{"id":9061,"date":"2015-11-11T07:49:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T14:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=9061"},"modified":"2015-11-12T10:12:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T17:12:22","slug":"another-reprimand-issued-to-bpd-officer-morrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/11\/another-reprimand-issued-to-bpd-officer-morrison\/","title":{"rendered":"Another reprimand issued to BPD Officer Morrison"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Morrison\"<\/a>

KTVQ2<\/p>

Billings Police Officer Grant Morrison is seen testifying during a coroner\u2019s inquest in January into the shooting death of Richard Ramirez.<\/p><\/div>\n

Billings police Officer Grant Morrison, who was reprimanded for being cited by Laurel police for keeping pot-bellied pigs at his home and who recently pleaded not guilty to a state charge of possessing unlawfully captured deer fawns, has also been reprimanded for wrongfully obtaining criminal justice information for his private use.<\/p>\n

A \u201ccorrective action form\u201d issued to Morrison in September, and obtained by Last Best News in a public information request, said the officer was given a written reprimand after seeking information for private use from the Criminal Justice Information Network and the National Crime Information Center.<\/p>\n

That was a violation of department policy, and under a new state law<\/a> that went into effect Oct. 1\u2014too late to have any bearing on this case\u2014it could have been prosecuted as a misdemeanor crime.<\/p>\n

Morrison, 32, who was found to have committed justifiable homicide<\/a> in two fatal on-duty shootings<\/a> in two years, has been with the Billings Police Department since 2009. He returned to patrol duty briefly after the inquest into the second shooting and he is now assigned to a Drug Enforcement Administration prescription drug diversion task force, based in Billings.<\/p>\n

Police Chief Rich St. John said Tuesday that Morrison\u2019s CJIN\/NCIC violations, and the department\u2019s response to them, were reported to the state Division of Criminal Investigation, in the Department of Justice, which oversees law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were satisfied with the remedies that took place and there\u2019ll be no sanctions on the department,\u201d St. John said.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>DCI Administrator Bryan Lockerby said that was true, but that based on new information his office received Tuesday, he will be seeking information and clarification from the police department.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Viets, the program manager of the Justice Department\u2019s CJIN Services Section, said that when the BPD initially reported Morrison\u2019s violations, the state understood that Morrison had only requested the information and that nothing was released to him.<\/p>\n

She said that understanding was challenged by information in an article<\/a> published last week\u00a0on the Montana News Association website. (See editor\u2019s note at the bottom of this story<\/strong>.) And at about 3 p.m. Tuesday, her office received a packet of information from Donald Cyphers, proprietor of the MNA website, which included the corrective action forms issued to Morrison.<\/p>\n

Her office hadn\u2019t previously seen those reports, Viets said, and they would have to be reviewed to see if they shed any new light on the situation. But she did say, after a cursory examination of the documents, that apparently no CJIN information was actually given to Morrison.<\/p>\n

And Police Chief Rich St. John, in an email to Last Best News, said flatly that \u201cIt was my understanding nothing was shared.\u201d But still later in the day, after he spoke again with Lockerby, St. John acknowledged that there were discrepancies between the corrective action form and what was reported to the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am aware of the discrepancy and we will resolve that ASAP,\u201d St. John said in a follow-up email. \u201cIt is a matter of reconciling what our records supervisor told Veits when we first reported the violation by phone as opposed to the what the corrective action says.\u201d<\/p>\n

The corrective action form released by the city clearly states that Morrison did receive criminal justice information from some of his colleagues in the BPD before a supervisor intervened and said such activity violated CJIN\/NCIC rules.<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Police Chief Rich St. John.<\/p><\/div>\n

According to the form, Morrison, who lives in Laurel, called the BPD on Thursday, Sept. 3, asking for a driver\u2019s license check on Linda Ramirez. She is a cousin of Richard Ramirez, one of the men Morrison shot and killed.<\/p>\n

