Three weeks before the vote that would decide who would lead the Coeur d'Alene Police Department, council member Dan Sheckler sent an email to the city's interim administrator. He wanted to know if the outside candidate was still interested in the job. "Will we be able to keep him on the hook?" he asked.

That was April 15, 2026, and six days later Sheckler made the motion to hire Greg Yeager, a deputy chief from Fort Collins, Colorado, as Coeur d'Alene's next police chief. The council voted 4-2. The police union, the outgoing chief, the mayor, and law enforcement officials from neighboring agencies had all backed the other candidate, interim chief Dave Hagar, and Sheckler had previously voted against Yeager. He flipped.

The public never heard why. The Coeur d'Alene Press, which published an editorial two days before the vote saying "the choice is clear" and "there should not be a big debate here," didn't ask. No local outlet did.

Public records obtained by the Idaho Fidelity Foundation now provide an answer. What those records reveal is that Sheckler had not been wrestling with the candidates on the merits. He had spent weeks privately reviewing a federal lawsuit implicating Hagar's truthfulness. He had asked the city attorney whether Hagar should be placed on a Brady list -- a registry used by prosecutors to track law enforcement officers whose credibility has been formally questioned, because an officer's Brady history must be disclosed to defense attorneys in every criminal case where that officer testifies. He had received a written conclusion from that same attorney that Hagar had lied in a city investigation. And he had discussed with a fellow council member how to keep the public from ever knowing any of it.

The Federal Case Nobody Talked About

In 2021, a former Coeur d'Alene police captain named Lee Brainard filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit against the city. The lawsuit alleged that in 2019, then-Captain Dave Hagar asked Brainard not to reveal that Hagar had secretly recorded city meetings, and that when Brainard told the truth about those recordings in an internal investigation, both Hagar and former Chief Lee White retaliated against him until he was constructively forced into early retirement.

On January 16, 2026, a federal magistrate judge ruled that Brainard's whistleblower claim would proceed to trial. In that ruling, Judge Debora Grasham stated as a matter of fact: "Hagar told Brainard that if he were asked about the recordings of the meetings, Brainard should say there are no recordings."

That ruling landed weeks before the police chief search entered its final stage, and the council members who would cast the decisive votes were about to start reading it.

What Sheckler Knew Before He Voted

City records show that City Attorney Randy Adams sent Sheckler the full federal court opinion on March 20, 2026, along with all depositions taken in the case. "I thought, as a lawyer, you'd like to see the whole thing," Adams wrote. Sheckler forwarded the full deposition package to his personal Gmail account on March 25 and again on March 28. He was studying this material privately, outside of any official proceeding.

On April 16, 2026 -- five days before the vote -- Sheckler emailed Adams directly: "The expert report opines that Hagar should be on the Brady list. Why is Hagar not on the Brady list?"

The Conclusion That Went Nowhere

"I had concluded that Captain Hagar did not tell me the truth about recordings of meetings with Tymesen about the Captains' MOU," Adams wrote in reply the following morning. "He disputed my conclusion and no formal investigation was undertaken on his conduct. Some City officials wanted that done; others did not. It was determined that my conclusion did not need to be reported to POST by the Chief of Police."

Adams acknowledged in the same email that "it could be argued that my conclusion was simply an allegation which was never tested in a direct investigation," and added: "The prosecutors would have to determine if my conclusion would have to be disclosed to defense counsel in the event Captain Hagar were to be a witness in a case."

Adams himself acknowledged that his conclusion "could be argued" to be an allegation that was never tested in a direct investigation, yet the city chose not to investigate, nobody reported the finding to Idaho POST -- the state body that licenses law enforcement officers and has authority to revoke that license for dishonesty -- and whether Hagar's history of alleged untruthfulness was ever disclosed to defense attorneys in criminal cases where he testified was left entirely to individual prosecutor discretion with no policy requiring it and no procedure to ensure it happened.

The Idaho Fidelity Foundation has submitted a public records request to Idaho POST for any disclosure or action on file regarding David Hagar.

"They Don't Know What We Know"

Two days before the April 21 vote, council member Kiki Miller texted Sheckler. She was upset about a Sunday editorial in the Coeur d'Alene Press endorsing Hagar. The paper had called the choice clear, praised his record, and raised no questions about the federal lawsuit sitting in public federal court records.

Sheckler replied with a summary of what he believed the council knew that the public did not. "They don't know what we know," he wrote. "Well we can't tell them. It's a personnel matter and involves pending litigation."

