DPS Honchos' Ethics Are Questioned

After Sports-Ticket Probe

RAY STERN | OCTOBER 25, 2012 | 4:00AM
The cops sat in clubhouse seats at Chase Field, not too far behind home plate,
as guests of the Arizona Trucking Association.

It was early evening on September 8, 2011, and the Arizona Diamondbacks

were playing the San Diego Padres. Pitcher Ian Kennedy was shooting for an
impressive 19th win of the season.

Watching a baseball game from such great seats was just what Lieutenant
Colonel Jack Hegarty needed.

That summer, the Highway Patrol chief at the Arizona Department of Public
Safety was feeling a lot of heat. Morale was much worse than normal at the
resource-strapped agency, and Hegarty was getting the blame. The troops
wanted his head.

Getting wrapped up in a scandal over baseball tickets had to be the last thing
Hegarty wanted.

Yet he knew that accepting free tickets from the trucking association could be
considered unethical. The organization represents trucking and
transportation companies regulated by the DPS. But Hegarty wouldn't have
been concerned about getting in trouble over this game. After all, he and other
DPS employees had accepted free tickets in the past.

Hegarty wasn't the only DPS honcho the ATA had invited to the game.
Captain Ken Hunter, the DPS' Southern Commercial Vehicle District
commander from Tucson, also went. For him, the Thursday game coincided
nicely with an overnight trip in Phoenix he'd planned so he could participate
in a Taser International project the next morning.

DPS Captain Deston Coleman Jr. also got an ATA invite. So did Sergeant
Jimmy Chavez, president of the Arizona Highway Patrol Association, the labor
organization that represents troopers.

All four men worked within the DPS commercial vehicle enforcement unit.
Treating them right helped keep the trucking group's wheels turning
smoothly.

Chavez and Coleman later ended up unable to go, and Hegarty gave one of
their tickets to DPS Sergeant Tim Mason.

It was an enjoyable game to watch for Arizona fans, as the Diamondbacks

went on to win 4-1.

But for Hegarty and Mason, sitting one row down from ATA President Karen
Rasmussen, the big moment of the night came about a half-hour into the
contest, which started at 6:40 p.m.

A TV camera pans the crowd. For a brief moment, Hegarty and Mason appear
on TV and also on Chase Field's giant video screen. They don't smile and
wave, as fans normally do when this happens. Hegarty, wearing a red D-backs
polo shirt, wears an embarrassed smirk, his brow furrowed. Mason's mouth
hangs agape. Rasmussen can be made out sitting directly behind Hegarty.

Busted!

Somewhere among the many thousands of TV viewers, someone recognizes

one or both men. And takes a still shot of the video.

A couple of weeks later, the picture is distributed widely among DPS staff.
Hegarty becomes a laughingstock.
Plus, accepting gifts from an industry you regulate is a serious matter — at
least when you get caught.

About a month after the game, Hegarty is called before DPS Deputy Director
Dennis Young, who tells him an investigation is under way.

Hegarty reportedly tells Young he's "curious" to see how that plays out, since
agency employees who accepted free tickets from the trucking association in
the past included Director Robert Halliday.

Hegarty is out of the DPS by January.

Offering free game tickets — especially for prime seats — is a common way to
curry favor with Arizona public officials and bureaucrats. Taking the tickets
has gotten a lot of these officials in trouble — some more than others.

The Fiesta Bowl scandal was the worst case of gift-taking in the past few
years, with 31 officials wined and dined in the hopes of influencing their votes.

Then there was the case of former state lawmaker and Tempe City
Councilman Ben Arredondo, who resigned from his seat earlier this month
after pleading guilty to federal felonies in a corruption-related case. He killed
his career by accepting about $6,000 in free tickets that essentially were
bribes from people he thought were land developers but really were FBI
agents.

Arredondo was one of the officials who took game tickets from the Fiesta
Bowl; he also helped the bowl obtain a $6.5 million subsidy from Tempe. But
last December, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery decided not to
press criminal charges against Arredondo or the other officials, saying the
gift-taking law is too vague.

According to statements by Hegarty, DPS officials took expensive baseball

tickets from the trucking association in 2010 and 2011, by which time it seems
they must have heard about the Fiesta Bowl scandal. The law enforcement
officials should have known better.
The probe of Hegarty revealed that the practice of DPS supervisors accepting
baseball tickets from representatives of the industry they were charged with
regulating had become routine. And it revealed apparent dishonesty in the
ranks of DPS supervisors.

