Former Lake County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Duryee has been stripped of his law enforcement credentials and barred from serving as a law enforcement officer in Montana.

The Montana Public Safety Officers Standards and Training Council recently voted unanimously to ban Dan Dur-yee after finding he lied to the Sheriff’s Office, his wife and parents-in-law about serving in the U.S. Marines.

Duryee never served in the military.

“It is common sense and a compelling inference that a law enforcement officer’s lies about serving in the military will raise questions in the minds of the public as to an officer’s honesty and integrity and will undermine public confidence in the law enforcement agency, and so I find,” Mike McCarter wrote in his findings on the case.

“Such lies raise questions as to the office’s character and truthfulness,” said McCarter, who oversaw the hearing.

Duryee resigned from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in January; he had been with the Sheriff’s Office since September 1998. He held five POST certifications: basic, coroner basic, intermediate, advanced and supervisory.

Hearing documents show that while on and off duty Duryee said he had served as a combat Marine in the first Gulf War, that others in his unit died during combat when he was present, that napalm caused a scar on his arm and that he suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome.

Duryee’s statements about his war service led at least in part to his being voted by fellow deputies as a team leader on the Sheriff’s Office’s special response team, even though Duryee had no SWAT training.

McCarter found Duryee’s statements were willful and violated the code of ethics: “His claims that he had been in the military were lies. They brought his honesty and integrity into question, and have brought discredit to his community, his agency and his profession.”  

Sheriff Jay Doyle was the only witness to appear on behalf of Duryee during the hearing in Helena.

In March 2010, a written complaint was filed with POST and an investigation began, although there had been an earlier internal investigation by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

Duryee’s service record was first questioned in 2008 when a fellow deputy began doing research and filed a Freedom of Information Request that revealed Duryee had never served in the military.

The sheriff at the time, Lucky Larson, was told of the situation, but never took disciplinary action against Duryee and instead doled out a one-day suspension to the deputy who had filed the request because he used department computers for research on Duryee’s military service.

In 2010, Doyle, then the undersheriff, wrote a letter about an internal investigation that found that as far back as 2000 Duryee “allowed, and ultimately, corroborated stories that were started about himself as a Marine.”

Doyle continued that it was “just a story” and no discipline was warranted.

According to hearing documents, Duryee admitted saying he had served in the military but denied making statements when on duty or in uniform. Doyle testified that he had heard Duryee talk about a fellow platoon member being killed and about being in combat.

An official complaint against Duryee was filed in August 2011 by POST’s executive director.

It alleged that Duryee lied to fellow law enforcement officers about being in the military and had possession of an unregistered and illegally converted machine gun. An amended complaint was filed in September 2012, based on the same allegations. The machine-gun allegation was later dropped.

Duryee also has been named in a lawsuit against the Lake County Sheriff’s Office that alleges Duryee was involved in an illegal poaching club known as the Coyote Club and that he was involved in department corruption.