Miller pushed back in kind: "And they don't ask; they repeat what they're told."

What followed was a frank exchange between two elected officials about how to avoid public accountability. Sheckler suggested adding an executive session to the agenda -- a closed-door meeting where the public is excluded and the discussion cannot be recorded or disclosed. The strategy, as he laid it out, was to use that procedural tool to signal that information existed that council couldn't share, without ever having to share it.

"Exec session wouldn't change anything," Miller replied.

Sheckler pressed: "True, but it will emphasize that there are things we cannot discuss. Then we can say we cannot discuss all matter discussed in ex session."

"Still, most, including press, will not grasp that," Miller wrote. "And the votes will happen prior to it anyway."

Miller's earlier response to Sheckler's opening statement: "Not many would catch that."

Miller was right that no local outlet reported it. She was wrong that nobody would eventually find out.

Worth pausing on a question the records don't fully answer: Sheckler and Miller were working to suppress information about a candidate they were voting against, not for. Whatever they knew about Hagar's credibility, sharing it publicly would only have further benefited the candidate they wanted -- Yeager. That raises a question the records leave open. Were they protecting the city from litigation exposure? Were they protecting the process from scrutiny? Or was something else driving the decision to keep Coeur d'Alene residents in the dark about a federal lawsuit involving the man who had run their police department for the past several months?

The Coordination

Sheckler was not acting alone. Council president Amy Evans texted him on March 31: "Randy has advised that the best way to get an item on the agenda is for a few council members to request." She gave him the phone number for Ron Jacobson, the city's interim administrator who had been hired after Troy Tymesen's retirement and who had put Yeager's name forward as his candidate for police chief.

It is worth noting that Mayor Gookin himself chose the three council members on his interview panel -- Miller, English, and Sheckler -- from a list of four options HR Director Tosi offered him. His response, in a March 2 email produced under public records, was: "Sorry. Too quickly read. Let's do: Miller, English, Sheckler." He was picking from a menu, not strategically installing allies. Dan English, a council member who would ultimately vote against Yeager, was one of the three he chose. What happened after that selection was not something Gookin had reason to anticipate when he picked his interview panel.

On April 16 -- five days before the vote -- Adams forwarded his entire legal dispute with Mayor Gookin over appointment authority to Sheckler and Evans, copying Jacobson and Tosi. He told them the mayor was trying to "circumvent" the process, then coached them on how to handle it at the meeting: get a council member to ask Adams whether the process was legal "rather than me interrupting the proceeding."

Evans replied with five words: "I appreciate this information."

City Clerk Renata McLeod texted Sheckler the exact motion language to add the police chief item to the April 21 agenda and coached him through the parliamentary procedure. Former Mayor Steve Widmyer texted Sheckler after the vote: "Dan, thank you for your courage in standing up for what is right." Sheckler was not the only YES vote, but he was the only council member who had previously voted against Yeager and then reversed course -- the flip that broke the deadlock.

The Dissent

Council member Christie Wood voted no. She had been raising alarms since before the first vote.

Three days before a deadlocked March 17 vote, Wood texted Sheckler directly with a list of concerns that read less like a council member's opinion and more like a lawyer's brief. The process was "poisoned and illegal," she told him. She had already filed a formal complaint against the city's HR department. Gookin needed to consult the city's insurer before taking any action. And HR Director Melissa Tosi had been compiling negative written comments from officers Hagar had disciplined and including them in materials sent to the city administrator and mayor ahead of the vote.

Tosi disputes this characterization. In a response to the Idaho Fidelity Foundation, she wrote that she is "unaware of any police employee that has received disciplinary action by Dave Hagar" and that "final discipline decisions are determined by the police chief only and there has been no disciplinary actions given by Dave Hagar during his time as Interim Police Chief." She said the feedback packet contained comments from all four interview boards on all four finalists, and that it would have been "inappropriate for HR to selectively remove certain comments made about any of the four finalists." The city denied a public records request for those materials under Idaho Code 74-106(1). Tosi noted that determination was made by the City Clerk's office, not HR.

By March 20, Wood had identified what she believed was deliberate manipulation. She had compared the summary Adams sent to city staff with the version Adams sent to council members and found them to be different. The version sent to staff made no mention of Dave Hagar. The version sent to council contained Brainard's allegations of Hagar lying.

The Idaho Fidelity Foundation has filed a public records request for both versions of that summary. If they differ, Wood's allegation is confirmed in the city's own documents.

