SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A Bay Area sheriff's deputy who claims he was fired after revealing his involvement in a DUI sting and cover-up sued his employer for retaliation, in Federal Court.
Former reserve deputy sheriff William Howard claims the Contra Costa Sheriff's Department ostracized, demoted and fired him for telling superiors that deputy Stephen Tanabe had coordinated a sting with a private investigator to set up a winery owner for a DUI arrest. He claims Tanabe then asked him to hide a package in his, Howard's, attic that Tanabe did not want investigators to find.
Winery owner Mitchell Katz claimed in a 2011 lawsuit that private investigator Chris Butler had set up a sting against Katz. Katz claimed that Butler's employee invited him to a wine bar in Danville on the pretext that he wanted to make a reality TV show about Katz's winemaking business.
The real purpose of the meeting was to lure Katz into getting drunk so Tanabe could arrest him for DUI, which charge his estranged wife could use against him in custody proceedings, according to the 2011 lawsuit. Katz agreed to dismiss without prejudice three of the 13 causes of action in his lawsuit.
In Howard's new lawsuit, Howard claims Tanabe received multiple calls from his "P.I. friend" during the evening, from which Howard surmised that Tanabe was receiving information about a suspect under the influence of alcohol, who turned out to be Katz.
Sure enough, Katz claimed in his lawsuit, he was stopped by Contra Costa County Sheriff's Deputy Stephen Tanabe, and was arrested for driving under the influence.
Howard claims that about a month later, on Feb. 16, 2011, an agitated Tanabe showed up at Howard's house, after Butler had been arrested on drugs and weapons charges, and asked Howard to keep a package that Tanabe did not want investigators to find when they searched his house while investigating his involvement with Butler.
Tanabe allegedly retrieved the item from his car, which was covered by a black plastic garbage bag, and told Howard to keep it in his attic.
Howard claims in his lawsuit that while the request made him feel "uncomfortable," he took the item in order to "avoid a confrontation with Deputy Tanabe while he was in this highly disturbed and agitated state."
Howard claims he "needed time to process the information Deputy Tanabe provided to plaintiff and to determine what course of action to take" but that he did not look into the bag and did not know what was in it. The package contained an assault rifle, according to a search warrant affidavit.
Howard claims he informed his superiors on Feb. 23, 2011 about his involvement with the DUI stop and the package that Tanabe left at his house. His supervisors allegedly followed Howard to his house, found the package containing the gun and arrested Tanabe.
Howard claims he was named in a San Francisco Chronicle news article on March 9, 2011 as the person who reported Tanabe to Contra Costa County regarding the Katz arrest.
According to his lawsuit, Howard's peers "criticized plaintiff for trying to ruin the career of a respected and well-liked sheriff deputy. Plaintiff was told he could not talk to anyone about Deputy Tanabe and the arrest of Katz, so plaintiff was not able to explain to his peers the truth about what had actually happened."
