Proctor Deputy Police Chief and City Councilor Troy Foucault entered a not guilty plea today to a charge of personally possessing morphine that was seized as evidence in a pharmacy burglary.
Foucault, the second-ranking member in a six-officer police department, also is charged with possession of a short-barreled shotgun and theft. He remains on administrative leave pending resolution of his case, according to Proctor Police Chief Walter Wobig.
Foucault is free on a $20,000 bond. He appeared in St. Louis County District Court with St. Paul attorney Robert Fowler, who entered the formal not guilty plea for his client. Foucault is ordered to not possess a firearm and to abstain from the use of alcohol and nonprescribed drugs.
Fowler is a former assistant Ramsey county attorney in the prosecution division. He now specializes in representing police officers in criminal, labor and critical incident cases. The red Toyota Camry he was driving Wednesday bore the license plate "FOP LAW" for the Fraternal Order of Police.
Assistant St. Louis County Attorney Karl Sundquist of the county attorney's office in Virginia is prosecuting the case. Sundquist was assigned the case to avoid a possible conflict of interest because Foucault knows some of the prosecutors in the Duluth office.
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Wobig told the News Tribune last month that a complaint against Foucault was brought to his attention, and he contacted St. Louis County Sheriff Ross Litman. Litman referred the case to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for investigation.
According to the criminal complaint: An administrative assistant in the Proctor Police Department was looking for a lost USB thumb drive in Foucault's desk drawer at the police department on Sept. 8 when she spotted drug items. Another Proctor police officer then searched the desk and found three different colored pills in a bank bag. The pills were in zip closure baggies inside the bank bag, along with at least $100.
The pills were found to be 15 milligram and 30 milligram morphine tablets along with a capsule containing OcyCodone and 500 milligram acetaminophen mixture. Proctor police linked the pills to those stolen from a burglary at LCT Prescription Providers in Proctor earlier this summer.
Wobig checked the evidence inventory that Foucault submitted from two drug burglaries and found that the officer's count of pills was off in two cases. Foucault conceded that his handling of the drugs was poor and not proper policy.
A search of the defendant's home located a short-barreled shotgun between the bed frame and box spring of the mattress at the head of the bed in the master bedroom. To be a legal shotgun by federal and state statute, the barrel cannot be less than 18 inches long. The shotgun seized had a barrel length of 14¼ inches.
