Montana- A Missoula County sheriff’s deputy was fired Wednesday for initiating sexually explicit conversations on the Internet using a county-owned computer and lying to supervisors about the nature of his online activity.

Sgt. Ty Evenson created an account on MySpace.com to improve “relations between law enforcement and the public,” according to his online profile. Evenson’s Web page also identifies him as a “deputy sheriff” employed with “Missoula area law enforcement” whose online intention is to meet “people interested in assisting law enforcement in a confidential one-on-one basis.”

However, an internal investigation allegedly shows Evenson used the popular online social networking Web site inappropriately and to a degree that compromised his official duties and violated Missoula County’s electronic communications policy.

“Your documented pattern of activity more closely resembles that of a sexual predator than of a deputy sheriff dedicated to ‘improved relations between law enforcement and the public,’ ” a letter of termination from Sheriff Mike McMeekin stated.

According to McMeekin, the offense became fireable when Evenson lied to supervisors and attempted to destroy evidence by deleting sent and received messages on his MySpace account.

“By his actions, he left us no choice but to terminate him,” McMeekin said. “When an officer lies, it affects his testimony in a court of law.”

“Had we asked him and he’d told us the truth, we’d be having a different conversation right now,” said Steve Johnson, director of human resources for Missoula County.

When an officer’s credibility is damaged, McMeekin explained, the integrity of a criminal case is compromised, leaving prosecutors vulnerable at trial and prone to criticism from defense attorneys.

“Your conduct in this matter has permanently tainted your future effectiveness as a law enforcement officer,” McMeekin’s letter said.

Evenson declined to comment on this story until he can meet with a representative of the Missoula County Deputy Sheriff’s Association and decide whether he’ll file a grievance and contest his termination. However, Evenson said he disagrees with a majority of the department’s allegations and denies lying to his supervisors. Evenson also said he intends to appeal his termination to the Missoula County commissioners.

The investigation began after Undersheriff Mike Dominick received three citizen complaints from women who said they were “disturbed” by Evenson’s unorthodox online outreach tactics, and wondered if he really was employed by the sheriff’s department. Dominick then installed a Web-monitoring program on Evenson’s laptop and began tracking the officer’s Internet activity at work.

One of Evenson’s “friends,” a 19-year-old Missoula girl, posted a comment wondering what the 44-year-old man was doing online.

“Not 100 percent sure what this is … you’re a cop and trying to better the connection between law enforcement and Missoulians? Is that what’s going on here?” the woman wrote.

A three-week investigation revealed that Evenson’s browsing criteria on MySpace were set to “swinger” and “women,” and shows he initiated contact with hundreds of women across the country who identified themselves as strippers, prostitutes and porn stars. The messages were frequently sexually suggestive and “occasionally in very sexually explicit language,” according to McMeekin’s letter.

Nearly all of the activity took place while Evenson was on duty and using county-owned equipment, software and Internet access accounts.

According to Dominick, the Web-monitoring software showed Evenson sometimes trolled for profiles on MySpace for hours, citing one instance where the officer spent seven hours networking. The software, called Web Watcher, took snapshots of every Web page Evenson visited, then forwarded the images to the company’s server. Dominick could then log on at the site and view all of Evenson’s Internet activity from the previous day.

When investigators compared the online activity with 9-1-1 dispatch records, they found incidents where Evenson, a patrol shift supervisor at the time, had delayed responding to disturbance calls for up to 10 minutes while he remained logged on at MySpace.

“The MySpace.com activities became so consuming that, by your own admission to the disciplinary review board, you would park your patrol vehicle near a ‘WiFi hot spot’ because those Internet connections were much faster,” according to the letter.

On Feb. 27, Evenson was suspended from his duties with pay pending the recommendations of a departmental review board.

The five-member review board, which serves as a departmental jury, convened March 5 and conducted a seven-hour hearing, during which Dominick questioned Evenson and displayed slides of his Internet browsing, e-mails and chat pages.

The review board unanimously recommended Evenson’s termination and found him guilty of five separate departmental charges: violating the county’s electronic communications policy, gross inefficiency for delaying his response to dispatch calls, conduct unbecoming an officer, and two separate instances of “being untruthful” with supervisors.

According to Steve Johnson, Missoula County’s electronic communications policy pops up whenever an employee logs on to the county system.

“Missoula County will not monitor these systems as a routine matter. However, the county reserves the right to access any of these systems and disclose any and all of their contents,” according to the policy.

McMeekin and Johnson acknowledged that county employees have been disciplined in the past for violating the electronic communications policy by viewing inappropriate materials. However, no one has ever been fired for those misdeeds because they’ve always confessed to supervisors after being confronted.

“We’ve never seen anything so extensive or anyone who’s tried to hide their activities or mislead investigators when confronted about it,” Dominick said.

Evenson won’t face criminal charges for his conduct, but has been disciplined for previous violations of department policy, including an instance that resulted in a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

Several years ago, the Missoula Police Department investigated Evenson at McMeekin’s request. That investigation resulted in the single misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct for quarreling with and allegedly slapping his 18-year-old daughter in public.

The inquiry also revealed that, after his daughter was ticketed for drunken driving, Evenson asked deputies to “make it go away,” a favor that one former deputy carried out.