GREAT FALLS — A former Fort Peck tribal police officer who stole drugs and money from the tribe’s drug investigations office, compromising more than two dozen criminal cases, has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
The Great Falls Tribune reports 33-year-old Mikkel Shields was sentenced Thursday after previously pleading guilty to burglary.
Prosecutors say Shields was working for the Fort Peck Tribal Police in September when he broke into the Fort Peck Tribal Law and Justice Building and used a crowbar to get into the drug investigations office, where he took opiates, methamphetamine and cash.
Shields was in the Army and Navy before joining the police department, and he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when he returned from Iraq. He says he completed a substance abuse program but relapsed in August.