By Janelle Stecklein
| The Salt Lake Tribune
A ninth West Valley City police officer has been disciplined in
connection with West Valley City’s now-disbanded Neighborhood Narcotics Unit.
West Valley police Sgt. Jason Hauer was suspended in late October
for 40 hours without pay for mishandling money belonging to a confidential
informant, according to discipline records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune as
part of an open records request. But the discipline involved a February 2010
incident, which occurred years before the 2012 scandal rocked the narcotics
unit and led to its disbanding in December 2012.
According to the Oct. 31 discipline letter written by West Valley
City Police Chief Lee Russo, in February 2010, Hauer "inappropriately took
possession of monies belonging to a confidential informant without a legitimate
or lawful purpose."
Russo wrote that Hauer then inappropriately used $500 of the
$1,200 he seized from the confidential informant in a law enforcement-led drug
transaction to pay a drug dealer targeted in the probe.
"Although eventually $1,200 of the informant’s money was
returned to her, $111 of the informant’s money remains unaccounted for,"
Russo wrote.
Russo said Tuesday that confidential informant’s money was found
uninventoried in an envelope inside a safe as far back as 2011 — long after
Hauer had been promoted to sergeant and transferred out of the unit.
But the internal affairs investigation languished, and it took the
department years to mete out any sort of punishment before it crossed Russo’s
desk in October.
"Nobody should have to wait that long for an internal affairs
investigation to complete," Russo said Tuesday. "It does no good for
anybody to have something sitting out there that long. It’s supposed to be
swift and reasonable."
Russo said just before he was hired in August to replace retired
Chief Thayle "Buzz" Nielsen, the matter was presented to the city’s
Professional Standards Review Board, who recommended a letter of counseling and
training.
