This Coachella Valley cop wanted his ex-girlfriend to be arrested. Then drugs appeared in her car. Deputy Brandon Klecker was fired for dishonesty and using his position for personal gain in 2013. Now he wants his job back.

Brett Kelman | Palm Springs Desert Sun

Show Caption Hide Caption Brandon Klecker files lawsuit after strange firing Klecker filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get hid old job back.

Four years ago, a Coachella Valley sheriff’s deputy was fired after internal investigators discovered he had encouraged at least five other police officers to pull over his ex girlfriend and search her vehicle for drugs.

Brandon Klecker, a seven-year deputy, told one of those cops his ex would be a “good arrest.”

“This would really help me out,” Klecker allegedly told that officer, according to newly released internal documents from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Seven days later, on Christmas Day 2012, the ex-girlfriend dropped her wallet beneath the passenger seat of her car and reached under the seat to pick it up.

Her hand felt something else. She pulled it into view.

It was a baggie of cocaine.

It turned out there were drugs in her car, just like Klecker had told the other cops. None of those other officers had actually investigated Klecker’s tips, but his excessive urging had raised enough suspicion that the sheriff’s department began investigating him instead. Before long, an internal probe discovered claims of simmering violence. In one instance, Klecker allegedly followed his ex's new boyfriend, then challenged him to a fight in the middle of a city street. In another, Klecker allegedly scoured his ex’s condo for the boyfriend, calling his name – with a gun drawn.

And then there were the mysterious drugs. Investigators couldn’t prove they were planted, but in Klecker's termination letter, the sheriff's department made those suspicions clear.

“Although this investigation did not find clear evidence that you planted drugs in her vehicle, it did determine you were egregious in your attempts to have her pulled over and arrested,” the letter to Klecker said. “You made several attempts to have other deputies conduct traffic enforcement stops of (your ex) and even told them there should be drugs in the vehicle.”

Klecker's attorney, Michael Morguess, did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story. After this article published online, Klecker briefly spoke with The Desert Sun on the phone.

“I can assure you one thing, your article could not be further from what happened,” Klecker said, before hanging up.

The Desert Sun is not identifying Klecker's ex-girlfriend or the boyfriend she dated after Klecker because they have not been accused of any wrongdoing in this case.

Klecker was fired in 2013, but the details of his termination only became public this month because the former deputy sued Riverside County to get his job back. If not for the lawsuit, the misconduct in Klecker's personnel files would have been hidden forever.

The lawsuit argues that the sheriff’s department did not have enough evidence to fire Klecker, and that he should be reinstated with back pay, which would likely amount to at least $200,000.

Three other Riverside County deputies have filed similar lawsuits in the past year, revealing their own misdeeds while attempting to get their jobs back. So far, none of them have actually been rehired.

All of these incidents were initially kept secret because of restrictive California laws that grant peace officers a level of confidentiality that no other government employee enjoys. Investigations into peace officer misconduct are confidential even if allegations are confirmed by evidence, but the same information would most likely be public in the case of a teacher, a firefighter or a city bureaucrat.

Some form of police misconduct records are also public in at least 38 states, but California keeps all these records confidential. Most often, police misconduct is only revealed in the rare cases where officers are charge with a crime.

In Klecker’s case, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office at least considered criminal charges, but ultimately declined to prosecute.

John Hall, a DA’s spokesman, said the case had a “lack of sufficient evidence." He would not say what charges were considered.

Klecker, who lives in Cathedral City, attended Cathedral City High School and studied criminal justice at the University of Phoenix, according to his Facebook page. Klecker also attended the College of the Desert Public Safety Academy, according to prior Desert Sun reporting.

He joined the sheriff’s department in 2006 and was assigned to patrol duties out of the Thermal station, which serves the cities La Quinta, Coachella and the unincorporated communities of the eastern Coachella Valley.

Trouble began after Klecker broke up with his girlfriend of two years, with whom he had a young son, in the summer of 2012, according to the deputy’s personnel files.

Klecker moved out of his ex-girlfriend’s condo in Palm Springs, but left a firearm at her home for security. The deputy also left some of his police uniforms behind because his ex was still doing his laundry, documents state.

