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| 7/23/2010 5:12:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Dawn Caudill |
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YouTube video of Park County Sheriff sparks controversy
Mike Potter
Staff Writer
When Littleton resident Dawn Caudill entered the Park County Sheriff's Office lobby on July 12, she just wanted the return of evidence seized two weeks earlier, she said.
According to Caudill, she didn't know that her iPhone was capturing video and audio of her conversation with Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener, which ended with Wegener apparently losing his temper.
"Here's an idea," he said in the video. "You go get an attorney; sue me," he said. "Take your sh--; get out of my office. Goodbye."
That video, later uploaded to YouTube, a popular video-sharing Web site, caused a stir in Park County and was even mentioned in a candidate debate by Michael Graves, who is challenging Wegener in the Republican primary.
Wegener told The Flume that he became frustrated with Caudill after she refused to understand that he couldn't release her evidence - which consisted of marijuana and Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, found in her vehicle - without authorization from the district attorney's office.
He said he also later apologized to Caudill for using harsh language, which Caudill denied ever getting.
"She just didn't understand the fact that we couldn't release her evidence until we got a release [from the District Attorney's office]," Wegener said. "I apologized for using bad language. I should not have used that language, but that's the only thing I apologized for."
Caudill took the video and uploaded it to YouTube on July 13 under the name "keepumhonest." In all, two videos were uploaded to YouTube. It wasn't until the second video that Wegener used harsh language with Caudill.
By 10 a.m. on July 19, the two videos had been watched a combined 1,912 times.
Caudill has also contributed to the conversation on the YouTube Web site in comments under her videos.
In one string of comments, she appears to be arguing with a woman she later identified to The Flume as the wife of the deputy who arrested her. But those comments have since been deleted.
Arrest and evidence
On July 12, Caudill, who has been a medical marijuana patient since early June, was in Fairplay seeking the return of evidence seized by deputies during her June 30 arrest. She brought along a copy of the Colorado Constitution pertaining to medical marijuana to provide support for her argument.
Caudill eventually got her seized property back, but it wasn't as easy as it sounded in the Colorado Constitution.
And now, she said, she is considering a lawsuit for the violation of her constitutional rights, although as of July 20 she hadn't filed anything or identified an attorney who would be taking the case.
In part, the Colorado Constitution Amendment 20 reads: "Marijuana and paraphernalia seized by state or local law enforcement officials from a patient or primary care-giver in connection with the claimed medical use of marijuana shall be returned immediately upon the determination of the district attorney or his or her designee that the patient or primary care-giver is entitled to the protection contained in this section as may be evidenced, for example, by a decision not to prosecute, the dismissal of charges, or acquittal."
Eleventh Judicial District Attorney Thom LeDoux said the Sheriff's Office wasn't under an obligation to return the evidence "immediately" to Caudill. Although charges had been dismissed on July 9, new ones were filed against her on July 12, and LeDoux said that the evidence could be used in the new case.
Caudill said she was falsely arrested on June 30, and that the charges against her were dropped, but the Sheriff's Office wouldn't release her pills or her medical marijuana immediately when she asked for them despite the dismissal.
However, all but one charge was immediately refiled.
Accidental recording?
Caudill has said she didn't intend to take a video of her exchange with Wegener.
She had taken a photograph on the phone earlier in the day, and she believes that somehow she began recording a video at that point, she said.
But once she discovered the video, she felt that she needed to upload it to the Internet so others could see.
"Honestly, it's a sad, sad thing that I had to go through what I had to go through for my constitutional rights to be upheld," she said. "For 12 days, I was without my medication because of somebody else's negligence."
But at least one person disagrees with the assertion that the video recording was accidental.
Park County Undersheriff Monte Gore said he pulled surveillance footage of when Caudill was in the Sheriff's Office lobby and it appeared that she had her cell phone camera trained on Wegener during her conversations with him.
Regardless, Wegener said there was one thing that wasn't in the video on YouTube - an apology he gave for using the harsh language.
He said he believed she accepted his apology, but now he isn't so sure.
When asked about the apology, Caudill denied she ever received an apology from Wegener for anything, and blasted him for not personally delivering the marijuana and Xanax that had been taken from her vehicle.
"He didn't even have the decency to bring me out my evidence," she said. "He sent some little old lady out with my evidence."
Medical conditions
Caudill said she suffers from anxiety and a blood coagulation disorder. The pills she takes for her blood coagulation disorder cause her stomach pain, and the medical marijuana helps calm her stomach so she can eat.
She eventually got her medical marijuana and her prescription Xanax returned on July 12, but only after two trips to Fairplay and many visits to the Sheriff's Office, the Park County Combined Court building, and the Fairplay office of the district attorney.
But Wegener said it wasn't as simple as immediately returning the evidence to Caudill, because he knew a new batch of charges were to be filed against her following the July 9 dismissal.
