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Sandy • Chance Kirkham apologized for his misconduct and asked Utah's police regulators to not take away his law enforcement powers.
"My certifications mean everything to me," Kirkham said. "I would extremely love to keep them."
But under questioning Monday from members of the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, Kirkham admitted he had driven to Mesquite, Nev., bought alcohol there and returned to Iron County, where he was a sheriff's deputy. He also let a 19-year-old woman transport the alcohol to some mutual friends.
So the council voted to suspend Kirkham for 18 months. His attorney, Lindsay Jarvis, told the council her client has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of furnishing alcohol to a minor and is serving 12 months of probation.
Eight other former or current peace officers received suspensions Monday at the council's quarterly meeting. The stiffest penalty went to Jason Sorenson, who received a four-year suspension for destruction of wildlife.
Sorenson, who was unemployed at the time of the episode, and another peace officer used dogs to chase a mountain lion up a tree. Neither man had a permit. So Sorenson went and found another friend who had a permit.
When the friend with the permit returned, one of the trio shot the mountain lion.
State law requires a permit holder to be present for the duration of the hunt. The council imposed a strict penalty because Sorenson was already under investigation in another poaching case when the hunt occurred.
Other discipline issued Monday:
• Police cadet Arnold O. Sawyer, two-year suspension for lying on an application.
• Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, Jeffrey Clegg, one-year suspension for falsifying a timecard to claim overtime.
• Tooele County Sheriff's Office, Aaron M. Bird, two-year suspension for smoking marijuana.
• Utah Valley University, Bryan Scott Cunningham, one-year suspension for driving under the influence.
• Utah Department of Corrections, Michael Petersen, one-year suspension for driving under the influence.
• Utah Transit Authority, John R. Lyle, one-year suspension for driving under the influence.
• Weber County Sheriff's Office, Stephen S. Sterrett, two-year suspension for driving under the influence.
The council issued two letters of caution. One went to a Box Elder County deputy who entered a diversion agreement for a misdemeanor count of domestic violence in the presence of a child. A diversion agreement means the charges are dismissed if the defendant commits no new crimes in a given period of time — usually a year or less. The deputy denied to council investigators that she did anything wrong.
The other letter of caution went to a Smithfield officer who admitted to pushing her daughter's 16-year-old boyfriend. The officer had told the boy to stay away from the daughter. The officer had already pleaded guilty to a count of attempted bodily harm. The count was Utah's lowest-level misdemeanor.
Twitter: @natecarlisle —
Police academy to add course about encounters with dogs
The state's police academy is adding a course on how to deal with family dogs.
Lt. Wade Bruer, who oversees instruction at the academy, told the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Council that the two-hour course will teach cadets how to interact with dogs and how, in some households, a dog is considered akin to a child and may be a person's only family.
Bruer said the course also will teach cadets ways to respond to a hostile dog and "not just go straight to deadly force."
Encounters between police and family dogs gained attention last year when a Salt Lake City officer shot and killed a dog named Geist. The officer was in a backyard looking for a lost child when Geist charged at him.