A Tracker, a Mayor, a Private Eye and a Clock Obsessed Commissioner: The Whole Trackergate Story
Readers have been inquiring of Picon, why we have not written about Trackergate. This is the type of story we enjoy covering, because it causes us to scratch our heads and wonder why. For those who do not know, we are referring to the tracker that was placed on Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve’s car in October 2022, and then discovered shortly before the general election. The tracker was found after Mayor Scheive’s car, a Range Rover, had been leaking oil and her auto-repair friend picked the car up to check out the leak.
Several outlets, including national news outlets, have reported extensively, from the mayor’s point of view. Most of the reports fail to ask some important questions, such as how the police derived the data they did, whether that was legal, who else the tracker had been associated with and whether the Sparks Police Chief was doing overtime to get a new gig. Because we pave the roads others are afraid to travel, we will do the heavy lifting.
As soon as we saw the police report about the mayor’s tracker, we knew there was more to garner. While KUNR and the Nevada Independent are ferociously trying to link a local Republican donor to the tracker, we are looking at the evidence already available. We are not sure if they are too scared to ask or maybe they just did not think to, however a new story lies within the Trackergate fiasco, and the data was right there for the asking. While they are stuck looking for personnel files of retired cops and emails between elected officials while we provide you unfettered evidence, directly from the police.
The Dusty Chief
Let us begin with the Sparks Police Chief, Chris Crawforth. We previously reported that Crawforth was vying for Reno Police Chief in order to “…sprinkle some of Spark’s dust on Reno...” however we never really explored the timeline as it relates to Trackergate. At the very moment the tracker had been found, Chief Crawforth was polishing his talking points, in an effort to land the Reno Police Chief job. He was an official candidate and was in the selection process. Not since the days of Richard Kirkland had one police chief jumped over to lead another agency in this valley. The police chief in Reno is selected by the council and the mayor chairs the council and votes with the council. Apparently, the Reno Police thought Trackergate was a conflict and that is how the Sparks Police ended up investigating. Shouldn’t Crawforth have asked some other agency to look into it, since the boss he hoped to serve was the one wanting the matter looked into? We wonder, did the offer to Crawforth fall apart because the Mayor did not get the answer she wanted from the Sparks Police Department.
The lead-in on both police reports provided indicates Chief Crawforth was the one who initiated the case. In fact, unlike most police matters, there is no explanation as to how the tracker made it from the mechanic friend of the mayor to the hands of the detectives. There is no chain of custody, as is normal in criminal matters. Maybe she gave it to the Chief, however handling evidence in this manner is odd.
Context is Everything
When we obtained the police reports, the police indicated they obtained the trackers ownership from a subpoena issued to the cellular provider used by the tracker. For reference, any real-time tracker must communicate via cellular towers. The trackers contain a SIM card, just like your cellular phone. This card houses the ownership data of the device and authenticates the subscriber with the tower. This ensures cellular carriers get their money and unregistered devices don’t get free service. These are inexpensive trackers and the GPS data they gather is stored in some software that comes with the device.
We found ourselves pondering, since when do the police jump feet first into matters that are not even crimes. While a Sparks Police deepthroat told the Nevada Globe, that “context is everything in an investigation”, we could not agree more, and this matter lacked the contextual basis to proceed as they did. That statement is their blanket out; well maybe the mayor was being stalked by an ex-boyfriend, which would fit within a stalking criminal investigation. We know from their own reports that no such allegation was made at the inception of this investigation. In fact, it appears that they knew from day one that this was all about the election.
So, what crime theory would they be working under? We would really like to know, because based on the public records they had no indication a crime occurred. Instead, they had a police chief who delegated something to them for investigation. Normally, police start with a complaint of an act of some sort. They then begin to look at information known to them, to include a statement from the reporting party, and whether it fits within any criminal statute. In this case, there is not an opening salvo, it’s a volley in all directions, in hopes of an answer that would please the mayor.
An Overreaching Subpoena
Nevada law allows a police agency to issue subpoenas in only two places in Nevada law we could find. One is for the investigation of check frauds, namely issuing checks with insufficient funds or on closed accounts. The other is to identify the subscriber of a public utility. You may wonder, why would the police get to subpoena the power company to determine who has power at a certain address? One example is a kidnapping scenario, maybe the police have information about a certain address, and they quickly need to determine who may reside there, this subpoena is designed for just such a circumstance. In fact, the intent of legislators included a similar scenario. The law, which is very straightforward, states the police may issue a public utility a subpoena to gather two things: the name and address of the subscriber, nothing more.
Not only does the law specify what the police can subpoena, it requires that the police be investigating a criminal matter. The police do not investigate civil matters. Below is the law the police used to ask for the tracker’s ownership, however they didn’t follow the law. They exceeded it, clearly. In the police subpoena, they asked for the “call detail records” and the trackers “credit card or billing information” which the company handed over, despite no authority to do so. This out-of-bounds action led to David McNeely, a duly licensed private investigator and retired law enforcement officer.
NRS 704.202 Investigation by law enforcement agency: Disclosure of name and address of person listed in records of customers by public utility upon receipt of subpoena; fee; immunity for disclosure made in good faith.
