PCSP officer pleads guilty to OWI in Election
Night 2010 incident
A Porter County Sheriff’s Police
officer arrested on Election Night 2010 on a charge of drunk driving—after
celebrating Sheriff Dave Lain’s re-election—has pleaded guilty to a charge of
operating while intoxicated, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said.
Ryan Fenters—who resigned from the
PCSP on April 30, 2011—pleaded guilty this morning to a Class C misdemeanor
charge of OWI, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Bennett told the Chesterton
Tribune.
Under the plea agreement, Fenters
would serve 20 days of community service, at six hours per day; his driver’s
license would be suspended for 90 days; he would have to complete a
substance-abuse program; and he would have to participate in a victim-impact
panel, Bennett said.
Also under the agreement, a second
charge filed against Fenters—leaving the scene of an accident—would be
dismissed.
“We treated him exactly the same way
as we would treat somebody else in the same situation,” Bennett said. “We
didn’t hammer him because he was a police officer. We didn’t let him off easy
because he was a police officer.”
According to the Valparaiso Police
Department, at 1:36 a.m. Nov. 2, 2010, an officer was dispatched to the 400
block of Indiana Ave. in response to a report of a hit-and-run accident, in
which three vehicles were found to have sustained varying degrees of damage.
One of the vehicles was registered to Fenters, who was not himself at the scene
but returned later after calling his wife, police said.
Fenters subsequently advised that he
had been at Passtimes at 175 Lincolnway prior to the crash and that, while
traveling on Lincoln Ave., a second vehicle pulled in front of him, forcing him
to brake and veer into another vehicle, police said.
Fenters admitted having had three
beers at Passtimes, then after the crash another beer at Duffy’s Place at 1154
Axe Ave., from where he called his wife, police said.
Fenters showed signs of intoxication
but refused to submit to field sobriety or chemical testing, police said. A
warrant for a blood draw was later obtained and executed at Porter hospital.
Sheriff Lain told the Tribune
after Fenters’ arrest that Fenters had been one of the PCSP officers gathered
at Passtimes on Election Night to celebrate his re-election. Lain himself left
the establishment before Fenters did, Lain said at the time, but a local
wrecking service had volunteered to station a wrecker at Passtimes to provide a
lift home to any person who had been drinking. Lain said that he heard later
that at least one person took advantage of the arrangement.