COUPLE AWAITING APOLOGY

FRISCO - Katie Rhodes and Josh Brudwick are awaiting an apology they
feel is becoming overdue.

"The offer's on the table," said Summit County Sheriff John
Minor.

The two were the victims of a drug bust gone awry July 25 when Summit
County Drug Task Force members handcuffed them at a local restaurant
and ransacked their Frisco condo looking for the makings of a crystal
methamphetamine lab.

They found nothing, and left behind a mess of broken doors and strewn
clothing and trash.

John Minor, in a joint interview last week with Frisco Police Chief
Tom Wickman and Undersheriff Derek Woodman, said he would personally
apologize and deliver a check to cover the cost of damage to the
condo. That cost has yet to be determined.

Minor said he spoke with Rhodes' mother, Judith, and offered to
apologize to her daughter in person, present the check and offer
counseling for the couple. He hasn't heard back.

Attorney Tim Mienert, who is representing Rhodes and Brudwick, said he
hasn't heard from anyone yet.

"We don't know what's going to happen," he said. "This only happened a
week ago. Anything is possible; it takes time for these kinds of
things to develop."

Not much has developed, although a lot of questions remain.

The Sheriff's Office is still waiting for test results taken from the
scene, notably those in the garage where officers said it smelled of a
flammable solution.

Flammable materials are often used in the production of crystal meth -
and are often to blame for lab explosions.

"We still don't have any answer for the odors," Woodman said. "We
speculated the Jeep might have had some sort of gas leak, but there
was no evidence on the ground."

They have since heard that a man Frisco police said was leaving the
apartment with a duffel bag and a trash bag might have been a neighbor
heading out on a camping trip. The officer who witnessed that is out
of town, so they are unable to follow up on that until his return.

Many in the community are critical of the operation.

"It's kind of hard to say this fell apart," Woodman said of the raid.
"It still goes back to the information we had at the time. We reacted
to that information in what we felt was the appropriate fashion. I
don't want to say the information was inaccurate, but certainly the
end result was not anticipated."

Some wonder how this ordeal might affect Minor's bid for election. The
primary, which will effectively decide the sheriff's election, is set
for Aug. 10. Minor faces his former jail captain, Mike Phibbs.

That election has been acrimonious from the start, when then-Sheriff
Joe Morales quit to take on a position at the state. The Board of
County Commissioners appointed Minor over Phibbs; Minor fired Phibbs a
few days later in what is officially termed a personnel matter
protected by the Open Records Act.

Minor can't talk about the incident under penalty of law. Phibbs could
open his records, but declines because he says they are "inaccurate."
Minor said he would gladly talk about the issue were Phibbs to give
the go-ahead.

Minor said he is concentrating his efforts on his job, not the
election.

"I'm a cop first and a politician second - and reluctantly, because it
(politics) enables me to do the job I love," Minor said.

"Police work is contentious. You're not going to make all the people
you serve happy. I have yet to see a person jump for joy and say, 'I'm
happy I'm going to jail today.' If people don't like what happened
here, they can vote that way."

Minor defends his task force's actions.

"A lot of people come up to me and say, 'You had to go. You had to
check it out.'" he said. "If we hadn't, it could have been worse. I'm
not going to stop being a cop. That's just who I am."

The stress of the politics involved is nothing compared to life on the
street, Minor said.

"I've had to tell a mother her 16-year-old was killed by a drunk
driver," he said. "I've had to do CPR on a 2-year-old while his mother
was behind me begging me to save his life. I've had people defecate in
the back seat of my patrol car, people try to take my head off. Being
a politician is nothing compared to working the streets."