over Sloan’s attempt to get away with
double-dipping in the aftermath of a fatal accident he caused. Not only should
Sloan be banned from law enforcement, Huff told me, “he should be facing
prosecution.”
Sheriff Huff is a former ISP Trooper. He hasn’t shared with
me his opinion of the agency’s conduct in the Scott Sloan case. Jackie Raymond,
the only surviving child of Sloan’s victim, has not been diffident on this
subject. She
describes the ISP’s behavior as that of a criminal “enterprise or
conspiracy with Sloan to … conceal evidence, harbor and protect Sloan from
criminal and civil liability, and intimidate, influence, impede, deter,
threaten, harass and obstruct witnesses … to protect fellow Idaho law
enforcement officers from the consequences of their criminal misconduct.”
As is so often the case in ISP Patrol District Three, the
focal point of official corruption has been Trooper Justin Klitch, who remains
on active duty even as he continues to accumulate lawsuits – and despite
earning a Brady
List nomination from Gem County Prosecutor Linville.
“Trooper Klitch has lost my trust as a result of his conduct
in [the Scott Sloan] case,” Linville informed the trooper’s supervisor, Captain
Richardson, in a March 11, 2013 letter. “I ask that he not be assigned to
patrol in Gem County so that I will not be put in a position of having to rely
on him to testify in prosecution of criminal cases in this jurisdiction.”
“Trooper Klitch is a valued member of the Idaho State
Police,” wrote
Captain Richardson in his reply to Linville, dismissing the controversy in
the Sloan case as a “difference of opinion.”
Klitch’s
Lawsuit Collection Expands
Before he was removed from active patrol duty, Klitch had
earned both professional and media notoriety for his performance as an “interdiction”
specialist – that is, an officer who engineers pretext stops that lead to
seizures of contraband and, preferably, cash. Two lawsuits highlighted by the
Statesman’s recent coverage of the Scott Sloan scandal document the predatory
methods Klitch used to engineer opportunities to plunder unsuspecting
travelers.
During a May 2014
encounter, Arizona native Jose Castillo, a retired forest ranger, was tailed
by Klitch for several miles on I-84. As Castillo approached a parked emergency vehicle,
Klitch “accelerated rapidly toward the rear of Mr. Castillo’s Blazer before
moving his patrol car into the passing lane,” thereby preventing the driver
from moving into the left lane, as traffic regulations require.
Prior to doing this, Klitch – who had noticed that the
vehicle had Arizona plates and was driven by a Latino male – contacted ISP
Trooper Christopher Cottrell, a K9 officer, in anticipation of a pretext stop
and vehicle search. A few minutes after Klitch pulled Castillo over for a
traffic violation that the ISP officer had created, Cottrell arrived to play
his role in this scripted exercise by walking his dog around the captive’s
vehicle and prompting it to “alert.”
Castillo, who had done nothing wrong, was forced to undergo
a pat-down search at the side of the freeway while Klitch demanded to know “how
much cash” he was carrying. The warrantless and unconstitutional search
disclosed neither contraband nor treasure.
As if to console himself for failing to find any loot, Klitch mocked and
taunted his victim, who said that he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder:
“When Trooper Klitch did not find any drugs or other contraband, he approached
Mr. Castillo to inform him that he had repeatedly urinated in the Blazer during
the search, stating that he had `only peed in there a couple of times.’”
On that thoughtful parting note, this “valued member” of the
Idaho State Police allowed Castillo to leave the scene.
Klitch’s sociopathic resourcefulness isn’t limited to
contriving traffic violations. A few weeks prior to his encounter with Castillo,
Klitch
and ISP Detective Corey Gates used a text message to lure an entirely innocent
Idaho resident named Jarrod Bush into an ambush that cost him more than $4,200.
A February 2014 traffic stop and search of a vehicle operated
by Gabriel Owen led to a marijuana trafficking charge. Among Owen’s effects was
a cell phone containing evidence of phone correspondence with Mr. Bush. Using
Detective Gates’ ISP-provided cell phone, Klitch sent Bush a text message “requesting
[his] assistance because `Owen’ had been involved in a car accident and needed
a ride,” narrates
Bush’s lawsuit. A meeting was arranged at a Chevron station in Nampa.
