Friday, March 25, 2005 | 11:07 a.m.
Two Metro Police officers have been suspended without pay after a Las Vegas man was charged with possessing drugs that had been left in his car by another officer during an impromptu police dog training exercise.
Officers Kevin Collmar and David Parker have been suspended, but not fired as called for by the Citizen Review Board. Officer Jose Montoya, a Metro Police spokesman, confirmed the disciplinary action this morning, but wouldn't say what the duration of the suspensions is because that is considered a personnel matter.
The officer who placed the drugs in Mark A. Lilly's car said he did it as a training exercise for his police dog and forgot to retrieve the drugs.
What followed was a bungled chain of events that culminated with two officers giving incomplete testimony at a court hearing. They had a chance to set the record straight at that hearing and did not, officials said.
Metro's internal affairs investigators found the officers guilty of neglect of duty, but the Citizen Review Board determined that the officers' actions were intentional.
The incident started on a night in July 2004 when Lilly allegedly approached some police officers -- not realizing they were police -- at Main Street and Carson Avenue and asked if they wanted to buy some drugs from him, said Andrea Beckman, executive director of the Citizen Review Board.
Officers Collmar, Parker, Jeffrey Guyer and Officer David Newton's police dog searched Lilly's car and found no real drugs, but they did find a substance that looked like drugs.
Selling or trying to sell fake drugs is a crime, so they arrested Lilly.
Newton decided to turn the incident into a training exercise for his police dog, so he placed authentic drugs in Lilly's car and let the dog find them, Beckman said.
However, she said, Newton forgot to retrieve the drugs.
Lilly was taken to the detention center and his car was impounded. During an inventory search of his car, the drugs used as a training aid for Newton's dog were found and, as a result, an additional charge of possession of a controlled substance was filed against Lilly, said Deputy Chief Mike Ault, who oversees Metro's internal affairs division.
When Newton realized what had happened, paperwork showing that Lilly shouldn't have been charged with that drug offense was filed out, but it wasn't sent to the district attorney's office as it should have been, Ault said. It was instead placed in a file.
The charges were later dropped, authorities said. Lilly later pleaded guilty to the other charges.
Guyer was not found guilty of any wrongdoing, authorities said.
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