At some point after this breakup, however, Klecker’s ex-girlfriend began dating a new boyfriend, whom the deputy believed to be a drug dealer.

MORE: The cops thought he was a gunman. He thought they were robbers. They both had guns.

Klecker’s first misuse of his position occurred in November 9, 2012, when he called another deputy asking for law enforcement research on this new boyfriend.

The other deputy reasonably assumed that Klecker needed this information for an investigation, so he checked the boyfriend’s name against the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or CLETS, a database that police officers can access through a computer in their patrol cars.

Klecker did not specifically ask the other deputy to do a CLETS search, but did ask for him to “run” the boyfriend’s name, documents state. Cops are forbidden from using the CLETS system for personal reasons.

Later that same day, Klecker called another deputy who worked for the Coachella Valley Narcotics Task Force, asking him to investigate the new boyfriend.

One day after that, on Nov. 10, 2012, Klecker went to his ex-girlfriend’s condo, spotting the boyfriend's vehicle in the parking lot.

There are at least three versions of what happened next.

According to testimony from the ex-girlfriend, Klecker went into the home, retrieved his gun and then spent five minutes searching the house for the new boyfriend, shouting his name. The girlfriend claims Klecker had his gun in his hand during the search. The girlfriend reported the incident to the Palm Springs police three days later.

A Palm Springs police investigator then called Klecker, who admitted that he became convinced the new boyfriend was at the condo after he saw his car in the parking lot. In this version of the story, Klecker made no mention of searching the home for the boyfriend while holding his gun.

But later, when his job was on the line during an internal investigation, Klecker denied ever seeing the boyfriend’s car or being concerned he was at the condo. The deputy could not explain why these statements contradicted what he said to Palm Springs police.

Over the next six weeks, Klecker made at least eight more calls trying to get at least four other police officers to investigate. Klecker repeatedly alleged that his ex was driving drunk and had drugs in her car.

Klecker also appears to have had one of his friends make five separate calls to police dispatch reporting the girlfriend for drunk driving. The calls were made from a burner cell phone, which is a cheap, pre-paid phone sometimes used to hide a caller’s identity. Investigators tracked down the caller anyway, at which point he admitted Klecker had provided him with the burner phone to make the calls.

Klecker was put on administrative leave on Dec. 20, 2012.

Five days later, on Christmas Day, the ex-girlfriend discovered the baggie of cocaine while reaching for her dropped wallet.

At first, she suspected the drugs belonged to her new boyfriend, so she destroyed them.

But four days later, it happened again. This time, the girlfriend found a bag of meth tucked beneath the driver’s seat of the same car. She called the Palm Springs Police department, worried that someone was trying to set her up.

“(She) expressed concern she was being followed and further alleged the drugs were possibly planted inside her vehicle by you because you still had the spare key to her vehicle and were trying to get her in trouble,” the sheriff’s department wrote in a termination letter to Klecker.

The final incident involving Klecker occurred in March of 2013, when the deputy allegedly chased and threatened his ex’s new boyfriend.

According to his personnel documents, Klecker saw the boyfriend’s car in Cathedral City, then followed him until they were both parked at a stop sign. Klecker got out of his car and challenged him to a fight.

The boyfriend said he just smiled at Klecker and drove away.

When questioned about this incident, Klecker told an opposite story. In his version, it was the boyfriend that followed him, and Klecker felt he had no choice but to exit his vehicle and confront him.

But camera footage showed that wasn’t true, documents state. Three different cameras had filmed the roadway that day, showing Klecker following the boyfriend, not the other way around.

Klecker was ultimately fired on September 12, 2013. He appealed his termination to an administrative arbitrator, who upheld the firing, then filed his lawsuit in Riverside County Court in January.

The Riverside County Sheriff's Department – which hired, investigated and ultimately fired Klecker – declined to comment for this story, saying it would not answer questions about Klecker's case because the ex-cop is suing the department.

Investigative Reporter Brett Kelman can be reached at 760 778 4642 or at brett.kelman@desertsun.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @TDSbrettkelman.