City manager rescinds sergeant’s demotion

Maricopa City Manager Kevin Evans has sided with a recommendation by the city’s merit board and returned James Hudspeth to the rank of MPD sergeant.

“There is a process in place and a decision was made,” said Maricopa police spokesman Sgt. Stephen Judd. “This is now a closed case.”

Hudspeth was demoted from sergeant to officer on May 1 at the recommendation of both Maricopa Police Chief Kirk Fitch and director of public safety Patrick Melvin, due to Hudspeth going against Maricopa procedure and policy when removing a floor jack from a vehicle.

Those policies were failure to impound and log property.

This incident has brought discredit to the department in the way it handles vehicle searches and impounds, Fitch said in his recommendation.

He added the police department’s integrity and the public’s confidence in its business must be beyond reproach. To violate that perception is a serious violation.

However, Hudspeth did not agree with the recommendation and wrote a memorandum saying his demotion only came about because the information was leaked to the media, and the demotion did not follow previous actions taken by the department.

Those previous actions he detailed were as follows:

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The evidence won’t sway me from my original recommendation of demotion. It is a passionate, yet flawed appeal, Fitch said in a counter memo.

After receiving the department’s notice that they would not overturn the recommendation, Hudspeth appealed his case to the city’s merit board.

That board made the recommendation in early August that Hudspeth’s demotion be retroactively overturned, and, instead, he be issued a suspended 40-hour suspension.

Evans slightly modified the recommendation by keeping in place the demotion from May 1 to Sept. 1, with no reward for lost pay, and then promoting Hudspeth back to sergeant Sept. 2.

The incident originally came to light Feb. 8 of this year, when police volunteer Al Suckerman was assisting MPD in conducting a vehicle inventory on a truck that was abandoned during a pursuit.

Hudspeth arrived on the scène during this inventory and made the statement, “let’s see if there is anything here I can use, want or need,” according to Suckerman. The sergeant then began to rifle through the vehicle and eventually was seen removing a floor jack and taking it back to his patrol vehicle.

Suckerman reported these actions, which resulted in a subsequent investigation.

During the course of the investigation, Hudspeth was questioned and admitted to the removal of the floor jack. However, he said he removed it only for departmental use and had no intention of taking it home for personal use.

In the investigation interview Hudspeth added he thought the vehicle was being used for smuggling purposes, and the jack was just junk that would eventually be thrown away.

He said, in a prior agency, PCSO sergeants would hand out items, like floor jacks and tarps that were in suspects’ vehicles, to deputies for use, and that is why he took it without a second thought.

Hudspeth also admitted to not following Maricopa Police Department policy and impounding the jack, and added that it possibly could belong to the last registered owner of the car.

Hudspeth never took the jack home according to the investigation, keeping the jack in the back of his patrol car at all times; days after taking it, he even showed the jack to Lt. Larry Eckhardt, who told him his actions were inappropriate, and the jack needed to be impounded.

Hudsepth; however, did not impound the jack at that time.

Eckhardt said in the course of the investigator’s interview with him that such removal of items for department use was not acceptable in any department he had ever worked for.

Pinal County Sherrif Paul  Babeu added, “What is being alleged by Hudspeth is clearly theft. If he has information regarding any such incident, I ask that he come forward immediately and report the information to my office so it can be investigated both criminally and internally. If the allegation is found to be true, theft charges will be filed.  This has never been our policy nor an accepted practice.”

The investigation found Hudspeth guilty of removing the jack, but didn’t find his defense that doing so in another agency made it acceptable practice to do so in the city of Maricopa Police Department.

As a result he was found guilty of not properly logging property and faliure to impound property.

The investigation did not specifically look at the removal of a floor jack as a theft, because it was ruled the incident did not meet the definition of theft.

A.R.S.13-1802 offers the following definitions of theft. A person commits theft if, without lawful authority, the person knowingly:

1. Controls property of another with the intent to deprive the other person of such property; or

2. Converts for an unauthorized term or use services or property of another entrusted to the defendant or placed in the defendant’s possession for a limited, authorized term or use; or

3. Obtains services or property of another by means of any material misrepresentation with intent to deprive the other person of such property or services; or

4. Comes into control of lost, mislaid or misdelivered property of another under circumstances providing means of inquiry as to the true owner and appropriates such property to the person’s own or another’s use without reasonable efforts to notify the true owner; or

5. Controls property of another knowing or having reason to know that the property was stolen; or

6. Obtains services known to the defendant to be available only for compensation without paying or an agreement to pay the compensation or diverts another’s services to the person’s own or another’s benefit without authority to do so.

The county attorney declined to press charges because of the absence of a victim and the low probability of conviction.

The decision made by the merit board, and upheld by Evans, was based on Hudspeth violating department code, not the theft of an item.

Evans declined comment on the matter.

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