A 204-page investigative report depicts Hegarty, when pressed about the

source of the tickets, as a double-talking back-stabber. Captain Hunter was
shown to be less than truthful, as well.

The report also raises questions about Halliday's role in the gift-taking
scandal.

Certainly, comparing stories told by Halliday and Hegarty in the report, it's
evident one of these top cops must have lied.
Officially, Hegarty chose retirement over discipline after the probe concluded
earlier this year and sustained the allegation of accepting free baseball tickets;
his punishment called for him to receive two days off without pay.

Hegarty accused his friend of overseeing an unfair investigation, claiming

Halliday's objectivity was in major doubt because the director's job also was
"at stake" in the case.

The DPS was slow to release documents related to this case. A March request
for the investigative report on Hegarty finally was made available to New
Times in early October. Following that, Halliday would respond only through
DPS spokesman Bart Graves, who in turn sent e-mails to New Times
summarizing Halliday's responses. Some, though not all, of New Times'
questions were answered.

Though the report details the interesting and tawdry details of how the DPS
supervisors accepted baseball tickets from the Arizona Trucking Association
and then tried to cover their trails, other aspects of the problem are worth
exploring: just how much the trucking industry benefited from its close
relationship with DPS higher-ups and whether road safety was affected.

The Fiesta Bowl and Arredondo scandals may have been bigger, but this one
may have had more impact — literally.

Two years ago, Hegarty, with Halliday's approval, cut truckers a break by
ending random stops of commercial vehicles by most DPS officers. Since that
time, the DPS has added dozens more officers to its dedicated commercial-
vehicle-enforcement unit, and the total number of inspections has increased.
So it's difficult to determine the impact of the change.

It's possible, statistics show, that the change resulted in more commercial-
vehicle accidents.

There's certainly no indication that the trucking association's habit of giving

away pricey baseball tickets to DPS supervisors has made state highways
safer.
Hegarty was one of several assistant directors, but he acted as second-in-
command for his longtime buddy, Halliday.

He'd been promoted to the job of Highway Patrol chief in early 2010 by
Halliday, not long after Governor Jan Brewer appointed Halliday director of
the DPS. Halliday replaced Roger Vanderpool, who'd been the choice of
former Governor Janet Napolitano.

The leadership styles of Hegarty and Halliday were considered caustic and
heavy-handed. Halliday, a 35-year veteran of the force who had retired before
returning as director, made waves even before his appointment was
confirmed by the state Senate by announcing plans for a major shakeup of
leadership staff. Both men were viewed largely by the 1,600-employee agency
as poor decision-makers who were too rigid in dealing with subordinates.

In early 2011, an internal survey of DPS employees sponsored by the Fraternal

Order of Police showed that 95 percent believed a morale problem existed at
the agency and that the agency wasn't headed in the right direction. Hegarty
was the primary target of the disgruntled state troopers, the survey showed.

The survey spurred Halliday to put together a panel of officers and civilians to
help with the problem. The committee's main recommendation was to dump
Hegarty.

"The disruptive leadership and management performance of . . . Hegarty has

consistently been responsible for stifling the performance of Executive Staff,"
the committee's report stated. "Reclassifying . . . Hegarty will immediately
improve the Director's credibility and overall morale within DPS."
Fortunately for Hegarty, he and Halliday were close, and the boss didn't want
to get rid of him. Despite the survey and panel recommendation, the biggest
action Halliday had taken against Hegarty by the time of the September 8
baseball game was asking troopers to complete a survey about Hegarty that
was worded to remind everyone of Hegarty's accomplishments and morale-
building ideas. Halliday also noted in the survey that removing Hegarty as
chief of the Highway Patrol "would be a very significant change" to DPS
leadership.

But then Hegarty, with his very public ethical breach over the tickets, forced
Halliday to do something.

After the investigation of Hegarty — or perhaps during it — the friendship

between Hegarty and Halliday became strained. It's difficult for an outside
observer to know who told the truth in the probe, but the report makes it clear
that either Hegarty told some fibs or, as Hegarty claims, Halliday protected
himself by failing to come clean about the practice of accepting tickets.

It could be a little of each.

It wasn't the first time Halliday was accused of stacking the deck against
someone he was investigating. In a November 11, 2010, cover story ("Hot Mess
at the DPS"), New Times detailed the case of a DPS pilot fired after a
questionable investigation launched by Halliday into the pilot's rocky
relationship with Halliday's daughter. Last year, the former officer, Geoff
Jacobs, lost a federal wrongful-termination lawsuit against Halliday over the
debacle.

