Probable cause found in case against Police Chief
November 20th, 2009District Court Judge M. Michael Baxter, last week, denied a motion filed on behalf of Gaylord’s Police Chief, to have charges against him dismissed. The court ruled that the State established probable cause that the Police Chief violated state statutes regarding the interception and disclosure of wire and oral communications and regarding the misconduct of a public official.
Police Chief Dale Roiger was charged earlier this year with two gross misdemeanors counts and has been on paid administrative leave. He is facing criminal charges for allegedly planting a “bug” in the Chamber of Commerce Office in July 2007. Roiger allegedly had the office “bugged” in an attempt to catch City Council members violating the open meeting law.
Baxter, in his order, wrote that oral communication is made with expectation that they are not subject to interception and are statutorily-protected communications. Intentional interception or procuring another person to record a private conversation without a warrant is a crime, he wrote.
In the alleged scenario, the defendant (Roiger) procured a subordinate police officer to make a secret entry into a locked building at night without a warrant or permission. The officer was directed to place a recording device to record any voice communication in the Chamber offices, including conversations taking place after business hours when the Chamber offices were not open to the public, and conversations during hours when the officers were open to the public. All of the recording was then available to the defendant.
Baxter wrote that “there is, at the very least, constitutional and statutory protection of the privacy of conversations held in an office after normal business hours by those people authorized to be in the office. There is legal protection afforded to recorded phone calls to the offices and for messages left during those phone calls. There is no credible basis to find that the conversations meant to be recorded were open to the public.”
Roiger’s attorney, Tony Nerud, had argued that the complaint be dismissed because there is no expectation of privacy for conversations taking place in the Chamber offices.
A settlement conference was scheduled for Nov. 17 in Le Sueur County.
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