Pubdate: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 Source: Topeka Capital-Journal (KS) Copyright: 2000 The Topeka Capital-Journal Contact: 616 S.E. Jefferson, Topeka, Kansas 66607 Website: http://cjonline.com/ Author: Steve Fry, The Capital-Journal 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk