MANTI, Utah — A judge Monday sentenced Seth T. Hendrickson, who was the chief of the Gunnison Valley Police Department until his own officers reported him for taking drugs last year, to home confinement and probation.
“This isn’t the way I was raised,” Hendrickson, 42, told the judge minutes before the sentence was issued, “my personality, my morals. I violated all that by doing what I did.
“I have huge regrets.”
Sixth District Court Judge Alex Goble implied in the courtroom that he considered sentencing Hendrickson to incarceration. He did not do so, in part, because Hendrickson had no prior convictions and has already completed some drug counseling.
“I think in this case, there was a public trust that was breached,” Goble said.
“But you’ve done everything else” expected of defendants, Goble added, “and I don’t feel as though I should imprison you or send you to jail.” Hendrickson in December pleaded guilty to two counts of drug possession and a count of official misconduct – all misdemeanors.
The Gunnison Valley Police Department protects the towns of Gunnison and Centerfield in Sanpete County. A search warrant, recently obtained by FOX 13 News and not previously reported on, describes what happened at the department in May. When a K-9 handler discovered the drugs used to train his dog were missing, he and another officer called Hendrickson. The search warrant says Hendrickson asked to speak to the handler in private. The handler recorded the call.
“Chief Hendrickson,” a Utah County Sheriff’s detective later wrote in the search warrant application, “tells [the K-9 handler] he needs him to ‘do him a solid’ and asks him how much drugs he is supposed to have in his possession at one time. The [K-9] handler asks Chief Hendrickson directly if he took the box of DEA drugs. Chief Hendrickson responds it is in his car.”
The Gunnison Valley officers reported what had happened to other police forces. Hendrickson later tested positive for heroin and other controlled substances.
In court Monday, Hendrickson said he became addicted to opioids after a back surgery and he suffered from insomnia. Stress at home and work were factors in his decisions, too.
“I was dealing with my own family, personal stress that everybody deals with,” he said, “but I was also carrying a decade’s worth of cases… and certain events that I just couldn’t forget about.”
“I got desperate, and I did things that I never thought I would ever do,” Hendrickson added.
The search warrant also describes drugs missing from closed cases and stored in Gunnison Valley’s evidence room. The door to the evidence room was, at least at times, not latched.
After court, Hendrickson’s attorney, Zachariah Becerra, denied Hendrickson took any drugs except for those meant for K-9 training.
“Seth Hendrickson is a person of exceptional character,” Becerra said.
“It was,” Becerra added, “a medical and mental health condition that resulted in his criminal behavior for which he has accepted full responsibility.”
Gunnison Valley’s police board placed Hendrickson on leave after the drugs went missing. He separated from the department later that summer. Gunnison Valley has not yet responded to a FOX 13 public records request seeking terms of the separation.
Becerra said Hendrickson will not contest any efforts by Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training to suspend Hendrickson or revoke his police certification. In 2020, Gunnison Valley’s then-chief – Hendrickson’s predecessor – admitted to drinking alcohol while attending a firearms training. That chief retired shortly thereafter.
While Gunnison Valley was looking for a new chief, its board committed what the Utah Antidiscrimination and Labor Division said was religious and age discrimination against chief candidate and former state legislator Carl Wimmer. Gunnison Valley denied any discrimination and settled Wimmer’s complaint for $80,000. Hendrickson got the chief job.
Back at Gunnison Valley’s headquarters on Monday, the current chief, Jason Adamson, discussed changes he’s made since taking the job.
Adamson, who previously worked at Unified Police Department and is a lieutenant colonel in the Utah National Guard, said he’s been trying to bring various aspects of the department up to law enforcement standards. He has four officers.
“We now catalogue and tag all of our evidence so it’s tracked,” Adamson said in one example.
That’s in part, Adamson said, to “make sure that there’s no chance of this happening again.”
