For as long as Anne K. Strasdauskas has been in the Baltimore County Sheriff's Department, controversy has followed her like a shadow.
Some who know her say the sheriff is a dedicated public servant who sometimes lets her zeal for her work intrude on her judgment. Her critics say she has misused her office, improperly mixing her personal life with her job.
With a Sept. 10 primary challenge nearing, previously unreported transgressions by Strasdauskas have been alleged. And for the first time, the specific reasons for her firing as a deputy sheriff in 1997 have been made available to The Sun by former workers and adversaries who have come forward. Among the documents is a Maryland State Police investigative report showing that detectives sought criminal charges against Strasdauskas.
The sheriff denies any wrongdoing. "Someone has singled me out," she said in an interview last week.
Several charges -- noted by a departmental review board when she was fired by the board and former Sheriff Norman A. Pepersack in 1997 -- are being made public for the first time.
Strasdauskas was reinstated after challenging the firing in court, a twist in a long and strained relationship with Pepersack, who hired her in 1991.
Strasdauskas, a Democrat, beat Pepersack in the 1998 election. Now he is running as a Republican against her. Two other Republicans and two Democrats also are challenging her.
The list of Strasdauskas' alleged transgressions as a deputy sheriff, outlined in documents, includes:
Stalking and harassing a Reisterstown woman for six months, calling her up to 10 times a day, and following her to her job and to the homes of friends. The woman agreed to drop a formal complaint to investigators with the Sheriff's Department, after Strasdauskas agreed to leave her alone.
Misuse of the FBI's National Crime Information Center computer system, in part to locate the woman she was accused of stalking. Maryland State Police met with a Baltimore County prosecutor about the case, but the prosecutor declined to bring charges against Strasdauskas.
Cheating on her final written exam to become a sheriff's deputy, the culmination of six months of intensive training. This was noted in the report recommending her firing.
Parking in a handicapped parking space using a permit that belonged to her one of her parents and a charge of insubordination stemming from failure to return a departmental radio as ordered. These also were cited in the report recommending her firing.
Strasdauskas denies stalking the woman and misusing the NCIC system. She says she "didn't keep her eyes straight during the exam" -- adding that she has limited vision in one eye -- but did not cheat.
"But why don't you print the good things I've done?" Strasdauskas said. "I saved the life of a black man with CPR. ... I care about my deputies, children and seniors. ... I am the sheriff, 365 days a year, 24/7."
She also takes credit for achievements as sheriff. Among those, she says, were using X-ray scanners at the courthouse, improving technology in her office and implementing a warrant-flagging system.
23 charges listed
A copy of the sheriff's department's official log of internal affairs cases on the day the panel voted to fire Strasdauskas -- December 8, 1997 -- lists 23 accusations against her dating from 1990, including the stalking and NCIC allegations.
Not all of the charges were heard by the panel. Strasdauskas appealed her firing, won re-instatement, then resigned and won the election.
Because Strasdauskas resigned, the investigative files did not become public and could not be used as evidence in an appeal of her reinstatement that was planned by Pepersack. He lost the election and the appeal never occurred.
Ethics investigation
These previously unreported allegations come to light as Strasdauskas faces a county auditor's inquiry into her campaign advertising and spending of public funds.
Strasdauskas, 48, also faces a separate investigation by the Maryland Ethics Commission into a possible conflict of interest. She appeared, in uniform, as a witness at a county liquor board hearing in January to endorse a corporation's license application for a Silver Spring Mining Co. restaurant in Cockeysville. But she did not inform the board that her brother owns the company's restaurant by the same name in Bel Air.
Perhaps the most serious of the charges against her occurred in November 1996, when then-Deputy Strasdauskas allegedly made illegal inquiries using the FBI's nationwide criminal-justice information center, according to documents. The NCIC contains 24 million records and is the nation's largest criminal-justice databank.
Law enforcement personnel are routinely and regularly told from the beginning of NCIC training that they must not abuse the system, which provides a person's criminal record, as well as information such as addresses, telephone numbers and license tag numbers.
