DENVER (AP) - A grand jury on Wednesday indicted former El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa on several charges, including extortion, false imprisonment, kidnapping and official misconduct.
Maketa, who resigned in December 2014 before the end of his third and final term, was indicted along with former Undersheriff Paula Presley and former sheriff’s commander Juan San Agustin. Attempts to reach the three were unsuccessful Wednesday, and prosecutors declined to comment.
Maketa and Presley are accused of coercing a woman to recant her story after she was involved in a domestic dispute with a deputy.
According to the 11-page indictment, Maketa told the woman in September 2013 that “she needed to come in to the Sheriff’s Office and do another interview and tell investigators that she instigated the incident in order to allow (the deputy) to get his job back.”
The woman, who worked for a company that provided medical services at the county jail, consented, was arrested and spent more than 24 hours in custody.
According to the indictment, the detectives on the case said they did not believe they had probable cause to arrest the woman but did so under orders from their superiors. San Agustin was among those who ordered her arrest.
Maketa and Presley also are accused of threatening to terminate a $5.2 million contract with the medical services company if it did not fire an employee who documented what she said were inappropriate comments made to her by a sheriff’s commander.
The woman, whose name has been redacted from the indictment, was fired in November 2013.
The other charges allege that Presley asked to put deputies on a district attorney’s list of officers whose credibility had come into question simply because “those officers had angered her.”
Several sheriff’s office employees also were investigated and threatened in connection with the 2013 disappearance of an internal affairs file for Bill Elder, a deputy who was running for sheriff and has since been elected, prosecutors say.
Presley later acknowledged that the file was at her home.
Wednesday’s indictment is the latest in a string of allegations involving Maketa, whose final year in office was marked by accusations of sexual favoritism and intimidation, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
The sheriff was accused of sexual impropriety, discrimination, creating a hostile work environment and removing almost all oversight of the department’s annual budget.
The Gazette has reported that an investigation conducted for the county found that Maketa mishandled internal affairs investigations, had inappropriate relationships with three female subordinates and offered an endorsement to a sheriff candidate in exchange for personal favors.
Nine notices of complaints for a total of $3.9 million were sent to the county.
Maketa, who quietly retired two weeks before the end of his term, played a leading role in responding to massive wildfires in the Colorado Springs area in 2013. He spent 27 years with the sheriff’s department, 12 of those as its leader.
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