Detective pleads innocent to felony
Suspended Spokane police Detective Jay Patrick Mehring said little Monday when he pleaded innocent to a felony harassment charge.
Mehring, 39, answered some yes-and-no questions but otherwise said nothing at his arraignment before Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price. Mehring will remain free on $100,000 bail pending his trial, which Price set for July 9.
Mehring is accused of threatening, in front of his 10-year-old son and a police sergeant, to kill his wife by burning the family’s Green Bluff-area home.
“Mr. Mehring maintains that he is innocent of any and all criminal charges and of the allegation that he misappropriated marital assets during the course of his and his wife’s contentious divorce,” defense attorney Chris Bugbee said in a news release.
Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick placed Mehring on unpaid layoff status March 30 when he was arrested on a Class C felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
A 15-year law enforcement veteran, Mehring has been with the Spokane Police Department for 12 years and has worked as an undercover narcotics detective since 2003. He was removed from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force March 27, a day before his wife, Lisa Mehring, was granted a protection order in their divorce case.
A police report cited in the detective’s criminal and divorce cases says he called his wife vulgar names at a wrestling match involving one of their sons, in front of their children and other people. Then, when she called him a “jackass” in a cell phone text message, he allegedly called to say he would “destroy” her and “burn down their house with her in it.”
Mehring allegedly repeated the threat two days later in front of the couple’s son and police Sgt. Dave Overhoff while working out at a gym March 26. Overhoff said Mehring told him, “I have nothing to lose, and a piece of paper (the restraining order) isn’t going to stop me, either.”
Court documents say Mehring became angry when his wife got an order freezing bank accounts she said he may have looted while they were seeking a divorce.
Some of the money came from logging on an 80-acre parcel of surplus state park land near Mount Spokane that the couple purchased last summer for $291,299 in a disputed auction. Court documents indicate the Mehrings mortgaged themselves heavily to buy the land, which is now tied up in litigation.
They had planned to develop half of the land for up to eight homes, and build a home of their own on the other half. Jay Mehring contends in the divorce case that one of two disputed bank accounts contained about $42,000 in logging proceeds that were supposed to help pay for the housing project.
Lisa Mehring countered that she never agreed to using any of the logging proceeds, originally $71,000, for the land development. Also, she said $13,000 “disappeared” from another account, and her husband improperly tried to divert charges from his credit card to hers.
The couple has scheduled a hearing April 26 to try to persuade Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly to lift a lien that effectively prevents development of the property.
The Mehrings borrowed $230,000 to buy the land. In addition, they took out a “maximum” mortgage on their current home, according to their attorney in a lawsuit brought by a woman who contends the surplus land should have been sold to her. Rielly ruled that Nancy J. Johnson was the legitimate winner of the land auction last May, but he said the sale couldn’t be undone and Johnson’s only recourse was to seek monetary damages from the state. Johnson placed a lien on the property while she appeals Rielly’s decision.