"Deputy Strasdauskas was running tags through NCIC one night and I told her to stop that moment," said retired Sgt. Frank Pollock, who commanded the warrant squad in the Sheriff's Department and retired in 2000. The next day, Pollock reported the incident to then-Sheriff Pepersack.
Strasdauskas says that she and others practiced on the computer system by gathering information on "friends, acquaintances and family." She says that she could not remember ever misusing NCIC.
In a separate internal document, Pollock told internal affairs investigators in October 1996 that Strasdauskas "was talking to her girlfriend and she was giving license information to a girlfriend."
Criminal probe in 1997
Pepersack referred the case to the state police Computer Crime Unit and a criminal probe was started in 1997.
According to a state police investigative document, the alleged misuse of the records system was directly linked to Deputy Strasdauskas's stalking of a woman who has since left Maryland. The Sun is not publishing the woman's name, to protect her privacy.
"It appears the suspect and [the victim] at one time had a relationship," said the state police report, written by Cpl. Michael F. Donhauser Jr. "This relationship deteriorated and the suspect began to stalk and harass [the victim]."
The woman eventually dropped her complaint against Strasdauskas. "She and the suspect had communicated and as a result of this communication had resolved their dispute," the state police report said. The victim stated that "the suspect had agreed to leave her alone and that was all she wanted."
Nevertheless, Donhauser took the allegations of NCIC abuse to Sue A. Schenning, a deputy state's attorney. Schenning told state police, according to the report, that she "would not prosecute in a case like this." She said her office had a policy not to prosecute "in [Criminal Justice Information System] cases unless the access of information results in harm to the victim in the case."
When asked about the case recently, Schenning said she has "absolutely ... no recollection of" state police coming to her with that case.
'Breach of faith'
Failure or refusal to prosecute NCIC cases concerns Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy analyst with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. His group advises and conducts research on government intelligence and law enforcement databases such as NCIC.
"Citizens grant certain authority to law enforcement to protect us," Aftergood said. "When that authority is abused, it causes a profound breach of faith in the public trust."
A normal stalking case, Aftergood said, "is frightening enough. But when the full power of the law enforcement system is used by a stalker, it's a living nightmare. Such cases should be deterred and, when discovered, punished to the full extent of the law."
Another allegation that led to Strasdauskas' firing was her use of handicapped parking spaces.
"The handicapped parking incident was typical of how she viewed herself," says Richard Compton, a former deputy now in federal service. "She used her elderly parent's handicapped sign in her personal truck to park near the courthouse in Towson. To me, that was just hypocritical for a law enforcement officer to do."
The sheriff acknowledges that she used the handicapped parking spaces. "Hindsight is 20/20. Have I made some mistakes? Yes."
Insubordination noted
The recommendation to fire Strasdauskas noted her violation of two honor codes. One incident, former and current sheriff's department employees say, occurred when she twice was caught copying off another person's exam paper at the police academy.
Strasdauskas says she had two honors charges while a recruit, once for failing to salute and once for "not keeping her eyes straight" during that exam.
During Deputy Strasdauskas' trial board hearing in 1997, the panel headed by Captain Bernadette E. Jordan found that Strasdauskas was guilty of insubordination. The charge arose from her failure to turn in a departmental radio for reprogramming.
That charge -- seemingly petty when viewed alone and the only one in the public eye at the time -- was to board members the latest in a lengthy list of allegations against Strasdauskas, and one that led it to recommend her firing.
"The issues of credibility and integrity are of paramount importance to the career of a Deputy Sheriff," Jordan wrote in the board report. "The prior two (2) honor code sustained allegations and parking in a handicapped spot as well this case of insubordination indicate a pattern of undesirable behavior exhibited by Deputy Strasdauskas."
Pepersack, 68, says he allowed Strasdauskas into the department as a deputy despite the alleged cheating "because we were desperately in need of deputies. ... I was going to address the discipline later.
"Now," says the former sheriff, "that could have been perhaps the worst decision I ever made in more than 40 years of service in law enforcement. No, most certainly the worst."