Nor is this the first time Halliday has been accused of getting too cozy with the
trucking industry.

Before his February 10, 2010, confirmation hearing before the state Senate,
lawmakers got an anonymous letter expressing concern that Halliday was a
longtime friend of Gary Fitzsimmons, safety director of Swift Trucking, a
Phoenix-based transportation company.
"Mr. Halliday informed numerous individuals that Mr. Fitzsimmons had
influence through Swift Transportation and the Arizona Trucking Association
who were willing to endorse him through their influence with Governor
Brewer," the letter stated. "If this is true, the commercial vehicle industry has
gained significant, direct influence with the individual and the agency
primarily responsible for their regulation and enforcement."

Asked about the letter by a senator, Halliday said his friendship with
Fitzsimmons was no big deal and that there was nothing untoward about the
trucking industry's lobbying for his appointment.

Halliday's a gruff Vietnam veteran who has held a wide variety of positions
during his 35 years with the DPS. As New Times' 2010 article described, he was
investigated — though never charged — in 2000 for an incident on a Payson
golf course in which he shoved a homeowner who had cussed him.

Hegarty, according to a bio that's still published on the DPS website, is a

former naval officer and University of Arizona graduate who has been with
the state police agency for 18 years. Besides working in patrol, SWAT,
administrative support, training, and commercial-vehicle enforcement, he
also completed a fellowship in the nation's capital at the National Highway
Traffic and Safety Administration.

Knowledgeable about a range of subjects related to his job, he has written

articles for various cop publications. In 2007, as a lieutenant, he wrote a
lengthy piece on whether a highly debated freeway speed-camera system run
by the state had reduced crashes on the Scottsdale portion of Loop 101. "It
seems very possible" that crashes went down 14 percent because of the
freeway cameras, Hegarty wrote, acknowledging that other factors could be
responsible for the decrease.

An article he wrote for the Arizona Trucking Association's 2009-2010

Yearbook describes how the ATA and DPS partnered in an educational project
intended to teach teens how to drive around big rigs. Contributions from the
ATA helped fund the program, and it was one of many instances of a business
relationship between the trucking group and the law enforcement agency.
And another reason, besides the overall enforcement of commercial vehicle
laws, that DPS officials shouldn't have been sitting in box seats at a sporting
event as guests of the ATA.

DPS policy prohibits employees from accepting "gifts, gratuities, or personal

favors from vendors, contractors, or suppliers."

A law on the books in Arizona lists accepting a gift as one of the "prohibited
acts" of state employees or officers — if the "valuable thing" or benefit presents
"a substantial and improper influence" on the gift-taker's duties. The
vagueness of the law (ARS 38-504(C)) is one reason Montgomery found it
difficult to bring criminal cases against lawmakers in the Fiesta Bowl probe.

But, crime or not, such gift-taking raises questions about the ethics of public
officials.

The DPS probe into the baseball tickets didn't go well for Hegarty. He sensed
that would be the case during his October 3, 2011, interview with Deputy
Director Dennis Young.

By then, the humorous picture of him and Mason sitting in the ATA seats at
Chase Field had made the rounds at the DPS. Halliday had seen it, of course,
and heard the rumors that the seats were provided by the trucking group. In
mid-September, he asked Hegarty about the source of the tickets, and records
show he was satisfied when Hegarty said he'd purchased them himself.

But on September 30, Major Jack Lane, who worked under Hegarty, fired off a
heated memo to Halliday and Young accusing Hegarty, Hunter, and Mason of
"potential criminal and/or ethical misconduct" based on their taking of gifts.
Lane had spoken with another officer about the "rumor" that the DPS officials
in the picture were sitting in ATA box seats, and the officer told him he'd talked
to Jimmy Chavez, who had been invited to the game but didn't go. Lane said
Chavez "confirmed" to the officer that the ATA paid for the tickets.
Lane then "understood the seriousness of these allegations," he wrote. "If the
tickets were in fact 'gifted' to these employees then there are criminal
violations. If they were paid for 'after the fact,' then there is less potential of
criminal violations, [but] there are ethical and/or conflict of interest issues
that need to be addressed."

Lane further noted that nearly everyone at the DPS seemed to know about
Hegarty's apparent bad ethics, "adding to the already tense situation
concerning leadership."

Failing to investigate and "properly" address the problem could damage the
agency's reputation, he argued.

