Prosecutors Drop False Report Charge Against Ex-Cop Meehan Still Faces 2 Obstruction Counts

Prosecutors were forced to drop a misdemeanor charge against former Spokane police officer Mark Meehan on Thursday.

Meehan, who is on trial in District Court, still faces two gross misdemeanor charges of obstructing a public servant.

Prosecutors Thursday dropped one count of filing a false police report after discovering that Meehan never signed the document. Without a signature, the charge has no legal basis, said Carl Oreskovich, Meehan’s defense attorney.

Meehan, 31, is accused of failing to tell other police officers that a suspect they were looking for was a woman he knew.

The woman, former Spokane prostitute Laice L. Adams, accuses Meehan of having sex with her in his patrol car and smoking crack cocaine from May 1996 to spring of 1997.

Adams, who also uses the last name Peterson, has said that she and Meehan had an “unspoken deal.” She let him do what he wanted to her and in return, Meehan agreed not to arrest her for illegal drugs.

If convicted of the remaining two misdemeanors, he faces a maximum of one year in Jail.

Meehan denies the charges.

Spokane police Detective Ben Estes testified Thursday that Meehan at first “denied he had any knowledge of Laice Peterson.”

Estes told jurors he formally questioned Meehan on Sept. 4 about the allegations.

Meehan first said “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Estes said. But then he admitted he’d known Adams and had visited or called her regularly for “about two weeks,” Estes said.

Later in the three-hour interview with police investigators, Meehan acknowledged he would go to Adams’ house and “counsel” her for “promiscuity” and drug use, Estes said.

Meehan, who had been a patrol officer for four years, was fired in late September.

Several weeks later, prosecutors charged Meehan in connection with a visit he and other officers made to Adams’ house last April. Meehan said nothing about knowing Adams while two other officers questioned her April 9, prosecutors say.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: What’s next Prosecutors rested their case on Thursday. Meehan is expected to testify today. The six-person jury should begin deliberating this afternoon.