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Fact check: No meth found in home during search for chief’s gun

August 7, 2019

Cheyne Orndoff’s graduation from Cal Poly

Clarification: SLO Police officers found a pipe at Cheyne Orndoff and Vanessa Bedroni’s home they listed as a meth pipe in their report. However, the pipe, which is sold for cannabis use, was not procured as evidence.

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo Police officers did not find methamphetamine in the home of a man misidentified as the person who found the police chief’s loaded gun on a toilet paper roll dispenser on July 10 in a restaurant bathroom, as reported by the Tribune.

Two days after the unwarranted raid, government employees collected and ran urine samples on family members. One of the samples tested positive for amphetamine, a finding possibly because of the use of cold or allergy medication.

Prosecutors responded to the test results with a motion to amend charges to include felony counts of child abuse and a request to incarcerate the parents, Cheyne Orndoff and Vanessa Bedroni, in lieu of $20,000 bail.

At a hearing on Aug. 6, Judge Tim Covello granted the motion to include felony charges but denied Deputy District Attorney Phillip Joo’s request to incarcerate Orndoff and Bedroni.

Peter Depew, Bedroni’s attorney, then asked Joo to allow further testing of the urine sample at a private lab. While Joo declined the request, it is likely the defense will ask the court to order the retesting.

The defense attorneys then asked the judge to allow Orndoff and Bedroni to attend their daughter’s Aug. 17 birthday party. Joo argued against the visitation request referencing needles and amphetamine, without explaining the context.

While Covello ruled Orndoff and Bedroni can have no contact with their children at this time, he set a hearing for Aug. 15 to revisit the visitation request.

After the judge denied Bedroni phone contact with her children, she began to shake and tears rolled down her cheeks.

Following the hearing, Tribune reporter Nick Wilson wrote an article titled, “Couple arrested during search for police chief’s gun had drugs in home, prosecutor says.” In his article, Wilson writes that “the prosecutor mentioned evidence of needles and methamphetamine found in their home.”

While Joo mentioned amphetamine, he did not discuss methamphetamine, nor did he say either compound was found in the home.

During the search of the home, officers found a red box containing hypodermic needles inside Orndoff and Bedroni’s bedroom. Because of a medical condition, Orndoff has a prescription for hormones which requires the use of hypodermic needles.

At about noon on July 10, Cantrell left her pistol in the bathroom of an El Pollo Loco restaurant. A short time later, a man walked into the bathroom, discovered the loaded and unattended firearm and took it with him.

An officer misidentified Orndoff as the suspect, which led the chief to send officers to Orndoff’s home to retrieve her gun. Another public employee misidentified Orndoff as being on probation, which led officers to conduct an unwarranted search of the couple’s home.

Even though officers did not find the chief’s gun, they put Orndoff and Bedroni’s 7 and 9-year-old daughters in foster care, their 5-year-old dog Princess in the pound, and the couple in jail for child neglect because of a dirty house.

In the aftermath of the chief leaving her gun in an El Pollo Loco restroom and the unwarranted raid on Orndoff’s home, several media outlets have posted news stories that lack context, are not in line with the facts, or appear to repeat city and county press releases.

For example, the Tribune has reported Orndoff and Bedroni’s arrests were unrelated to the chief’s misplaced gun, that Orndoff was on probation, that the chief had good reason to search Orndoff and Bedroni’s home without a warrant, and that methamphetamine was found in the home.

Orndoff and Bedroni pleaded not guilty to all charges. In an attempt to raise money for their defense and for work needed at their home, Cheyne Orndoff recently posted a plea for assistance on GoFundMe.


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This saga gets more disgusting as the days go by. These overpaid public servants will do anything and say anything to safe their sorry asses. They could care less about justice and the damage they have done to this family. Worse yet the SPINELESS city council remains silent.


32

The Shredder weighs in:


https://www.newtimesslo.com/sanluisobispo/newspeak/Content?oid=8700504


5

Glad to see NT picking it up at least, but ironic reading where they knock CCN, because I wouldn’t trust the Shredder any further than I could throw either Trump or Hillary! {^)


14

Yet another piece that shows the Shredder is only worth shredding.


8

I generally give LEO’s the benefit of the doubt, they have a TOUGH job and we need them…BUT this is getting worse and worse. These folks are being used to deflect the negligence of the Chief. The DA would be wise to drop all this, acknowledge that errors in identity were made and criminal assumptions were announced which were not founded by fact. It should concern all freedom-loving citizens.


49

All the good cops in SLO are going to stand up, speak out, denounce these tactics and refuse to work for Cantrell.


Good cops are honest and apply the law equally to all. Good cops want to help people and protect them….not conduct illegal searches and trump up bogus charges. Right?


Were told that most cops are good….so I expect most cops will boycott work, March, speak out, etc.


As soon as thwy get enough courage….


Or maybe there are none?


30

You really think so, given the salaries paid, we know Chief Cantrell makes around $250,000 and have to know other salaries are in that same line. They know if they wanted to make that much in some other department it would have to be in a area where they’d have to be real cops dealing with real crimes and not in cushy SLO so other than a few cops secretly talking to CalCoast the rest will keep their mouths shut and collect their outrageous salaries.


28

We are so screwed. The mafia would be cheaper and more fair than this current bunch of dirty cops.


21

Deanna F Cantrell Police Chief

San Luis Obispo, 2017 $216,321.00


8

Cal Poly students and faculty tipped the election scales and voted in these deceitful SLO officials, which are now fabricating a case against one-of-their own Cal Poly graduates to cover their latent and emergent errors. Not a peep from the Mustang News. Is the Mustang News too chicken to cover the story, because they fear retaliation or because the council members have ties to Cal Poly?


