COCAINE USE DETAILED

Why former sheriff's Cpl. Timothy P. Oblander started snorting cocaine and
later smoking it is a mystery to him, Oblander testified Wednesday.

His cocaine abuse in the mid-1990s forced the Shawnee County sheriff's
narcotics investigator to seek help from a drug rehabilitation center and
eventually ruined his 11-year career as a deputy.

Under questioning Wednesday from District Attorney Joan Hamilton, Oblander,
39, told of his slide into cocaine addiction as part of his testimony in the
preliminary hearing in Shawnee County District Court of Sheriff Dave
Meneley, who is charged with two counts of perjury.

Oblander's start as a deputy in 1984 suffered a setback when he was arrested
on a county road for drunken driving. He subsequently resigned at the
request of then-Sheriff Ed Ritchie. After getting training as a reserve
deputy, Oblander became the town marshal of Rossville until 1987 when
Ritchie rehired him as a deputy.

At the urging of narcotics Detective Scott Holladay, Oblander applied in
January 1993 to Meneley, the newly elected sheriff, to join the "special
services unit," which has many of the same duties as the sheriff's narcotics
unit. Oblander got the new slot.

Oblander, whose partner first was Deputy Scott Baker and later Deputy Frank
Good, started learning to train dogs to detect cocaine, methamphetamine and
marijuana, which were packaged in baggies as training aids. But in late 1993
or early 1994, Oblander testified he became a drug user. Once or twice, his
baggies were missing cocaine or methamphetamine because he would use a straw
to snort it, mostly in his patrol car.

Why would Oblander, a narcotics enforcement officer, try cocaine and
methamphetamine?

"I've asked myself that a million times," he testified. "The temptation was
just too large."

Over time, Oblander's cocaine consumption grew. When he started, he used a
quarter to a half of a gram of cocaine once every several weeks, Oblander
testified, but by the time he last used the drug in June 1995, he was using
one-half to one gram two or three times a week.

Oblander took cocaine evidence from a federal drug case investigated by
Holladay, saying it didn't matter to him whether the case was pending or had
been resolved in court.

"I didn't really care," Oblander said, adding he was desperate the night he
took cocaine from the federal case.

When investigators tried to question him about the matter, he refused to
give a statement, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination. During an attorney general's inquisition in 1996 into
missing cocaine, he again took the Fifth. Oblander knew Holladay and a
second deputy were suspects and had to take polygraph tests to clear
themselves, he testified.

In early 1995, he started smoking rock cocaine. Near the end of his drug
use, Oblander said: "I couldn't stop. It seemed like I wanted more and more
and more."

On May 11, 1995, he was depressed when he got off duty and snorted a gram of
methamphetamine.

"It wiped me out. I couldn't do anything," Oblander said.

Asked his state of mind, he replied, "I didn't have any."

Oblander drove around, stopping on a back road of Silver Lake, where
searching deputies found him the next day, still high. Oblander took off
from work for about a week, and his partner, Good, took care of notifying
his supervisors.

All the cocaine Oblander was skimming had come from investigations he
conducted with Good and purchased with department drug buy money, Oblander
said. After his disappearance in May 1995, he relapsed several more times
before he entered a drug rehabilitation center, leaving Good to carry the
word to supervisors.

"He's always taken care of things for me in the past," Oblander said.

Oblander testified he didn't tell Meneley about his cocaine problems, but he
did tell Good about his addiction in 1995.

When he entered rehabilitation, "I was at the bottom of my life," he said.

Oblander worried whether he would have a job on the sheriff's department
when he finished, but Good told him everything was going to be OK.

During visits to the rehab center, Meneley was supportive and ultimately
told him he had his job at the sheriff's department. Oblander said he didn't
tell Meneley of his drug use until a short statement was issued on his
behalf on March 1, 1999, three days after he resigned as a corporal. Since
then, Oblander has been self-employed as a framer in residential
construction. He has five to seven employees.