Jonathan Ellis

jonellis@argusleader.com

In January of 2013, several agents with the state Division of Criminal Investigation descended on the Flandreau Police Department.

What started as an investigation into missing drug money soon turned into an investigation of the entire department.

Much of what they found was never made public.

One police officer was eventually prosecuted for stealing money. But that officer, Stephan Nelson, triggered a wider investigation into police corruption when he told agents that others in the department were breaking the law.

The DCI investigation revealed that one police officer committed burglary by breaking into a building. Other police officers were found to be taking items from the evidence locker – including firearms and booze – for personal use. There was an allegation that a man was beaten and pepper sprayed in the face while handcuffed and in police custody, and DCI agents uncovered a flimsy no-knock drug raid based on a Flandreau officer sneaking around outside a home and peeping through windows.

Few people learned the full story, and the DCI investigation wasn’t made public. Once it was completed, the Flandreau City Council demanded the resignations of Chief Mike Eisenbarth and his sergeant, Jesse Doyle.

Three years after they resigned, the episode is under scrutiny again. Moody County Sheriff Troy Wellman hired Eisenbarth last month as a deputy after Eisenbarth took a three-year hiatus from law enforcement. Eisenbarth’s hiring prompted outrage among some residents, and somebody with access to the DCI investigation leaked portions to the public.

The investigation found that questionable police practices had existed for years.

“There was a tremendous failure in leadership,” Moody County State’s Attorney Paul Lewis said in an interview last week. “There absolutely was.”

Flandreau tribe cutting ties with city police

The episode was still reverberating last summer. The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe refused to renew a joint law enforcement contract with the city. Publicly, the city and tribe were feuding over the tribe’s plan to sell recreational marijuana. But tribal officials were also upset that Nelson – a tribal member – was the only police officer prosecuted in the wake of the DCI investigation. Richard Johnson, Nelson’s lawyer, said it was his client who disclosed the rampant wrongdoing to investigators.

“It was almost unbelievable what was going on,” he said.

Sara Rabern, a spokeswoman for the DCI, said that decisions to prosecute in such cases are typically up to the local state’s attorneys.

Lewis, who was only on his third day on the job as state’s attorney when the DCI investigation started, said the other officers exercised poor judgment, but they didn’t commit prosecutorial offenses. Items that had been removed from the evidence room, such as a gaming console and firearms, were returned.

Flandreau resident Dave Ahlers is among those upset that Eisenbarth has been rehired. Ahlers wrote a letter to the Moody County Enterprise and he has also challenged Wellman and the county commission for allowing the hire. Wellman did not return a call seeking comment.

“I think it’s pretty bad that he didn’t get fired, and now he’s coming home to roost at the county,” Ahlers said.

On the night that his letter ran in the local newspaper, Ahlers discovered documents taped to his office window. They turned out to be one DCI investigative file into police corruption at the department. Argus Leader Media independently obtained a copy of that investigation as well as a second one into accusations that Doyle committed burglary while supposedly looking for drugs in a Flandreau building.

Besides burglary – or what officers called “sneak and peek” missions – the reports show that officers routinely engaged in illegal activity by taking items from the evidence room. South Dakota law contains a provision barring law enforcement officers from retaining property they confiscate without a court order – a measure meant to protect the public from police corruption.

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But Flandreau officers routinely drank beer and alcohol they confiscated. A Wii video game console seized during a theft investigation was hooked up in the police station where officers used it to play video games and watch movies during work shifts. Eventually one of them took it home.

Several firearms were also taken by officers. Under questioning by DCI agents, some of the officers claimed they used a couple of .22-caliber pistols from the evidence room to shoot stray animals.

“The reason the guns from evidence were used for animal control rather than their issued duty weapons was because if officers discharged their duty weapons they were obligated to write a report,” the investigation said. “The officers did not have to write a report if they discharged the guns from evidence.”

But more serious were allegations of civil rights abuses. One such allegation led to a no-knock drug raid on the home of two women after officers sifted through their garbage and one of them snuck around their home peeping in a window on another “sneak and peek” mission.

Jill Wede, one of the two women, said in an interview last week that she came home to find the house totally trashed after police went through it on the drug raid. They had even removed ceiling tiles. It wasn’t until later that she learned she was being charged with possessing a small amount of marijuana. Wede said she had no idea where the marijuana came from.

“I think they were all crooked and trying to go after people for little things,” she said.

Eventually, around the same time that DCI was investigating the department, the charges against Wede were dropped.

Lewis said he ordered the charges dropped after learning that officers violated Wede's Fourth Amendment rights, which bar police from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures. Lewis said he doesn’t tolerate violations to the Fourth Amendment.

“There’s no such thing as a sneak-and-peek,” he said.

Ultimately, Ahlers believes the public deserved a better explanation of what happened in their police department.

“They should have released the findings so people know what happened,” he said.

Ahlers also said that he will continue to press county officials about their decision to hire Eisenbarth.

Rabern, the DCI spokeswoman, said the former chief’s law enforcement certification is inactive because he’s been out of law enforcement for two years. The issue will come up next month when the Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training Commission meets.

In hindsight, Lewis said more information could have been released to the public about the DCI investigation. But, he added, all of it blew up on his third day on the job.

Today, Lewis said the Flandreau Police Department has fixed its problems and turned the corner.

“The Flandreau Police Department is miles and miles above where it was,” he said.