Ambulance Company Owner Remains Deputy Sheriff After Payout for Pulling Over Competitor

A volunteer sheriff’s deputy who owns an ambulance company has settled a lawsuit that claimed he illegally pulled over a competitor's driver to intimidate them as they transported a patient.

Darrell “Steve” McIntosh admitted no wrongdoing in making the June 2016 traffic stop in rural eastern Kentucky and did not help shoulder the cost of the $26,000 settlement.

Ambulance driver and EMT Jason Crigger was instead paid by the Kentucky Association of Counties, which insures local governments, with some of the payout covering attorney fees.

The dispute over whether the McIntosh Ambulance owner had a legal justification to stop the Arrow-Med Ambulance driver was not resolved by U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves, who dismissed the case Monday after the settlement was reached.

McIntosh said he suspected Crigger of careless driving after seeing him do "something on his cellphone." Crigger said McIntosh had been tailing Arrow-Med drivers and that he was sick of it. Some drivers took photos, he said, but he only pointed his phone at the deputy.

No citation was issued and the lawsuit claimed that rather than discuss a traffic infraction, McIntosh “proceeded to verbally harass [Crigger] over a private civil allegation.”

McIntosh, who also is a city councilman in Jackson, Kentucky, says he didn't do anything wrong in stopping Crigger and denies Arrow-Med's claims that he has improperly steered business to his own company.

He says he tried to flag down Crigger to discuss his cellphone use without using his cruiser’s sirens, “to be man to man about it,” but that Crigger “sort of turns his nose up there and smirks and goes on, and that’s when I turned around and pulled him over.”

McIntosh says his role as a sheriff’s deputy hasn’t changed since he stopped Crigger and that he responds to accidents and pulls over drivers for speeding or texting while driving. He says, “I’ve only pulled over one ambulance in 10 years,” and that he didn’t see Crigger’s dialysis patient in the back.

He says there’s no conflict of interest in him working as a sheriff’s deputy while owning an ambulance company.

“That’s like saying there’s a conflict with working at U.S. News and working at Starbucks,” McIntosh says. He says crash victims generally call 911 dispatchers on their own, and that he doesn't administer local government ambulance rotations.

Breathitt County Sheriff Ray Clemons says McIntosh “does a good job” and “he don’t get paid nothing” for helping patrol the streets.

Clemons says McIntosh is his cousin, not his nephew as was widely believed. McIntosh specifies they are second cousins and acknowledges owning the house the sheriff lives in, but says there’s nothing improper about the arrangement.

McIntosh's attorney Jonathan Shaw says he recommended settling with Crigger to avoid the uncertainty of a jury trial scheduled to begin this month, as well as the possible expense of an appeal.

"There wasn't a lot of proof in the case," he says. "It's more of an economic measure to save money than anything else."

Reeves, the federal judge, ruled in June there was a significant enough factual dispute for the case to go to trial, leaning in part on recent testimony from a state court legal battle between the companies.

A state court judge hearing Arrow-Med's claim that McIntosh misused his official position to benefit his own company issued a preliminary injunction late last year forbidding him from doing so. The judge found "there was no good faith attempt to enforce the law" with the stop, but instead “an attempt to intimidate and harass [Arrow-Med's] business."

Crigger says he never received an apology from McIntosh but that he’s pleased with the settlement, which will allow him out of the spotlight.

“To be honest with you, I thought the whole thing was unnecessary,” Crigger says. “I’m glad the whole thing is over with.”

Crigger’s attorney Ned Pillersdorf says even without an admission of guilt, the case sends an important message that officers cannot be "misusing official positions to settle purely civil disputes."

Still, McIntosh may get the last laugh.

McIntosh sued Arrow-Med in federal court in April 2015, alleging the company was overbilling Medicare. If successful, the lawsuit brought under the Federal False Claims Act would allow McIntosh to collect a portion of any funds recovered.

In December 2015, Arrow-Med, owned by Jay Arrowood, responded with the state lawsuit alleging McIntosh is abusing his position as a sheriff's deputy to steer business to his own company. Arrow-Med representatives have repeatedly pledged their own FFCA lawsuit against McIntosh. It's unclear if one has been filed, as the complaint could be under seal.

Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, stepped in to make a criminal case out of McIntosh's false claims case.

A federal grand jury in June indicted Arrow-Med, Arrowood, his wife and a manager on charges that they falsified records and defrauded the federal government by billing for unnecessary rides for patients, including at least one who could allegedly walk.

Arrowood did not respond to an email requesting comment, nor did attorney Darrell Herald, who is representing him against the federal fraud allegations.

McIntosh's attorney for the civil fraud case, Nick Wallingford, says he believes federal prosecutors will prove about $2 million in fraudulent claims. Penalties would be three times higher, and McIntosh would received up to 25 percent of whatever is clawed back, his attorney says, making $1.5 million a rough estimate of the maximum award.

As the companies slug it out, patients are caught in the middle.

“He really dumped some anxiety on me," David Drake, Crigger's passenger when McIntosh pulled him over, said last year. "I was strapped down in the back. I can’t run, I can just pray to God he won’t go psycho.”