Two officers in deep SCAT

Two Denver PD officers are in deep trouble, thanks for possible drug use and cell phone usage that didn't please superiors in the right way.

The Denver Post reports that the two officers were part of the Department's SCAT (Special Crime Attack Team), which are elite teams of hand-picked officers.

One officer was recently accused of using cocaine. Nice, huh? Think we have anything like that in McHenry County?

But what really got my attention was this one.

"Another member of one of the district's teams, Jay Whittenburg, began serving a 90-day unpaid suspension last week after he admitted to investigators that he sent sexually explicit text messages to a woman from his department-issued cellphone while on duty."

How differently a similar "problem" was handled right here in River City; errr, I mean, in McHenry County.

A deputy at the McHenry County Sheriff's Department sent and received over 1,000 text messages between a confidential informant and him - many from his MCSD (taxpayer-supported) cell phone. And there were many (hundreds?) of telephone calls, too.

What action did MCSD take? The deputy got ten days off, and then he got some over-time to make up for his pay loss. Who handled his discipline? Sheriff Nygren, who is hardly ever around? Or Undersheriff Zinke, who would like to still be around after December 1, 2014?

Maybe Zinke could speak out and say whether he objected to Nygren's going soft on that deputy, if that's what happened.

Had MCSD slapped its deputy with a 90-day unpaid suspension, it would have gone to the Merit Commission for blessing by five friendly members. They probably would have approved it, and then it would have become a public record, subject to FOIA. By keeping the discipline to "30 days or less", MCSD avoided putting the matter out to public viewing.

If you are in the in-crowd at MCSD, you will get handled by the kid gloves. If, however, you're not, you'll get fired and then have to fight to get your job back. Several of those fights are still going on, even though they don't make it into the local papers.