SLO police chief concealed communications, violated policies in search for gun, attorney says
San Luis Obispo Police Chief Deanna Cantrell and other department officials concealed communications and violated city policies relating to personal cell phone use during an alleged “bad faith” search after the chief lost her gun last summer, a defense attorney says in a detailed motion filed Tuesday.
Attorney Pete Depew filed the 104-page motion to block evidence gathered in the home search of his client, Vanessa Bedroni, who’s facing two felony child endangerment charges, along with her husband, Cheyne Orndoff.
On July 10, 2019, Depew said, SLO police conducted an illegal search of the couple’s home without a warrant amid an urgent effort to locate Cantrell’s gun, which she had inadvertently left in a bathroom stall at El Pollo Loco.
After misidentifying Orndoff as a suspect, and guided by a database error that led them to believe he was on probation when he actually wasn’t, police searched Orndoff and Bedroni’s home, which is located on O’Connor Way just outside city limits.
Police eventually realized they had the wrong man, but not before they observed conditions from outside the home that they considered to be criminally dangerous for the two young children, according to the city.
As part of the search, they then gathered evidence of needles and methamphetamine in the residence, former SLO County Deputy DA Phillip Joo said in an earlier court hearing.
Orndoff and Bedroni have pleaded not guilty, and the legality of the search, to be determined by Judge Tim Covello, could determine if that alleged evidence can be used in a trial.
In Tuesday’s filing, Depew laid out a detailed sequence of events on the day Cantrell lost her gun, documenting his team’s investigation of the department’s alleged actions during the search. Among the findings, Depew says:
▪ No evidence exists that Cantrell’s initial call was “dropped” when she first contacted dispatch after losing her gun or that she needed to use her private cellphone to make 40 unrecorded calls to other department members’ private phones in the hours after losing the weapon, in violation of city policies.
▪ In a recorded call on the day of the search, a SLO sheriff’s official said SLOPD has “a really bad habit of not vetting stuff all the way through” in its investigations, adding Orndoff had a “pretty good beef” to file a complaint against the city.
▪ A voice recording of an unidentified SLO police sergeant alerted a sheriff’s official that a prompt “be on the lookout” (also referred to as a BOLO) alert to other agencies regarding the chief’s missing gun fell through the cracks — but not because of a clerical error as SLO officials said publicly, but instead possibly to keep it “on the DL (down low)” while undercover officers investigated. (An alert was sent out that night, several hours after the incident occurred, and should have gone out sooner, Cantrell previously acknowledged to The Tribune; she said a staff miscommunication caused the lapse.)
▪ A database error in the Criminal Justice Information System that mistakenly labeled Orndoff as on probation was created by the County Probation Department and not the Superior Court, and because probation is considered a law enforcement agency, the evidence gathered thereafter in a warrantless search can’t be used in a trial.
▪ Prior to the search of Orndoff and Bedroni’s home, an officer briefed a group of law enforcement officials on the situation with the missing gun without identifying Cantrell, saying: “So here’s the story. An officer left a weapon inside a bathroom today and then left accidentally” and “that officer went back right after that and then the gun was gone,” adding that “We are going to search no matter what.”
▪ Orndoff repeatedly protested to officers he was not on probation and had paperwork to prove it in his car, to which an officer ultimately replied, “I really don’t care.”
▪ SLOPD tried to influence the District Attorney’s Office to file the case as a felony. When the DA’s Office initially filed the case as a misdemeanor, SLOPD again contacted the DA to advocate for a felony filing. The case was then re-filed by the DA as a felony.
In Tuesday’s motion, Depew contends the search was made in “bad faith” with the intent to hide information that could have exposed the chief’s error, summarizing the day’s events in a scathing assessment.
“Across more than 10 police reports and dozens of hours of electronic media, one trend is clear,” Depew wrote. “Every coincidence, every mistake, every dropped call, every semantic ambiguity, every gender-neutral sentence construction, every jurisdictional irregularity, every malfunction, every phone call on a private cellphone, every lapse in judgment, every deviation from SLOPD policies, every sequence of events that strains believability — coincidentally helped keep Chief Cantrell’s identity as the loser of the firearm from becoming public knowledge.”
Asked for a response Tuesday, both the DA’s Office and City Attorney Christine Dietrick declined to comment, saying they’ll respond through the court system so as not to prejudice the case.
The points will be “addressed in open court during the litigation of the pending defense motion to suppress evidence,” Assistant DA Eric Dobroth told The Tribune.
