Fabian Cota, Mesa Police Association President, Busted for Public Drunkenness in San Diego, Police Say
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| Fabian Cota, president of the Mesa Police Association, spent four hours in a San Diego drunk tank over the weekend, police say. |
We reached Sergeant Cota, who also serves as a vice president of the state Arizona Police Association, on the phone this morning -- but he wouldn't talk about what happened.
"No, I didn't get anything," he says coyly after being asked if he received a ticket or any other kind of notice of violation. "I just went down to San Diego to attend a wedding."
Must have been a heck of a shin-dig.
Mesa police received notification from their San Diego brothers early Saturday morning, reporting that Cota had been "arrested for public intoxication," Sergeant Ed Wessing tells us.
Technically speaking, says Detective Gary Hassen of the San Diego police department, Cota wasn't arrested -- though, "obviously, he made contact" with police at some point during the evening. Hassen couldn't confirm whether police had made contact with Cota directly, or whether someone called the cops due to any boisterous behavior by union representative.
Because he wasn't "combative," he was just taken by cops to a "detox" station, where he was forced to spend a minimum of four hours, Hassen says.
The incident that proceeded the trip to "detox" occurred at 600 Fifth Avenue, in the downtown Gaslamp district.
Wessing says Cota could have faced charges had he not agreed to the drunk-tank treatment or walked out before his four hours was up. Mesa PD put Cota on "administrative functions," pending an investigation.
Cota's still on disciplinary probation due to the findings of an internal investigation related to his work in the union, Wessing reports.
The department found that he'd failed to accurately report how he'd obtained a list of internal police e-mail addresses that had been used in a union campaign, according to a recent article in the Arizona Republic.
In the above article, Cota also refers to stress over a strained relationship with Stacy Dillon, the owner of a PR firm that represents the Mesa Police Association.
Dillon tells New Times she knew nothing about the weekend incident in San Diego.
Cota's certainly off to another stressful week.
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