Records produced in response to that request also reveal that Jacobson's first recommendation to council on March 17 was not Yeager. The following day, Tosi emailed Jake Fisher -- the El Monte police chief who had been one of the four finalists -- to inform him the process was on hold: "Our City Administrator did decide to move forward with another candidate for his recommendation to which council ultimately did not confirm." Yeager himself confirmed in a March 18 email that he knew he had not been selected.

Within 24 hours, Tosi had provided Yeager with the email addresses of every panel member and written: "I know Ron Jacobson called you yesterday but I want to reinforce that you did extremely well in the process and the City of Coeur d'Alene would be lucky to have you."

Providing a non-selected candidate with the personal email addresses of every panel member and assuring him the city would be lucky to have him is not standard post-rejection HR practice.

What the Mayor Knew and Didn't Know

Mayor Dan Gookin responded to questions from the Idaho Fidelity Foundation after records were produced, confirming he knew about Adams' conclusion regarding Hagar's truthfulness before the vote but saying he believed the conclusion was biased and wrong. "My opinion is that this was merely another in a long string of harassment and retaliation efforts by the city hall crowd against Hagar, White, and the PD," he wrote.

He said he did not know that Adams had briefed Sheckler and Evans the morning before the vote. When the Idaho Fidelity Foundation showed him the records, he said he planned to confront Adams publicly and again call for his resignation. He did not do so at the next council meeting. He later said the agenda item had been withdrawn and that an executive session had been requested to address Adams' employment instead. He said he did not know about the Miller-Sheckler texts.

That Gookin was kept in the dark while his own city attorney was briefing the council bloc against him is itself documented in the records. The mayor who backed Hagar throughout had no idea the people voting against his candidate had been reading the federal lawsuit for weeks.

What Happened at the Meeting

At the April 21 meeting, former City Attorney Mike Gridley stood up during public comment and named the Brainard federal lawsuit directly. He described Hagar and White's alleged retaliation against a captain for telling the truth about recordings and raised questions about honesty and integrity in the chief position. Every council member who voted for Yeager heard this before casting their vote. None of them addressed it in deliberations.

The Coeur d'Alene Police Association had submitted a formal letter of endorsement for Hagar the day before the vote, signed by the association's president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, and two at-large representatives. The letter stated that the membership had voted overwhelmingly for Hagar, with more than 85 percent choosing him and more than 85 percent of the full membership participating. "Our decision was clear and unequivocal," the letter stated. "The men and women of the Coeur d'Alene Police Department want Dave Hagar to be our next Chief of Police."

That number raises its own question: the officers who work alongside Hagar every day had access to all the material reviewed by the selection committee and chose him by an overwhelming margin. Whether that reflects genuine confidence in Hagar's character, a preference for a known local leader over an unknown outsider from Colorado, or something else, is a question the record doesn't resolve. What it does establish is that the community of people closest to the situation made a clear choice, and the council overrode it.

Officers walked out of the meeting after the Yeager vote passed. In his prepared statement, Sheckler emphasized process and the city administrator structure with no mention of the federal lawsuit, the Brady list question, or the city attorney's conclusion about Hagar's truthfulness.

Three days after the vote, city records show Yeager had not yet committed to the job. On April 24, Jacobson emailed Gookin and Tosi asking the city to waive the first-year discharge exception in the city's severance policy. "After Tuesday night's council meeting, I do understand his concern," Jacobson wrote. Tosi told the background firm on April 30: "I do not believe an on-site visit is necessary." That firm had recommended traveling to Fort Collins to assess Yeager's leadership record in person. Yeager's starting salary was ultimately negotiated from the city's opening offer of $164,500 to $175,000, plus $5,000 in relocation assistance. The man the council voted to install knew before he accepted the job that the political situation was unstable enough to demand protection.

What Is Still Pending

A federal court expert witness report in Case 2:21-cv-00073 -- referenced directly in Sheckler's own emails as opining that Hagar should be on the Brady list -- has not yet been independently reviewed by the Idaho Fidelity Foundation; access through federal court records is being pursued.

The city has produced denial letters for public records requests targeting Christie Wood's HR complaint (Request #2026-361) and Tosi's packet materials (Request #2026-362), citing a personnel records exemption in both cases. Those denials confirm both records exist. A public records request for both versions of Adams' Brainard summary (Request #2026-360) produced records confirming Adams' full briefing campaign to council members and Jacobson, but the staff-side emails Wood described -- the version she says omitted Hagar's name -- were not among the records produced; a follow-up request has been filed. A request for Wood's legal memo on appointment authority (Request #2026-363) received a ten-day extension and remains outstanding.