Troy councilors name Travis Miller new police chief

Troy City Council’s months-long efforts to name a new chief of police finally came to an end Wednesday evening as veteran officer Travis Miller was picked for the top spot.

Miller, who has been serving as the acting chief at the request of Mayor Chuck Ekstedt, was pleased.

“I’m happy it’s over and we can move forward,” Miller said.

The meeting, which was momentarily interrupted due to a storm that knocked out power across northwest Montana and northern Idaho, lasted nearly two hours.

The department has been without a chief since veteran Katie Davis worked her last day with the department on July 5. She took a job with the county drug treatment court. Davis was hired in June 2017 after working in Troy Dispatch for several years.

Miller joined the force at the same time Davis was named chief. Before that, he said he worked with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office for 17 years, rising to the rank of captain.

Monday, city council met anticipating naming a new chief, but some members of the police commission were unsure if they should be following Montana Code Annotated or Troy’s policy handbook.

Ekstedt called in city attorney Levi Roadman to answer the question.

Roadman confirmed that, in this instance, Montana law would supersede Troy policy.

There were also concerns at Monday’s meeting, held because there weren’t enough council members for a quorum at the Sept. 16 meeting, about nepotism because Travis Miller is Troy police officer Mike Miller’s father.

Ekstedt pointed out that if a situation arose where Travis would have to reprimand Mike, it would fall to him to step in and handle it.

Roadman said Monday a decision needed to be made as soon as possible.

Mike Miller said he had applied for a position with Montana Highway Patrol, so the question may be moot. Miller’s position is grant funded and he decided to apply before learning the grant was approved to pay for his position.

“Not having a chief is hurting our community,” Roadman said. “The longer we go without one, the worse it’ll become. We have guys working a lot of overtime, but if we hire Travis as the chief, we can use the COPS grant to hire another officer.”

Travis Miller said at Monday’s meeting he was willing to undergo a probationary period if he was named chief.

“When we talked to the county sheriff’s office, they told us the working relationship has been great,” Travis Miller said.

When council finally voted to approve Miller, it included a provision that he’d serve a 12-month probationary period. If it wasn’t satisfied with his performance, he would return to being an officer.

At Wednesday’s meeting, many area residents wondered why council had yet to make a decision.

Miller acknowledged he didn’t have experience in developing a budget.

“When I worked for the county, the undersheriff handled that,” he said.

Sgt. Henry Roy was very vocal in his support for Miller to be the new chief. 

“We’re working on a more aggressive approach, but the courts need to also be a little more aggressive when it comes to dealing with some of these drug offenders,” Roy said. “We’ve also talked about a new work schedule that would provide 24-hour coverage. As for discipline, if anything ever happened with Mike (Travis’ son), I’d deal with it and report to Chuck (Ekstadt) about it.”

After more than an hour of discussion, Ekstedt then sought a motion to approve Travis Miller for the chief position.

Councilor Scott Hoffman made a motion, but it was not immediately seconded.

Councilor Jamie Shupe said she had her reasons for not seconding Hoffman’s motion.

“We have new information that I was just provided that I can’t disclose. It’s an email,” Shupe said. “Chuck, don’t pretend you didn’t get the email.”

“Travis, can you explain this? Ekstadt said.

Miller said there was a situation involving a major drug player in Troy.

“We were ready to arrest him, but we were told to stand down. A year later, the county sheriff’s office called and said he was standing in front of the post office and that they wanted him arrested now,” Miller said. “He wanted to give his phone to another person, but we got permission to take the phone. We cuffed him in front, but I forgot to pat search him before we put him in the patrol car. When we watched the video we saw that he reached in his pockets and removed some change and lint. The video shows he didn’t ingest the drugs in the patrol car.”

“We took him to the Lincoln County Detention Center where he was dressed in the routine garb and placed in the general population,” Miller said. “The next day the county called and said I messed up because he had ingested something and was higher than a kite. I asked them why he didn’t get searched in the jail.

“I then called Levi (Roadman) and he said it was a mistake on my part, but it was a bigger mistake on the county’s end.”

Miller said the mistake was something that happens nationwide in terms of sneaking contraband into a detention facility.

Henry said the typical procedure is to search for weapons, but not drugs and to let detention officers handle it at the facility because it avoids many issues with the Fourth Amendment.

The U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Councilor Shawna Kelsey asked Miller if the situation arose again if he would handcuff the person behind his back.

“Yeah, if I arrest that dude again,” Miller said. “Handcuffing someone in front of their body goes a long way in relationships when you deal with them again.”

Roy explained the difficulty of making those decisions and pleaded to council to give Miller an opportunity at being the chief.

“We have to make those decisions at 3 a.m. by ourselves,” Roy said. “We’re tired of the burn out and we’d like some normalcy back in our life.”

In terms of Miller’s probation and judging his progress, Councilor T.J. Boswell talked about the possibility of having monthly updates and reports after each council meeting.

Miller said he was fine with that and Ekstadt said he was, too, but wanted to make sure there weren’t any issues with the Montana Municipal Interlocal Authority.

Ekstedt said when the job was advertised, the city received 14 applications. They initially interviewed eight people before narrowing the list to two.

Ekstedt said he, councilors Scott Hoffman, Shawna Kelsey, deputy county attorney Jeff Zwang and new city attorney Levi Roadman and a few others were part of the initial team that did interviews.