POST director disputes Lunde report
SANDPOINT — The executive director of Idaho’s police academy is challenging a report that a former deputy who blew the whistle on alleged corruption in the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office has been cleared of wrongdoing.
The Idaho Peace Officers Standards & Training Council voted unanimously earlier this year not to strip former Deputy John Lunde’s law enforcement credentials following an investigation.
But POST Academy director Jeffry Black said the council’s vote did not clear Lunde of wrongdoing.
“The POST Hearing Board vote indicates that the allegations presented did not rise to the level of decertification. This was not a statement on his termination,” Black said in an April 28 letter to Sheriff Elaine Savage.
Black’s letter was written in response to a story published in The Daily Bee which reported on the council’s vote and contained remarks from the POST Council’s management assistant, Trish Christy.
“There was just absolutely no wrongdoing,” Christy said in the article. “His integrity is intact.”
In his letter to Savage, Black said Christy’s comments were her opinion and did not reflect his views or those of the council. Black disputed the article as “misinformation,” a position which Savage shares.
“Lunde was not cleared of any wrongdoing; he just wasn’t decertified. And Trish Christy is not a spokesman for POST,” Savage said. “This is a very sore subject with me and that (article) made it look like I was in the wrong, which is not the truth.”
Lunde’s attorney, Joe Filicetti, dismissed Black’s letter as a political move aimed at providing cover for Savage, who is locked in a five-way race for the Republican nomination for sheriff.
“At the end of the day, POST found that he did not lie and she terminated him for lying,” said Filicetti, who added that Lunde passed three polygraphs and certification investigations are rigorous affairs which rarely end in favor of the law officer being scrutinized.
Lunde began working for the sheriff’s office in 1995. He was placed on paid leave in 2005 and ultimately fired. Lunde filed suit against Savage and two of her lieutenants in 2006, alleging he was forced out of his job for exposing corruption in the department. In the suit, Lunde claimed there was a standing order not to ticket retired law officers and some of his colleagues on the force were falsifying grant reports, misappropriating alcohol seized as evidence and committing other misdeeds.
Lunde regards the POST ruling as vindication and is eager to put the whole episode behind him. A POST investigation into his claims would be one way of finally settling the matter, he said.
“I challenge her to hold her guys to the same level of scrutiny that I went through and see just exactly how many of them walk away with their certificates,” said Lunde.