Can you just imagine how Ms. Bedroni feels tonight? A sketchy brother-in-law’s criminal history ends up with the Police going out of their jurisdiction, storming into her home and taking her kids and dog away. And now she can’t even talk to them on the phone, because the deputy DA Loo blocks sample retesting and is compounded by a biased Trib reporter which eludes to drugs being found. That Trib reporter fails to do basic investigation that the good folks here at Cal Coast News have done. No Trib mention that illegal drugs were not found on the premises. No correction yet by the Trib either. If there were no illegal drugs then why is the judge imposing visitation criteria on a non-existent problem?


So, Cheyne was an identity theft victim when his brother Cole gave authorities the wrong name. Is the Victim Witness Assistance Center’s Diana Stroub helping Cheyne from that previous occurrence when Cheyne was a victim? If so, why wasn’t the probation error fixed along time ago by this agency?


I’ll speculate that Cheyne’s brother not only got to feel bad by implicating his brother on the original probation offense, but now Cheyne’s brother now has to live with the fact that Cheyne and wife had their kids taken away and they will have huge bills. Is the county stepping in to make sure Cheyne’s brother doesn’t slip into depression or hurt himself from the grief he has too?


SLO city officials better do back-flips and bandaide this situation by admitting they rushed an investigation to handslap Chief Cantrell. Plus, at a minimum correct the employment obstacle that they’ve created by offering Orndoff a job with full benefits in his chosen discipline, PRONTO!


33

this whole thing stinks, it is getting more and more convoluted. the D.A. is just a moniker for whom ever is pulling his strings.

All said and done, The SLOPD chief is lucky that her gun was picked up by a peaceful man that was trying to do the right thing with something he knew was dangerous and, no doubt. saved lives, rather than a man that had a different disposition. like Hazmateer cites, things would have looked very different had the 10 year old boy picked up the gun. Whether the gun went off or not, it would have been a child picking up a loaded gun, due to her negligence.imagine the headlines then.

These people have to be sent a MSG from the people of SLO, We are not like that, we want leaders of our community that we can rely on to be “people of character” , I’ve heard ” people of character” defined as follows – “people of character do the right thing, even when nobody is looking”, that’s how i live my life, how about you Chief, detectives, CWS, probation, mayor, D.A. and anybody else involved in this fiasco and the obvious cover up attempt.

Skeeter is not a criminal and neither are Cheyne and Vanessa. Skeeter is a quiet peaceful man that likes to stay to himself and he tried his best to do the right thing with this dangerous weapon, Cheyne and Vanessa had a unkempt house and those children do not deserve to be taken away from their parents, that they love and miss, and Cheyne is a recent CAL POLY graduate with honors. Some criminals, right?

Every body in SLO should be outraged and getting ready to hit the streets in condemnation of what is going on


.THIS is OUTRAGEOUS!!! and we should have had enough already!!!


Cheyne and Vanessa need 49,000 people to contribute one dollar or 25,000 people to contribute two dollars or anybody contributing what they can to meet their ‘gofundme’ goal and get their family reunited, There are repair costs to the house, kicked in doors, refrigertors left open so that all of their just bought food could rot, cleaning supplies to clean up after a SLOPD tornato went through the house, defense costs, such as research, lab tests, PI work and all of the other costs that go with trying to defend yourself against a government that has unlimited tax payer money and has gone rogue,and that charges dearly for everything that you ask from them.


thank you


53

Folks,


Let’s ALL attend the next SLO City Council meeting and DEMAND an end to this witchhunt, enough is enough. Cheyne Orndoff is NOT the guilty one, the guilty ones are Deanna Cantrell, Christine Dietrick, Mayor Heidi Harmon, Derek Johnson, DA Dan Dow, and Deputy District Attorney Phillip Joo.


Shame on these phony public servants!


I hope folks are seeing the true face of the whacky SLO Progressives, this case has revealed that they do not practice what they preach, and the silence of the idealogical left is stunning, Cheyne Orndoff deserves the civil liberties that the constitution guaentees to us all.


Shame on Heidi Harmon: silent hypocrite.


Speak truth to power.


39

Whether or not there were drugs in the house does not matter, this was an illegal entry into someones home. Our nation was founded on the right not to have the government enter your home without a warrant. Whats next, random checks of home with arrests if someone is doing something not permitted. Maybe they put a statue in their home of a white male. Our rights must be protected.


55

The Chief and the City are trying to deflect from anyone reporting on or considering the other possible outcome of her negligence. If “Skeeter” had not removed that gun from the bathroom, the video shows that a 10 year old boy would have walked in and found it. Given that this is PC SLO, it’s likely this child would never have been taught what to do if he found himself in the presence of a firearm. He may very well have picked it up and accidentally shot himself. Think of what would be happening right now, this minute, if the Chief of Police of SLO had left her gun in a public bathroom and a child had shot and killed himself with it, all because of her negligent act. She should be punished as if that very thing had actually happened, because that’s the accountability for her negligence. Instead, the entire city is in high level CYA mode trying to make sure no one makes that analysis or holds her accountable for her gross negligence. We, who live in SLO, must insist at every City Council meeting from now on, and on every opinion page of every local media outlet, on a daily basis, that the Chief of Police, City Manager, and City Attorney be removed from their offices immediately. There can be no compromise on this. This was an egregious breach of public trust and those who are guilty must be held accountable and terminated from City employment immediately.


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