When Bush arrived at the station, he was surrounded by
Klitch and a thugscrum of ISP officers who insisted that “it was a `done deal,’
and that there was enough evidence to charge [him] with Conspiracy to Traffic
in Marijuana.” This was a lie, of course, as was the subsequent claim that a
drug-detecting dog had “alerted” on Bush’s vehicle during the course of an
entirely illegal search.
Scouring the interior of the car, Klitch didn’t discover any
contraband but he did find $4,260 and a cell phone. These were stolen – or as
Klitch and similarly disreputable people would insist, “forfeited” – and Bush
was taken to the ISP’s District 3 office for interrogation.
No evidence was ever found that Bush had violated any laws.
He was never charged with an offense, nor was a formal civil forfeiture
proceeding ever begun. This was an act
of felonious theft devoid of even the pretense of lawfulness. It is also quite
typical of the behavior Idaho residents should expect from the criminal
syndicate called the Idaho State Police
Dum spiro, pugno!
8 comments:
the corruption on display is part of the corruption this entire nation has undergone. seems everywhere one looks, those on the payrolls of various 'public' entities - federal, state, county and city - are corrupt.
when a system is as corrupt as ours has become, there is no 'working within the system' to fix the problem. the only way to 'fix' the system is to wipe the slate clean by purging ALL involved. an additional requirement would be to get back to where laws actually stop actions leading to harming others, or their property, instead of the criminalization of everything, as is the case today.
it is my belief that, in the end, the only remedy is to divide this nation into at least two parts - one for those who love being told what to do all the time with everything criminalized, the other with the only crimes being those that hurt people, or their property - and then letting people have a true choice as to what type of govt they will live under.
My wife and I had just tonight, watch the movie about the useful citizen for government parasites and their personal advancements within the system. The move was about a boxer who was convicted of murders that he never did. But he was a throw away person because in the 50's being black, a black man's life had no meaning and was regarded as sub-human to the higher form of life, government employees. Today any citizen no matter who they are, are considered throw away life forms to government employees in their personal advancement. If a citizen's well being is destroyed along with their family is useful in the personal advancement of a single government employee's personal gain in their government employment. That citizen has huge problems because they all circle the wagons because its, One for All and All for One. The citizen who pays their wages and so on has become their enemy because the citizen has been pretty much tapped out and has little to give. And is now demanding a stop to the looting of their personal property. To keep the scams, to keep the useless eaters in their useless jobs of government employment, that are nothing more of a service to society than a fly on a cow pie to make the world a better place. The system has turned on such good citizens. The proof of this is, in Will endless amount of stories that have never been challenged or proved incorrect. I rest my case.
I predict a fairly soon bad career end for both Klitch and Richardson. Idaho is too nice for either one of them.
I wouldn't count on any career ends for any of the defendants in these lawsuits. They seem to have the full support of their superiors at the highest levels; even if the defendants lose these cases, the higher-ups are more likely to promote them, not fire them.
The problems Mr. Grigg has reviewed here and elsewhere seem to be systemic within IDAHO ISP, and the result of the brass supporting the lack of integrity and professionalism within it's agency.
Idaho's governor could likely intervene and influence behavior at ISP, since he is the chief executive of IDAHO.
But I wouldn't hold my breath on that happening, either.
Trooper Spike is another ISP scum bag, all ISP law enforcement should be considered armed and dangerous and liars until proven otherwise.
I imagine a follow up article will be done soon showing all of the lawsuits against Klitch have been dismissed and the Troopers suing ISP (including Rice) are having their cases thrown out because they, themselves, withheld exculpatory evidence in the Sloan crash? Or does that not fit the narrative of this website?
See the update above.
As former Idaho AG David Leroy points out, the dismissal of Roseen's lawsuit (which happened a few weeks after this essay was published) didn't resolve the questions raised by it, or by the numerous others (including two who filed separate lawsuits) who have reported the trooper's habitual abusive behavior.
True story.
Kevin Haight is the current LT in charge of statewide communications for ISP. His brother Krent Haight is incarcerated for repeated crimes of perversion against minors.
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