Ronan police chief denies falsification allegations, claims paperwork was correct
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RONAN – The Ronan Police Department is under investigation by Montana’s Public Safety Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council following a recent incident in which it was falsely reported that a Montana Law Enforcement Academy student was employed by Ronan Police Department.
Montana’s POST Council is the organization responsible for overseeing Montana’s law enforcement agencies. The POST is responsible for establishing basic and advanced qualification and training standards for employment of Montana’s public safety officers.
According to POST Executive Director Wayne Ternes, at issue are documents allegedly falsified by Ronan Police Chief Dan Wadsworth that stated a student “sponsored” by Ronan’s police department to attend the Montana Law Enforcement Academy was hired by Ronan police when he was not.
During a recent interview Wadsworth said he isn’t sure what happened to cause an investigation.
“I have no idea what’s going on right now,” Wadsworth said. “I haven’t seen any documents from POST yet, and I won’t know what’s going on until we get the documents.”
According to the chief, he’s not sure what he did wrong.
“I’m clueless what I did,” he said. “As far as I know the documents were correct when I sent them. All I can do is wait until we get the paperwork from the POST.”
According to Ternes, the investigation of Ronan’s Police Department is far from over, and is at a standstill until the POST can review documents with Ronan’s city attorney, James Raymond.
“I don’t know much about it,” Raymond said. “No specific requests have been made to me.”
“The problem is that we currently can’t rely on paperwork received from Ronan concerning work history,” Ternes said. “We will not accept anything from Ronan Police until we clear it all up.”
