Seward County Commissioners have questions about training sessions and insurance liability at the patrol office housing Seward County Sheriff’s staff and members of the inter-agency drug interdiction task force.
The commissioners asked Sheriff Mike Vance to attend the March 18 meeting to discuss and answer questions about the use of the patrol facility south of the interstate between Seward and Milford.
Questions centered around the county’s sponsorship of a law enforcement training workshop by a private company named Desert Snow, reporting costs for Seward County staff to attend, assuring adequate insurance paperwork is filed with the county clerk’s office, and whether it is a conflict of interest for Seward County staff members to be contract instructors for Desert Snow.
Commissioner Raegan Hain said in a later interview she hopes Vance will provide further answers to their questions in a few weeks.
While the sheriff is elected to lead and manage his department, Hain said the patrol office is a county-owned facility and the commissioners are responsible for assuring it is used safely and with adequate insurance.
At the meeting, Hain, who is the board’s liaison with the Sheriff’s Department and Seward County jail, told Vance she and first-year Commissioner Scott Pekarek recently stopped at the patrol office while nearby on other business.
They left with questions about the number of vehicles at the site, the presence of a large banner for the private training company, and reference to training sessions being held there.
The county purchased the facility in the past few years to house the Seward County Interdiction Task Force and much of Sheriff’s Department staff later moved their offices to the site.
The Seward County Sheriff’s Department annually hosts a workshop conducted by Desert Snow, a company that specializes in interdiction, drug search and other aspects of law enforcement at the local, state and national levels, according to its website.
Vance said 70 officers from the United States and Canada attended the workshop in October 2024. Another three-day Desert Snow APEX trap class is being advertised online for next October in Lincoln, but lists the patrol office’s Seward County address.
The $990 per student course trains officers to find concealed spaces where drugs, money or other contraband could be hidden in a variety of vehicle types.
The facility’s space allows participants to have hands-on training with vehicles inside.
Vance said the patrol office also hosts canine training for law enforcement officers in and out of Seward County once or twice a month and area officers use the firing range there.
Vance said in the meeting he was not sure how many registrations were given to the department for hosting a Desert Snow workshop, but he does send deputies to the local session. The Desert Snow website information for hosts indicates they are provided two spots in the workshop.
Vance said officers who attend the sessions sign a waiver of liability for the training.
At the meeting Vance responded to a question about Desert Snow’s proof of insurance with a document Hain said was undated. It is common for a group renting or borrowing a facility to provide proof of liability insurance.
Board Chair Misty Ahmic said the county had an invoice for five registrants submitted for payment for the 2024 workshop, but the submission did not include a list of the officers attending.
Hain said in reviewing the invoices for past training, she found a $40,000 invoice from December 2020 for 40 students to attend a three-day workshop and receive a tool bag. No names or registration forms were attached.
“We don’t have 40 individuals in our department,” Hain said.
Vance said prior to the purchase of the patrol office his department had hosted a Desert Snow workshop in York.
“Almost every agency around here sent somebody to it,” he said, noting that funding came from the department’s Drug Fund, which is comprised of seized funds that have come back to the department.
Ahmic said the sheriff’s department and county have three accounts funded by forfeited or seized funds, but no staffing is paid through those funds.
The sheriff’s department is part of the county’s single audit which looks at any areas expending $750,000 or more annually, and the interdiction program files an annual report at the federal level that Vance shared with the board last August.
Pekarek and Commissioner Darrell Zabrocki asked Vance if any of his staff are employed by Desert Snow or if Desert Snow personnel work out of the Seward County location.
Zabrocki said Desert Snow is a topflight organization but asked if any Seward County officers have an interest in the company.
Vance said three or four sheriff’s department staff members may work with Desert Snow when they are off duty, but he said he could not discuss personnel issues.
In a later interview Vance said some Seward County law enforcement officers are instructors at the local workshop and workshops across the country on their time off.
“I do not see any conflict of interest with them being instructors for Desert Snow because they do it on their own time,” Vance said in a later interview.
Vance was an instructor for Desert Snow training workshops prior to being elected sheriff, but not since, he said.
The vehicles parked at the patrol office are a mix of the local interdiction group’s seizures and some of Desert Snow’s seized vehicles that are used to offer hands-on demonstrations of how contraband can be hidden in vehicles.
Vance said some of the vehicles are modified to the extent that they cannot be sold for other uses. Seized vehicles cannot be sold for at least two years in the federal forfeiture program.
The banner at the patrol office was purchased from Desert Snow, which also sells other merchandise like bumper stickers. Vance said he has a banner at his home.
Zabrocki also asked Vance about a drive-through Xray machine the department had hoped to get when the county purchased the patrol office. The machines help identify hidden cavities in vehicles.
Vance said the equipment is like that used at some United States border points and would have been funded by the drug fund. People have since backed off wider use of such equipment and he is not sure that it would be available in the future.
Ahmic, in an interview after the meeting, said she hoped this and further conversations will bring some clarity to how the facility is being used, Desert Snow and what is beneficial to Seward County.
“That is what we are here for, to make sure the county is prioritized,” Ahmic said.
Last August, Vance shared a copy of his annual report on the Seward County drug interdiction task force with the commissioners, in which he reported that the group affiliated with Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Treasury added $753,099 from the “equitable sharing fund” to the task force’s budget in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
Several other federal investigation, law enforcement and financial government entities are also involved.
Task force funds cannot be used for salaries and wages, but Vance reported then that $391,513 was paid to “federal task force replacement officers” to allow deputies to serve on the task force. Other expenditures were for equipment, travel, education and awareness awards and memorials, and investigations, including $17,710 for training and education.
The task force has a budget of $1.9 million for fiscal year 2024-2025. The collaborative group includes the Nebraska State Patrol, Milford and Seward Police Departments, the Seward County Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department. Saline, Lancaster, Duell and Thayer County agencies are also affiliated but file separate reports from the Seward County members.
Seward County is one of only a few departments in Nebraska that utilize interdiction, which involves an officer stopping a vehicle for any reason and then asking to search it. If a suspicious amount of money or contraband is found, the driver is given the opportunity to avoid arrest and charges by forfeiting the cash or drugs on the spot.
The cash and drugs are then turned in to the federal government, which later allocates a portion of the cash to the Seward County Sheriff’s Drug Fund and other agencies involved in the forfeiture.
