Today David Michael Cantor,a Phoenix Criminal Defense Attorney, talks about a recent notice of claim filed by two former top officials and a captain on administrative leave from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for $22 Million. The three individuals are former Chief Deputy David Hendershott, former Deputy Chief Larry Black, and Captain Joel Fox. All three were caught red handed in 2010 when another MCSO commander, Frank Munnell, wrote a memo describing years of widespread mismanagement and misconduct under Hendershott’s leadership.
David finds this notice of claim to be a waste of taxpayer time and money.

Here is the full story:
“Two former top officials and a captain on administrative leave with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office who are at the center of abuse-of-power allegations have jointly filed a $22 million notice of claim asserting that county and state officials, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu and private investigators schemed to destroy their careers.

Their claim was filed Aug. 15 with the county and the state by former Chief Deputy David Hendershott, former Deputy Chief Larry Black, and Capt. Joel Fox, who is currently an employee.

Hendershott and Black each demand $7 million for pain, suffering and loss of future earnings. Fox demands $8 million. Hendershott and Fox have already filed other notices of claim and lawsuits against the county and state.

Hendershott and Black were fired by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the wake of a 2010 memo by another top commander, Frank Munnell, who alleged years of widespread mismanagement and misconduct under Hendershott’s leadership. A subsequent probe by Babeu’s office upheld some of the allegations, resulting in their firings.

Fox remains on paid administrative leave pending an ongoing inquiry into his conduct. Fox has earned $77,667 while on paid administrative leave.

The new claim asserts that Munnell was negligent and malicious in his memo and that he “made many untrue statements, either intentionally or based upon lack of knowledge.”

The claim alleges that Munnell spent time working with the FBI and Arizona Attorney General’s Office “in some type of undercover or agent position,” working with investigators and attorneys to secretly record a meeting and build a case against the three.

The former employees also allege Munnell did not disclose his undercover work to Arpaio when he delivered the memo, nor that he had been collecting evidence against the sheriff. They also claim Munnell was so frustrated that no indictments had been issued against Arpaio and others that he “took it upon himself in retaliation to issue his memo intending to harm the victims.”

The claim asserts that other high-ranking employees within the Sheriff’s Office helped Munnell destroy the claimants’ careers.

“It is well known that Munnell and his allies in the Sheriff’s Office have longstanding vindictive grudges against Hendershott, Fox and Black because of their positions and influence within the Sheriff’s Office,” it said. It also said the relationship was further strained because of Hendershott’s decision to not promote Munnell.

The claim asserts that a conspiracy against the Hendershott, Fox and Black expanded to include Babeu and private investigator Keth Sobraske, who led Babeu’s inquiry into Munnell’s allegations.

“The report is a bunch of conclusions, speculations, unsupported judgments and assumptions that are just not true,” the claim said.

Montana-based attorney Ed Moriarity, who filed the claims, said he will file a notice of claim against Babeu next week. He declined further comment, saying the claim speaks for itself.

“There’s a whole different side to the story here, as you can see,” Moriarity said.

The claim names Arpaio, sheriff’s employees, Babeu, Sobraske and his firm, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the Board of Supervisors, County Manager David Smith and former state Attorney General Terry Goddard and his employees.

All declined comment because of pending litigation.”

Today David Michael Cantor, a Phoenix Criminal Attorney, talks about DNA testing and the Drenth Case. Drenth was found shot last year near the Arizona state capital and the cause of death is still unanswered. At the time he was part of an internal investigation of Phoenix police officers and fraud.

One step of the investigation was to collect DNA samples from a variety of police and city employees. Although 330 other had submitted their DNA for testing 6 were holding out. Their reason for doing so was because they did not want to be entered into the nationwide DNA pool.

David’s question here is why arent all police officers required to do this? They have to be fingerprinted when they start working as an officer of the law, why not go ahead and get their DNA? What do you think?

Here is the Drenth story from a year ago:
“Phoenix police officials continued their intense investigation Tuesday into the shooting death of Sgt. Sean Drenth, whose body was found outside his patrol car south of the state Capitol on Monday night.

Drenth, 34, found near 18th Avenue and Jackson Street, died of an apparent gunshot wound between 10 and 11 p.m. Monday.

Police officials didn’t release many details, saying that they had more questions than answers and that they are not ruling anything out.

“We are doing everything humanly possible to find out exactly what occurred,” Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said.

Drenth, a 12-year veteran with the Police Department, was awarded the Medal of Valor in 2004 for helping rescue people from a burning apartment building. He was married to Colleen Drenth for 13 years.

The Police Department lost contact with Sgt. Drenth less than an hour before the Arizona Capitol Police found his body in an alley near the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

He was shot in an open area where police officers are known to sit in their cars and work on paperwork and still keep an eye on what is going on.

Sgt. Trent Crump, a Phoenix police spokesman, said that many police vehicles are single-officer units and that Drenth didn’t have a partner.

“As the officer, you use your discretion on when you need a backup and what calls you take by yourself,” Crump said.

Officials declined to discuss weapons Drenth may have carried or whether there were signs of a struggle.

“We are looking at all of the evidence, and we will run through everything,” said Sgt. Steve Martos, who is also a spokesman for the department. “It might be too early to determine.”

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon headed to the area shortly after 11 p.m. and described the scene as somber.

“There were about 30 or 40 officers, and I saw the emptiness and shock in their eyes,” Gordon said.

Drenth was the last Phoenix police officer to be promoted to sergeant. The city implemented a freeze on promotions in the department shortly after December 2009 as one of the ways to manage its budget crisis.

Drenth had been working in the South Mountain Precinct for about a week after being transferred from the Squaw Peak Precinct in central and north-central Phoenix.

He requested the move and was among several officers who transferred as part of a citywide shift in precinct boundaries that took effect this summer, Martos said.

Drenth’s death is the latest blow to the Police Department, which has faced several high-profile incidents over the past year.

Earlier this month, South Mountain police Officer Richard Chrisman was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Danny Frank Rodriguez while on a domestic-violence call.

This week, Squaw Peak Precinct Officer Sutton Wohlman was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault in the choking of his girlfriend.

And in March, Michael Johnson, the city’s only African-American council member, was pinned to the ground by South Mountain Precinct police Officer Brian Authement, igniting a citywide debate on race relations between police and the south Phoenix minorities.

“It’s a difficult time for the Phoenix Police Department for a number of reasons, but we remain focused with the same professionalism and vigor for the job that we had before,” Martos said.

Johnson, who represents the area where Drenth’s body was found and is a former Phoenix police homicide detective, said it was too early to determine the circumstances of Drenth’s death.

“There are just not enough details to elaborate or speculate on anything,” Johnson said.

Councilman Claude Mattox, chairman of the City Council Public Safety and Veterans Subcommittee, received a call shortly after 1 a.m. Tuesday alerting him of Drenth’s death.

Mattox, who arrived in the area around 1:30 a.m., said officers were told to take advantage of counseling services provided by the city if they needed them.

Drenth’s death shows that Phoenix police officers “are out there day and night, literally putting their lives on the line for the residents (of) Phoenix,” Mattox said.”

Recently a Chandler police officer was reprimanded for approaching a Judge regarding a teenagers traffic violations. As David Michael Cantor, a Phoenix DUI Lawyer, discusses this is a serious miscalculation on the officers part.

Here is the Arizona Republic Story:

A Chandler police lieutenant has been reprimanded after an internal investigation found he had made a city judge “extremely uncomfortable” by coming to her courtroom to talk about a teenage friend’s traffic case.

Lieutenant Lucas Hunt, who supervises about 30 patrol sergeants and officers, got a letter of reprimand for unbecoming conduct after a May 24 conversation before City Court Judge Maria Brewer and a police officer about the juvenile’s tickets.

Brewer “felt he was asking her if there was something she could do to take care of the tickets,” the report says.

She said she felt Hunt did more than just ask about options, she surmised that Hunt was trying to “put information out there in the hopes that she would take care of the ticket.”

The teenager, the son of a friend of Hunt, attends Valley Christian High School in Chandler, where Hunt is an assistant junior varsity coach. With four moving violations, the youth was facing the loss of his driver’s license, and Hunt said the boy’s father asked him how to proceed.

Hunt said he went to court to ask such questions as how the family could retain a public defender, whether traffic school was an option, and “what can we do about this.”

Hunt, a former Traffic Unit supervisor who has been on the force about 20 years, told department investigators he had not written a ticket for a juvenile driver in about 15 years and was unaware of the process.

Although investigators concluded that Hunt showed poor judgment in discussing the tickets with the judge, they found that he did not use his influence to try to reduce or dismiss the four moving violations, the report says.

Hunt said he had already discussed the tickets with the sergeant who issued them, the Traffic Unit lieutenant and someone in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, but they had not answered his questions, according to the report.

“Lieutenant Hunt never made a specific recommendation about dismissing or reducing any charges,” wrote the professional standards commander. “However, this incident made Judge (Maria) Brewer and Officer (Scott) Williams feel extremely uncomfortable and gave the impression of impropriety.”

Hunt never named the teen or the sergeant who ticketed him, did not have a copy of the citations, and never asked the judge to reduce or dismiss them, investigators found.

Still, both the judge and Williams told investigators that it was inappropriate for Hunt to praise the student. Hunt described the juvenile as a “good kid” attempting to get home before curfew, the report says.

Williams said he believes “Lieutenant Hunt specifically contacted the judge to help out his friend.”

Hunt provided enough information about the traffic case that Brewer recognized the juvenile when he appeared, and she felt compelled to change the venue to another courtroom and another judge.

The letter of reprimand will stay in his personnel file for three years, said Sgt. Joe Favazzo, a spokesman. Hunt has no other complaints, which expire after three years, in his file, Favazzo said.

Neither Brewer nor Hunt would comment on the incident.

“The investigation concluded that he did not attempt to fix a ticket, but as a department, we don’t want a uniformed officer to address the court in this manner, and we felt it fell under the category of unbecoming conduct,” Favazzo said.