1. Upon receipt of a subpoena by a law enforcement agency pursuant to NRS 704.201, a public utility shall disclose the name and address of the person listed in the records of customers of the public utility to the agency.
2. The public utility may charge a reasonable fee for any administrative expense related to the disclosure.
Normally, a subpoena is issued through a court or by a district attorney in a matter before the court. A subpoena, demanding a company or individual hand over information, is a serious intrusion. Maybe this is why the Nevada legislature has curtailed law enforcement’s ability to issue them. Unlike a search warrant, a subpoena issued by the police has no oversight. There is no independent arm of the government buffering the natural desire of the police to intrude into the private lives of citizens. While the mayor is sniveling about her “privacy” as a public figure, who was running for office, the police seem to have violated Mr. McNeely’s absolute right to privacy as a private citizen.
A Clear Disparity
In an example reminiscent of how then Commissioner Bob Lucey got special treatment from the Sheriff, in this case the Sparks Police admit on video that they tried to get McNeely in trouble with the private investigators licensing board, among other anomalous actions average citizens would never see. The police then lament about how they don’t agree with private investigators being able to use trackers, despite years of warrantless use by law enforcement. Prior to 2012, the police could affix trackers to cars, and they did regularly. In 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Jones that such an intrusion required a warrant. Since private citizens have no mechanism to get a warrant, this law is irrelevant to non-government actors. We wonder, did the police ever lament about how they should have to get a warrant before affixing a tracker, before warrants were required? Of course not.
We will leave our readers with this final example of disparate treatment and lack of consideration for the lawful activities of Mr. McNeely, before we drop a bombshell on another topic. In the police report provided by the city, they redact personal identifying information, such as social security numbers and other personal information. In cases with a victim, they may redact the victim’s address. In this case, both McNeely and Schieve are listed as “Subjects”, meaning they are neither victims nor suspects. They are just two people mentioned in the reports with no culpability assigned to either. Yet, the Sparks Police saw fit to release the report with the Mayor’s address and personal phone number redacted. Mr. McNeely received no such courtesy or consideration. The Mayor has served the citizens of Reno for 10 years, meanwhile Mr. McNeely served the United States in the military and Nevada as a peace officer for more than 20 years. Why does he not get the same redaction as the mayor?
Who Else Had a Tracker
Now to the bombshell. When we saw the police had obtained the GPS data from the trackers inception through when it was found on the mayor’s SUV, we wondered where else this tracker had been. Afterall, the Mayor has made baseless claims that other elected officials were tracked. We were especially curious after This is Reno posted the body camera footage of the police interviewing McNeely, who indicated the tracker had only been on the mayors a few weeks. Who else had been tracked? We hired our own private investigator who asked for and received the tracker data, which starts in March 2022.
The initial data, provided by the Sparks Police Department in the form of an excel spreadsheet, had GPS data points, almost 6,000 of them, in an odd format. Tracking devices can provide very accurate readings and produce latitude and longitudinal coordinates. The more numbers in the coordinates, the more accurate the location. In this case, the data only provided 2 digits. When we mapped the data, the closest we could ever put the tracker to the Mayor’s home was .4 miles away, hardly accurate at all. Curious, our private investigator reached out to Sparks for clarification. They certified that what they gave him was what they received from the tracker company. Disappointed, we wondered how we could ever determine if this tracker had been on any other elected official’s cars. We had a hunch that it had been on a certain county commissioners’ car, based on data pings in Spanish Springs, however .4 miles includes many homes.
We decided to have our investigator reach out to Commissioner Vaughn Hartung and ask him about the tracker and whether he was aware of any such device on his car. Sadly, Commissioner Hartung declined to comment. So, we are unaware if Mr. Hartung was notified previously by an agency that he may have been tracked or if he just doesn’t care.
We thought our inquiry would end there, when suddenly we obtained the precise data. On a whim, we asked the company who provided Sparks Police the GPS data if it was normal to have low accuracy data. In a serendipitous exchange, they sent over a more precise version of the spreadsheet. This version puts the tracker right at the mayor’s home and it also confirmed our other hunch, that Washoe County Commissioner Vaughn Hartung was also being tracked. In fact, while the mayor was tracked for about three weeks, the clock loving commissioner was being tracked for nearly 7 months.
We wonder if the Sheriff found one on his car too. In an email, the Sheriff offered other elected officials to bring their cars to his station where they could be searched by his bomb squad, as his was. By this time, the tracker was long off commissioner tick-tock’s Jeep, however we wonder if he took the Sheriff up on his hunt for trackers. We also find it ironic, everyone of the Sheriff’s patrol cars is GPS tracked, yet somehow his county car needs to be searched for GPS tracking.
Let’s consider that in Nevada there is no right to privacy in public view, it does not exist. Reno’s very own Mayor is hoping to change that, in fact there is generic bill placeholder calling for privacy issues to be addressed during this legislative session. Mind you, that bill, if she has her way, will not make for transparency with elected officials, instead it will allow them more autonomy and secrecy. Ignoring the longstanding premise, “public figures have less of a right to privacy than everyone else,” Mayor Schieve’s vendetta against her boogieman, Beadles, could deliver big changes in privacy laws aimed at protecting an individual’s right against being tracked. Of course, none of these added privacies will apply to big tech, marketing companies or the government.