Ex-K-9 officer’s license plate sparks inquiry

The coded license plate was scrawled in marker on the Chandler police white board: "C1FDME"

And a warning: "Do not run this plate!" But that's exactly what eight officers did.

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And the license plate -- which was never even displayed on a car -- sparked one of the department's largest internal affairs investigations this year. It lasted three months and was even extended as the department pulled one officer after another in for questioning.

The plate, it turns out, belongs to Sgt. Tom Lovejoy and his wife, Carolynn. Rumors circulated that it stood for "Chief (expletive) me" - a bitter reference to a sheriff's investigation into the Aug. 11 death of Lovejoy's police dog, Bandit, who died after being left in a heated car for 13 hours. They were angry that Chief Sherry Kiyler made the case public and asked the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to get involved.

No one knew for certain, so the officers ran the plate through their computer system seeking to learn what the plate meant.

When supervisors discovered officers were running the plate, they launched an internal affairs investigation and, one by one, questioned anyone who they suspected drew the license plate on the board.

During questioning, one officer told internal affairs investigators "(I) wanted to know if it was true."

Another admitted, "Pure curiosity ... I don't blame anybody but myself."

But running license plates for reasons other than legitimate police business is against Chandler police policy.

Chandler investigators contacted the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division and learned the plate was assigned to a 1966 Volkswagen and had been requested online Dec. 14 in the name of Tom Lovejoy.

MVD told investigators the person requesting the plate said it stood for "Christ 1 found me."

Now, Carolynn Lovejoy says the plate not only has a religious meaning, but also stands for "Chief failed me."

She said the idea for the license plate came in November, shortly after the couple had to sell her husband's pickup truck to pay their mounting legal bills.

Lovejoy, once the head of the K-9 unit, had been demoted to the night beat. He was fighting a criminal charge brought by the sheriff's office and was now having to drive an old Beetle to work.

It was a dark time, Carolynn Lovejoy said, and she was looking for a symbol to help the couple get through it.

"I was trying to keep my faith, and I came up with this," she said.

The code had a double meaning to her. One had a religious significance, and the other was a scathing critique of her husband's employer.

"He's driving this little car around, and it's because the department and the chief failed him," she said.

She said she ordered the plate from MVD without her husband's knowledge.

"When I told him what the plate said, he said, 'You did not,' " Carolynn Lovejoy recalled.

She said her husband was skeptical and checked it out the easiest way he knew - through an unauthorized records check.

After verifying it, Lovejoy worried it would cause problems, and the pair decided not to put it on the car.

Later, the department ordered Lovejoy not to put the plate on his vehicle, Carolynn Lovejoy said.

But the problems still came. And eventually, as word of the plate spread through the ranks, so did an extensive internal investigation.

The cost of that investigation wasn't immediately available.

"I didn't think it would cause that much trouble, I really didn't," Carolynn Lovejoy said. "And you know what? I probably wasn't thinking logically back then."

Tom Lovejoy declined to comment for this story, but according to the internal affairs investigation report, admitted he should not have run the plate.

"You know, it's ... hindsight, looking back at it, I shouldn't have run it," Lovejoy told investigators.

"I should have talked to, you know, one of my supervisors ... something ... or asked permission to run the plate before I did it," he said.

He added, "So it, you know, I mean as far as it having meaning to me, personally it doesn't ... and being that my wife ordered it, I think that it would probably be more appropriate to ask her what it meant."

Lovejoy also told police he plans to return the license plate to MVD and explain that it had an unintended negative meaning.

According to public records, Lovejoy was suspended for one day for running the plate, his second sustained allegation of a policy violation. The other officers were given letters of reprimand.

"It was the lowest part of our life," Carolynn Lovejoy said of the days in November when she decided to order the license plate. "It was the worst time of our life."