The notice said Morrison asked Officer Robert Ellison, who was working the BPD front desk, to send him Linda Ramirez\u2019s driver\u2019s license information and photograph. Ellison relayed the request to Tressa Huett, a secretary, \u201cwho obtained the requested information\u201d for Morrison, according to the city document.<\/p>\n

Morrison later called back asking for a registration check on a vehicle license plate, and Ellison told him it was registered to a woman whose last name was Nilsen.<\/p>\n

The form said Morrison told Ellison that the vehicle in question was stalking his home and that he wanted Nilsen\u2019s photo and license information. He said his wife had gotten a good look at the driver of the vehicle and wanted to see if her recollection matched Nilsen\u2019s photo.<\/p>\n

Ellison relayed that request to Huett, but this time Huett notified Sgt. Neil Lawrence, and Lawrence said the request violated CJIN\/NCIC rules. Lawrence called Morrison and told him the same thing, but Morrison said he only wanted to show the photo to his wife so they could ask the Laurel Police Department to investigate.<\/p>\n

Morrison was issued a written reprimand for that violation, the same discipline he had received in June, after Laurel police officers issued him three citations for keeping prohibited animals, pigs. The reprimand also said that Morrison\u2019s Laurel residence had been the subject of \u201cnumerous complaints\u201d about Morrison\u2019s keeping unlicensed dogs.<\/p>\n

In September, Morrison was cited by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks for possessing \u201cunlawfully captured deer fawns.\u201d He entered a plea of not guilty on Oct. 14. St. John said he would relay an interview request from Last Best News to Morrison, but Morrison did not attempt to make contact.<\/p>\n

St. John said he will do nothing about the state citation until the case has been settled. As for the other violations, he said, the BPD uses a system of \u201cprogressive discipline\u201d that emphasizes education over punishment. The department invests a lot of time and money in officer training, he said, so unless officers are unfit to serve, every effort is made to retain them if they show a willingness to learn from their mistakes.<\/p>\n

St. John said Morrison\u2019s attempt to obtain CJIN information was wrong, and that he should simply have gone to the Laurel PD if he thought someone was stalking or harassing him, but the incident \u201creally wasn\u2019t a big, big violation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the animal violations in Laurel were unrelated to the CJIN violations, so offering progressive discipline in the form of written reprimands in both cases seemed warranted. If Morrison is found guilty of the deer-possession charge, St. John said, it might be necessary to \u201cramp up\u201d the discipline.<\/p>\n

In February 2013, Morrison shot and killed Jason James Shaw, and in August of that year a coroner’s jury determined that the shooting was noncriminal, justifiable homicide. According to testimony at the inquest, Shaw ignored Morrison\u2019s commands and reached for what turned out to be a BB gun replica of a Walther P99 handgun.<\/p>\n

On April 14, 2014, during a traffic stop on the South Side, Morrison shot and killed Richard Ramirez, who was a backseat passenger in a car and who reportedly ignored commands to keep his hands up. He was later found to have been unarmed. In January, a coroner’s jury ruled that that shooting, too, was justifiable homicide.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note<\/strong>: We have had ample, excellent reasons to mock the Montana News Association<\/a>, but we also have to acknowledge that it did the first reporting on Morrison\u2019s illegal use of the CJIN\/NCIC information. It’s like that old saying<\/a> about the blind pig.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billings police Officer Grant Morrison, who was reprimanded for being cited by Laurel police for keeping pot-bellied pigs at his home and who recently pleaded not guilty to a state charge of possessing unlawfully captured deer fawns, has also been reprimanded for wrongfully obtaining criminal justice information for his private use. A \u201ccorrective action form\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[3363,3362,3365,2695,3364,84,2696],"class_list":["post-9061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-billings","category-news","tag-bryan-lockerby","tag-criminal-justice-information-network","tag-drug-enforcement-administration","tag-grant-morrison","tag-jennifer-viets","tag-rich-st-john","tag-richard-ramirez","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}