A few days later, Hegarty was called to Young's office and asked who paid for
the September 8 tickets. Hegarty told him it was the ATA but that he "didn't see
an issue" with taking them, Young's report states.

Seeing how things were going, Hegarty apparently decided to try to drag
others down with him.

Director Halliday "has used tickets supplied by the ATA and has himself
attended games," Young says Hegarty told him.

Hegarty said other DPS employees had accepted free ATA tickets. According
to Young, Hegarty said the director of the Arizona Department of
Transportation, former state lawmaker John Halikowski, took the freebies,
too. Halikowski, through a spokesman, denied ever accepting tickets from the
trucking industry or going to a baseball game with an industry representative.

Hegarty, in his interview with New Times, says he never alleged anything about
Halikowski. He says Deputy Director Young's report is not accurate on the
point, and that he's considering suing for defamation because of it.

"That just floors me, that he would attribute that to me," Hegarty says.

Young didn't return calls for this article.

Following the initial probe and Hegarty's criticism of Halliday, the director
demoted Hegarty to captain and kicked him out of his job as Highway Patrol
chief.

Halliday then turned over the investigation to the Phoenix Police Department
to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, and Phoenix Internal Affairs
Detective Eric Pagone, as well as other Phoenix IA investigators, began taking
a look at the case in early November.

Pagone interviewed Hegarty on November 14 and 15, and Hegarty claimed

Dennis Young never asked him who paid for the tickets and that he didn't say
the ATA paid for them.

Hegarty says he was asked who "provided" the tickets and that he'd told
Young it was Karen Rasmussen, president of the ATA.

But, Hegarty told the Phoenix detective, the tickets weren't owned by the ATA
but by Rasmussen personally or, perhaps, by another ATA member. He said
he'd been to "about" six games in 2011 using tickets he'd purchased from
Rasmussen.

Hegarty presented to investigators a cashed check he'd written for $800 to

Rasmussen in May 2011, saying it was to pay for baseball tickets he'd bought
from her. Nothing's written in the memo field of the check, making it
impossible to know what the check was for.

It may have no bearing, though: Hegarty admits in the report and in his
interview with New Times that he accepted free tickets from Rasmussen in
2010. The investigation showed he went to at least one game with Rasmussen
and Halliday in 2009.

The total number of games attended by all DPS officials over the years isn't
known; the investigation concerned the September 8 incident.

Before the game in question, Hegarty told the detective that Rasmussen had
called him and mentioned she had tickets available.
Hegarty maintained that he paid Rasmussen $300 for the four tickets at the
season-ticket-holder price of $75 each — but that he didn't pay her right away.

He'd had the check in his wallet that day but forgot to give it to her, he said.

The check, dated September 8, cleared the bank on October 5, the

investigation showed, two days after Hegarty was interviewed by Young.

It was deposited into ATA's checking account — not Rasmussen's.

When interviewed by Detective Pagone in mid-November, Captain Ken

Hunter said he was "unaware" that the tickets — which he estimated to be
worth $100 to $120 — had come from the ATA or Rasmussen. He said he only
found out later, after talking to Hegarty on October 31, that his companion at
the game claimed he'd bought the tickets from Rasmussen.

Hunter said it was the first time he'd been to a D-backs game, and Hegarty had
"inferred" that going to the game was a "team-building" experience that wasn't
optional, he told Pagone.

Hunter admitted that the ATA's board of directors "have a vested interest in
the trucking industry" and that he would "not feel comfortable accepting
tickets from the ATA."

Yet he also admitted he'd heard rumors that DPS officials routinely accepted
free tickets from the ATA.

Hunter submitted a written statement to investigators saying he "was not told

where the tickets came from, nor did I ask."

A week later, e-mails pulled from the DPS supervisors' work accounts showed
Hunter and Hegarty knew exactly where the tickets came from.

"ATA has four club box tickets for this game and would like to invite you to be
our guests," Rasmussen told Hegarty, Hunter, Chavez, and Coleman in a
September 1 e-mail at 10:13 a.m. "Let me know if you're interested. (however,
only one parking pass)"
About 90 minutes later, Hegarty was the first to get back to her.

"I am," he wrote. "I'll take the parking pass, they can walk."

Rasmussen, whom Hegarty told investigators was his friend, jokingly replied
to all four that Hegarty could "charge them for a ride & impose a surcharge on
the parking. Just a thought."

Coleman shot back, "Karen he does not need any help with this. We may have
to rent seats in his vehicle to get there."