“At that time all evidence will be taken under oath with witnesses on both sides subject to cross examination on all issues,” Dobroth said. “It would be a disservice to our professional ethical standards and to the community we serve to (comment on the claims in this story).”
Dietrick wrote in an email: “The city and its witnesses are aware of the efforts to publicly advance the narrative reflected in the motion without the benefit of all evidence being publicly presented in court. The city has confidence in the judicial process and the DA’s Office to present the complete and accurate facts through the motion hearing and trial proceedings and city witnesses welcome the opportunity to support that process.”
The court filing Tuesday comes two weeks after Cantrell announced she was leaving her role at the end of September to become the new chief of the city of Fairfield in Northern California.
Alleged sequence of events
In the filing, Depew lays out a detailed account of what happened after Cantrell lost her gun, starting with the first call she made from her personal cellphone to the SLOPD dispatch landline at 1:07 p.m. on July 10.
That call was “dropped,” Cantrell told The Tribune in a July 29, 2019, interview, before she could report the lost gun, a Glock 42 with hollow-point bullets, a weapon Depew says is illegal for civilians to own.
Cantrell then made about 40 calls on her private cellphone between the time she lost her gun and the time SLOPD entered the defendants’ home about seven hours later at 7:43 p.m., Depew wrote.
Those included an unrecorded call with SLOPD Officer Josh Walsh at 5:42 p.m. over personal cellphones while SLOPD officers were at the couple’s home conducting surveillance of the residence, Depew wrote.
“All 40 of those calls were to unrecorded lines — a dubious pattern and a deviation from SLOPD policies by the SLOPD chief that cannot be ignored,” Depew wrote.
After the initial call to dispatch at 1:07 p.m. and a brief conversation on the recorded line in which Cantrell asked for SLO dispatcher Christine Steeb, Depew wrote, “There is no dial tone or other audible indication the call had ended.”
“Approximately 12 seconds later, Chief Cantrell called the personal cellphone of another dispatcher, Ms. Christine Steeb,” Depew wrote.
Later that day, SLOPD responded to a tip from a Morro Bay Police Department officer, calling in from home, Depew wrote, that Orndoff could be the person who took the gun because of his similar appearance to a man captured in an image from El Pollo Loco video surveillance released in a city Facebook post.
SLO police didn’t have a warrant to search the home and relied on a law enforcement database, the Criminal Justice Information Services system, which police said showed that Orndoff was on probation.
A note in the system even included a “Do not match list” post, indicating caution that Orndoff’s profile had previously been linked mistakenly with his brother Cole Orndoff’s profile, Depew wrote.
Cole Orndoff was on probation for a past drug-related conviction and had used Cheyne’s name as an alias when communicating with police.
After officers came to his home on July 10, Cheyne Orndoff “repeatedly told the officers that he was not on probation,” wrote Depew, adding Orndoff told police he had paperwork in his car steps away on his property.
“Prior to SLOPD entering the home, Cheyne pleaded with officers to look up the details of his alleged probation status,” Depew said. ... Specifically, Cheyne asked, ‘would you have access to any of (the probation) information, like what case he’s talking about that I’m on probation? Because, I have no cases on me, so I don’t understand.’ A SLOPD Officer responded, ‘Even if I did, I can’t tell you.’”
According to Depew, Orndoff then told officers: “The DA never cleared that s--- up? . ... False identity, my identity was stolen.’
When one officer said, “you’re still on bench probation,” Orndoff reiterated, ”No, I’m not.”
The officer replied, ‘Yes, you are.’
Orndoff attempted to explain, Depew wrote: ‘No. All those charges were put on my brother, therefore, it’s not possible. I even have the paperwork in the car,” before noting that his own record had been expunged.
To that, the officer said, “I don’t really care.”
Police later learned that another man, Los Osos resident Skeeter Mangan, who didn’t have a beard as Cheyne Orndoff did at the time, had taken the gun after finding it in the bathroom. He turned it over to authorities the next day, on July 11, 2019, after media reports circulated his photo.
SLO police recommended criminal charges against Mangan, but after reviewing the evidence, the DA’s Office declined in a letter District Attorney Dan Dow wrote to Cantrell, citing “the totality of the circumstances and Mr. Mangan’s apparent developmental disability as documented briefly by SLO Sheriff’s Office Deputy Ron Slaughter.”
Depew and Orndoff’s attorney, Jason Duffurena, contend the records they’ve been provided by the city as part of the case relating to Cantrell’s cell phone records have been heavily redacted by the city and they are entitled to more information.
