A Hero Needs Your Help!

To my beloved Wyoming: one of your peeps is being attacked! A fine and decent man, sworn to die for you if he must, is attempting to fight an unjust action against his good name. He deserves simple fairness. Is that asking too much of the hero he is? Wyoming, I ask that you do not let this happen!

First, there are the ill-conceived comments to newspapers. For example, as well-known in the criminal community for being anti-police and one who can “get you off,” second only to being as well-known in the law enforcement community as—well, something else—Rock Springs lawyer and drunk driver advocate Harley McKinney; a lawyer once publicly censured and fined by the Wyoming Supreme Court for less than professional conduct, stood upon his lofty perch and then, in a letter to the editor, he demanded honest scruples—demanding adherence by the police to the stalwart and irreproachable principals of our system of law.

In his familiar and typically libelous attack; actually, less an attack on Wyoming state trooper Ben Peech and Wyoming peace officers in general, and more, a free ad for his law practice, he enlightened us all as to what the police really do when they receive a tip of an intoxicated driver. Apparently, all those hundreds of times I responded to such calls, I fabricated the reasonable suspicion I needed to make the stop, fabricated the results of sobriety testing and then lied on my report. Imagine my surprise when all the while, I thought I was an honest cop.

As to the issue, I know Ben Peech. I was among the veterans who taught him and welcomed him into the Wyoming Highway Patrol. I know his motives. They are not of money, glory or power. I proffer instead, that his motives were and remain simple: to remove these selfish felons, their gains and substances and to protect our families from their collective foul and lethal presence.

Like all good cops, Ben hates what drugs are doing to America. He hates the chemicals but more importantly, the people who blend them. He isn’t alone. This state has other pit bulls just like Ben. Bad guys hate them. Which is why you should love them and be very thankful that they have been in your employ. In Ben’s case, for a decade.

Because of Trooper Peech, countless pounds of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, ecstasy and other illicit substances have found their way into our state incinerators. They could have found their way instead, to your children’s veins. However, because they found their way to Trooper Peech, they were stopped cold. Cash; used to further these criminal enterprises, has been confiscated and in turn used by our state and federal law enforcement agencies against the very felons from whom it was taken. This includes the over 3 million in this case. All, at great risk to Ben’s family and to himself. And all for you.

I am no longer in a position to have an “ in” with the inner-sanctum of the Wyoming Highway Patrol and to know all of the facts in the case against Trooper Peech. However, I knew the Command Staff of the WHP all too well. In my time they were different players, but the tactics are familiar. I too, was a 2-term president of the Wyoming Highway Patrol Association. I authored the Awards and Medals Program under which Ben was decorated for his drug interdiction efforts! These medals have always been paid for by the Association, but have been pinned and presented, by the Colonel of the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Presently, that is Sam Powell—the very man who terminated Trooper Peech. For his drug interdiction efforts!

I too, faced endless and often emotionally taxing persecution over my questioning of labor matters, working conditions and officer safety issues. I demanded autonomy for my Association business and was rewarded with several cold and prickly meetings with Command, clearly intended to intimidate me into submission—into doing things, “their way." These are some of the suspicions many have cast toward the WHP Command over this case and, while am I not surprised, I am troubled. You see, I also know Colonel Sam Powell as a straight up, honest leader and I am sure he feels he has acted properly. Others who advise him could very well be ill motivated, but I pray not him.

The WHP is steeped in the tradition of overt, uniformed law enforcement—unfortunately to the point of debilitation. They are strictly a uniformed agency with proud, bold and colorful activities. The dark and slimy world of drugs requires a trooper who desires it, to sometimes obtain training on his own or from outside sources; of the dark, clandestine and tricky maneuvers sometimes needed to be successful in drug interdiction. In my opinion, what Ben did as reported in this case may have been distasteful to a WHP not accustomed to such tactics but it was 100% legal—with guidelines and directives by courts familiar with this type of activity and in conjunction with federal agents. As a taxpayer, I demand our police do everything within the law to stop crime. Everything! If hurt feelings result, tough noogies.

To see a brave and gallant peace officer stripped of the most coveted position in Wyoming law enforcement, whether due to his fraternal activities representing Wyoming’s state troopers or, due to his active engagement in fighting narcotics flow throughout our state, would be a shameful waste. All this would accomplish, is to afford a perverted sense of “pay back” and an almost sensual joy, to some very foul souls keeping our state prison officials employed.

I would urge those citizens holding animosity and a propensity to pre-judge so labeled “police misconduct” cases, wherein they have neither standing nor business, to keep their poison pens at bay and allow the system to run its course as the law provides.