Rasmussen replied to the group, teasing Hunter that he hadn't "weighed in on

this important discussion . . . but I'm probably interrupting something
important that you're doing."

Hunter didn't reply, but he later admitted to Pagone that he'd seen the e-mail.
He and Hegarty had to backtrack in their statements to the investigator,
saying their earlier statements had been miscommunication, not dishonesty.

A letter of reprimand went into Hunter's permanent file.

Included in the report was a September 6 e-mail discussion between Chavez

and Rasmussen that helps represent the routine nature of these ticket offers.
When Chavez informs Rasmussen that he can't make the September 8 game
as planned, she gets back to him a few hours later: "Bummer. I have an extra
ticket for the afternoon game on Sept. 21. Think you can get off work to go?

Chavez doesn't question who would pay for the ticket. He simply tells her he'll
be in St. Louis for the National Trooper's Coalition meeting that week.

A spokesman for Chavez at the Arizona Highway Patrol Association said

Chavez would make a statement about his involvement, but he never got back
to New Times.
Rasmussen also was contacted by Phoenix investigators, who wrote in their
report that she was "reluctant" to consent to an interview, worried that
whatever she said would be "misrepresented" and "blown out of proportion"
in the media.

However, she backed up Hegarty's story that he'd "reimbursed" her for the
tickets and that the seats weren't owned by the ATA but by an ATA member.
Despite what she'd said in the e-mail, Rasmussen maintained, the DPS officials
were not "guests."

It stands to reason that her e-mail is more believable than her statements to
the investigator, because she hadn't known there would be any trouble when
she sent it.

In the "brief" phone conversation with Pagone, Rasmussen said she didn't
remember providing any free tickets to DPS employees in 2008 or 2009. New
Times called her for comment, but she didn't call back.

As with those of others involved, some of Director Halliday's answers to

Phoenix officers don't ring true. He appears to have been treated with special
consideration by the PPD. His interview fits on one page of the 204-page
report, and there is no evidence in the report that his comments were
challenged.

Halliday remembered going to only two Diamondbacks games with

Rasmussen, with Hegarty also attending. The first was in 2009, during the
break in his service between retiring and becoming director. As a private
citizen at the time, it didn't matter whether he was gifted the ticket.

The second time he went was after becoming director, either in the "early
2010" or "early 2011" season, he said. Either way, Halliday says he was "under
the impression" that Hegarty had purchased the tickets from Rasmussen.

He said he didn't believe he violated any policy.

Taking Halliday at his word that he attended only the one game as director, it
still doesn't fit that he would assume Hegarty had bought the tickets from
Rasmussen without at least asking Hegarty to verify that assumption. After all,
Halliday should have known that if he had guessed wrong and the ATA had
paid for the tickets, he could get disciplined for a policy violation.

On January 5, Hegarty, in his final written response to the allegations against

him, implied that Halliday went to more than just that one game with the ATA
as director. He says it can't be true that Halliday believed Hegarty had bought
or owned the tickets.

"This is not truthful, he clearly understood the tickets were owned by Karen
Rasmussen, and on at least one occasion, physically accepted the ticket from
Karen outside the stadium," Hegarty wrote.

Hegarty cried that his old friend also lied about the circumstances of
Hegarty's demotion.

Halliday was quoted in the Arizona Republic after the October 2011 demotion
as saying that the FOP survey was just one factor in Hegarty's demotion — and
that "there were some other people outside the agency that were pretty
unhappy with him in state government."

Halliday didn't elaborate, but it seems clear that the baseball-game incident
had something to do with the demotion, based on the timing. Halliday denies
that, though.

Hegarty, meanwhile, claims that Halliday told him on October 28 that the
"sole reason" for his demotion was his attendance at the baseball game. After
his meeting that day with Halliday, Hegarty says, the director called "several
department employees and non-employees," telling them Hegarty was the
subject of a criminal investigation and that was the reason for the demotion.

It's a he said/he said story — except not a typical one in that both "hes" were
among the highest-ranking cops in the state.
In January 2011, Highway Patrol chief Jack Hegarty prepared a draft report
assessing the effectiveness of the February 2010 order prohibiting state
troopers (except the fraction that work in the commercial-vehicle bureau)
from making random stops and inspections of commercial vehicles. No final
version ever was completed.

Hegarty related in the report the concern of some officers that they were
losing an enforcement "tool" because of the order, and he mentioned a
February 2010 article in the Republic critical of the policy change. But he
added that the change was "relatively insignificant."