The release of those records continues to be in dispute, with a preliminary hearing set for Sept. 24.
Depew cited a SLO Police Department policy, stating a “(personal cellphone) device should not be used for work-related purposes except in exigent circumstances (for example, unavailability of radio communications). Members will have a reduced expectation of privacy when using a personally owned (device) in the workplace and have no expectation of privacy with regard to any department business-related communication.”
Additionally, “documents, emails, photographs, recordings or other public records created or received on a member’s personally owned (device) should be transferred to the San Luis Obispo Police Department.”
Sheriff’s Office officials questioned search
Depew cited recorded conversations between Sheriff’s Office officials around the time of the search of the couple’s home, which occurred more than six hours after Cantrell first realized her gun was missing.
SLOPD notified the Sheriff’s Office of the incident and of its plan to conduct the home search because the O’Connor Way residence is in sheriff’s jurisdiction, Depew wrote.
Sheriff’s Office deputies showed up only to keep the peace, they said in the recorded transcript, and not to take part in the search.
Depew quoted a sheriff’s deputy chief, learning of the situation, telling a watch commander that SLOPD “has a really bad habit of not vetting stuff all the way through,” and suggested the search could lead to a successful civil case against the city.
The transcript of the conversation, according to Depew’s motion, is as follows:
Sheriff’s watch commander: Apparently this wasn’t the right guy.
(Laughter.)
Watch commander: While they were out there, I guess one of the detectives were still doing some work on it and they got a better side profile of him and it wasn’t Cheyne. So, basically at this point they don’t know where the gun’s at. So, I asked their captain, are you guys planning on putting some sort of, you know, BOL for local agencies, cause they apparently put this on Facebook at six hours ago, but never bothered telling any of the local agencies. So, he said, yeah, we’ll put something out.
Sheriff’s deputy chief: Had they put on social media that there had been a stolen firearm?
Watch commander: Here’s what they put. If you just go to SLOPD’s regular Facebook page, it says SLOPD is asking for assistance, locating this man who may be in possession of a stolen firearm at El Pollo Loco on LOVR on today’s date at 12:15 and to call SLOPD. So, they put this out at, you know, right when it happened.
Deputy chief: And, of course, they identified that guy as having a stolen firearm when he in fact does not have a stolen firearm.
Watch commander: He just has, you know, basically a lost property that is not his, not — I wouldn’t call it stolen.
Deputy chief: But this guy doesn’t have the gun?
Watch commander: No, it’s not Cheyne Orndoff. They had the wrong guy.
Deputy chief: Do they think they have the right guy now?
Watch commander: They don’t know who the right guy is.
Deputy chief: Jesus Christ.
Watch commander: So, they went out there. They searched his property. They’ve cleared. It’s not him. So, it cleared from that location and they’re like, “yep, it’s not him. We have a better photo now, apparently.” And they now have a side profile and it’s not him.
Deputy chief: Right. I tell you what, if Cheyne decides he wants to file a complaint against San Luis PD, he’s got a pretty good beef.
Watch commander: Probably.
Deputy chief: Well, I’m really glad we decided to play it cautious with them because what a surprise, their info wasn’t good.
Watch commander: Well, and that’s why I called you. Because, I’m like, you know, I’ve dealt with SLOPD enough to know that whatever they’re telling me, only a fraction of it is going to be correct.
Deputy chief: Because they have a really bad habit of not vetting stuff all the way through.
Urine sample also an issue
Depew also said that a urine sample related to the case and collected by SLOPD at 11:30 a.m. on July 12, 2019, tested positive for methamphetamine and amphetamine, according to evidence initially presented in the case.
But after the defense requested a re-test by a private lab, the result came back negative after a test on Dec. 7, 2019.
The identify of the individual whose urine sample was collected is not clarified in Depew’s motion.
“After being confronted with the re-test that showed the initial laboratory report to be false, SLOPD drafted a supplemental report on April 2, 2020,” Depew wrote. “That reports seems to claim not that the private laboratory’s negative result was incorrect — but rather that SLOPD lost track of which urine sample belonged to whom.”
Depew contends the initial test however, prompted a deputy district attorney to increase the case charges to felonies by signing an amended complaint on July 16, 2019.
“Purportedly underlying that decision to re-file was a urine sample collected by SLOPD at 11:30 a.m. on July 12, 2019,” Depew wrote.
This story was originally published September 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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