Mike Wooten, 35, has been a trooper since 2001. He has been married
and divorced four times. One of his marriages was to Palin's sister,
Molly McCann, with whom he had two children. That marriage ended in
2006. His behavior leading up to the divorce led Palin's and McCann's
father, Chuck Heath, to file a formal complaint about him to the state
police.
. Heath and Sarah Palin, who was not yet governor, said that Wooten
had threatened to kill Heath - telling McCann that Heath "would eat a
f***ing lead bullet" if he hired a lawyer for her. They also charged
that he had used a Taser on his own 11-year-old stepson, had drunk
beer in his patrol car and had shot a cow moose without a license (the
latter a crime in Alaska, where such licenses are not easy to come
by).
. The state police investigated these charges and substantiated all of
them. Col. Julia Grimes, then head of the Alaska State Troopers,
suspended Wooten for 10 days and wrote, "The record clearly indicates
a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times,
illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a
course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession."
She warned him he would be fired if he didn't shape up. The troopers'
union got the suspension cut to five days.
Now ask yourself this: If you were Sarah Palin and had such a
revealing look at Mike Wooten, would you have wanted him on the force?
Palin was acting as any concerned citizen should after a close
encounter with an unfit cop. If there's abuse of power in this story,
it lies on the side of bureaucrats and unions protecting officers
whose behavior makes them a danger to the public.
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