Using 11 months of data, from February to December 2010, Hegarty wrote that
overall inspections had increased since the change for various reasons but
that slightly fewer inspected trucks had been taken out of service because of
problems. The drop was "unexpected," according to Hegarty, but the DPS' rate
of taking unsafe trucks off the road was still higher than the national average.

While inspections were up, fatal crashes involving commercial vehicles in

2010 went down, Hegarty wrote. He quickly added that other factors could be
involved besides the increase in inspections. But the crashes result clearly was
what he was hoping for, and he concluded that the new policy prohibiting
random stops "did not negatively impact" inspections or the percentage of
trucks ordered out of service by the DPS. He made another reference to the
fact that "fatal crashes" decreased during the new policy period.

But a different picture emerges when looking at injury and property-damage

crashes in 2010, and at all three categories of crashes in 2011.

It turns out that crashes actually were up.

Statistics provided by the DPS show that commercial-vehicle crashes of all

types — fatal, injury, and property damage — declined from 2006 to 2009.

Then, in 2010, while fatal crashes went down from 39 in 2009 to 32 in 2010,
fatals jumped to 42 last year.
Injury and property-damage crashes went up in 2010 and 2011. Crashes so far
this year closely mimic the 2011 numbers.

Crashes for all vehicles went up in 2010 and 2011, state figures show, which
could be a result of more vehicles on the road because the state's economy
improved.

But the fact remains that when the policy went into effect, critics predicted
less enforcement would mean more crashes.

True, inspections are up— but that's mainly because federal funding allowed
the DPS to transfer more officers into the commercial-vehicle bureau, beefing
up the bureau's force of dedicated commercial-vehicle inspectors from 511 in
2009 to 605 the following year.

Hegarty tells New Times he believed the decision to end most random stops
would make the commercial-vehicle inspection process more efficient overall
— and that the trucking association opposed the move.

He says truckers prefer to be pulled over for no reason because a clean

inspection is good for their records. However, Hegarty also says that two out
of three truck inspections reveal violations, making his argument that
truckers would want random inspections hard to believe.

Others make the more likely argument that the trucking industry welcomed
the change. The important question here, of course, is whether the industry's
favors to DPS management contributed to the policy change.

Gary Doyle, a Phoenix lawyer who represents truckers and other

transportation interests, says he'd heard industry representatives complaining
about the random stops before the prohibition.

"The problem with purely random stops is that they're extremely inefficient,"
Doyle says. "They'd pull someone over and wouldn't find a violation."
Well, not a major violation, he says. Once an officer takes the time to pull over
a vehicle, he or she usually manages to find something wrong, either in the
driver's logbook or on the vehicle itself, he says.

Doyle says he doesn't believe the change had any effect on road safety, mainly
because Arizona DPS officers earn their reputation as some of the toughest in
the country on truckers committing violations.

But Shaun Kildare, research director for the Washington-based Advocates for
Highway and Auto Safety, says Arizonans should be concerned about the
change.

Most states allow troopers to conduct random stops, which the institute sees
as important to road safety, Kildare says. Although the average motorist might
recoil at the thought of a random, suspicion-less stop, Kildare says, the belief
by experts is that stopping commercial vehicles is no different from having a
health inspector conduct a surprise visit at a restaurant.

Without random stops, trucks and other commercial vehicles are directed to
regular highway inspection sites. Though most operators are law-abiding,
those "prone to disobey" the rules could take advantage of the new policy by
steering clear of the sites.

"It's a little bit harder to avoid a stop if you don't know where it's going to
occur," Kildare says.

As Kildare describes it, good truckers might think the new policy is good
because they face fewer potential hassles.

But bad truckers think it's great.

Robert Halliday, through his spokesman, says it's more important than ever
for law enforcement to work with the commercial-trucking industry, because
more trucks are on the road than ever. He vows to continue an "ongoing
dialogue" with the industry.
That's understandable. It's when the DPS and the trucking industry exchange
more than dialogue that problems begin — something Halliday seems to have
learned only recently, following the Hegarty incident.

Halliday "disagrees" with Hegarty's statements in the 204-page report, his

spokesman writes on behalf of the DPS boss.

Though the DPS typically doesn't comment on internal investigations,

Halliday says he's making an exception in this case:

As he told Phoenix police, he maintains that he had "no idea" the tickets for
the baseball game he attended as DPS director came from the ATA.

"Had he known that, he would have not attended," the spokesman says.

Sounds like the ATA may be lonely at D-backs games next season without
Halliday and his crew.

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