Charges
Caudill was arrested on June 30 on charges of driving under the influence of drugs, speeding, weaving, possession with intent to distribute a schedule 1 drug, possession of more than one but less than eight ounces of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Those charges were then dropped in district court in Fairplay on July 9. LeDoux said the motion to dismiss without prejudice was part of the prosecutors' plan to refile the charges at a later date.
On July 12, charges of driving under the influence of drugs, speeding, and a lane usage violation were filed in county court in Fairplay against Caudill.
The charges stem from the traffic stop that occurred on June 30 when she was stopped at Kenosha Pass around 1 a.m. by Park County Deputy David Michael Harper-Head.
According to a warrantless arrest affidavit, Harper-Head, who signed that affidavit, was following Caudill's Jeep after it sped out of Jefferson heading northbound.
"I had to accelerate rapidly to catch the vehicle and I did get behind the vehicle at approximately mile marker 201..." said the affidavit. "I looked at my speedometer and saw that the vehicle I was behind was going in excess of 78 miles per hour. I knew this because that was the speed I was travelling and the vehicle was pulling away from me."
Harper-Head also noted in the warrantless arrest affidavit that Caudill's vehicle crossed over a marked yellow lane line on the driver's side of the vehicle and then crossed over a white fog line on the passenger side of the vehicle, almost hitting a metal guard rail.
But Caudill said if she was driving erratically, it was because she was trying to get out of the way of the deputy, who at the time she didn't know was a deputy.
When he stopped the vehicle and approached it, Harper-Head said he could smell marijuana coming from the
vehicle.
Caudill denied having smoked marijuana in her vehicle or at all that evening, and later she told The Flume that a friend of hers, also a medical marijuana patient, had smoked some while in her company, but not in the car. On the other hand, the affidavit says that Caudill told Harper-Head that the other person smoked marijuana in her vehicle.
When Harper-Head asked Caudill to perform roadside sobriety maneuvers, she had trouble with them.
She said she explained to him that she had a stroke in 2009 that affected her balance.
She told The Flume that it was for that reason she failed the maneuvers.
And when Harper-Head informed Caudill that he was going to search her vehicle, she protested, according to the affidavit.
"I then opened up the door of Caudill's vehicle and was immediately met with a strong odor of marijuana," it said.
A search of Caudill's vehicle turned up a baggie of marijuana, a glass pipe, papers for wrapping marijuana and a prescription bottle of Xanax.
Caudill said that when she was placed under arrest, she informed the deputy that she was a medical marijuana patient, but he didn't listen or give her an opportunity to provide proof that she was a medical marijuana patient.
It was around that time that Caudill began to have an anxiety attack.
"I thought that I was having another stroke," she said.
She mentioned her medical condition to the deputy, and he called for an ambulance to be put on standby.
Caudill was then taken and booked into Park County Jail, where her blood was drawn. She was then locked in a cell, and left to wait for a drug recognition examination.
She said upon being put in the cell, she immediately rang a buzzer, but she wasn't given any sort of medical attention.
"I needed medical assistance," she said. "For an hour this went on. I was banging on the door, essentially screaming for help."
While she was in the cell, she said, deputies opened the door to yell at her to calm down. She said she was threatened with a Taser and flipped off through the window in the door.
"I was convinced that in that cell, I was going to die," she said.
Eventually paramedics were called to the scene and administered her some medication. They were able to get her heart rate to normal levels.
Eventually, she was taken before a Park County judge and was able to post bond and then released around 2 p.m. after being in custody for almost 12 hours.
When charges were dismissed without prejudice on July 9, Caudill was back to Fairplay trying to get her medication returned to her, but she was unable to obtain it because the Park County Sheriff's Office was closed because of the county's four-day work week.
Return of evidence
Eventually, though, Caudill's marijuana and Xanax were returned to her after she filed with the court a hand-written motion asking for her property to be returned.
The judge declined to rule on the motion until the DA's office filed a response. A clerk with the court then contacted the DA's office, and a district attorney spoke with Caudill, which eventually led to her evidence being released.
Ledoux said that his deputy district attorney Steve Sullivan, approved the releasing of the evidence even though there was no obligation to do so.
"In this case, the deputy district attorney looked at it and made the decision to go ahead and return [the evidence] because it appeared this it was legal for her to possess, and we could document it in other ways," he said.
When asked about the Colorado Constitution provision about the immediate return of medical marijuana, LeDoux said it was his legal opinion that the provision requiring the "immediate" return of the medical marijuana was designed to prevent law enforcement abuses by holding onto medical marijuana as evidence longer than it needed it, but he said, there was no violation of that provision in this case.
The Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Office still have access to the evidence in some fashion because of photographs taken of the medical marijuana and pills, he said.
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