Former deputy facing decertification for giving rides to women without body cam

It led to Scott Chaput's resignation in lieu of termination last year. 

Chaput has been a certified law enforcement officer in Nebraska since December 2021, working as a deputy in Grant and Frontier counties before going to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. 

He resigned there July 28, 2025, and his certification has been locked since, preventing him from working in law enforcement elsewhere in the state.

At a hearing on June 17 at the Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island, the Police Standards Advisory Council considered a motion by the state seeking revocation of his certification. 

Attorney Jon Hendricks, who helps prosecute the cases as a special assistant attorney general, said Chaput had continually violated department policy "by providing unauthorized rides to females while he was on duty with his body camera off."

It started with an incident May 25, 2024, at a bar in Fairbury. Chaput later would say a fight was about to break out so he drove the women away. 

Hendricks said his supervisors later learned he had given them a ride in his patrol vehicle without his body camera on, per policy, and that he was in a relationship with one of them.

"This is something he had been warned about prior," Hendricks said.

He said a review of Chaput's body cam footage that night showed people approaching Chaput at the bar asking about a phone a woman thought she had left in his car.

Hendricks said Chaput could be seen waving, seeming to indicate that his body cam was on.

During the internal investigation that followed, Chaput eventually admitted to giving rides and being dishonest initially when asked.

Chaput was given a written reprimand for it. 

Yet a month later, on June 22, 2024, Sheriff Nicholas Georgi learned he was still giving rides in his patrol car without activating his body camera, Hendricks said.

This time, the sheriff suspended him three days. 

Then, on July 26, 2025, Georgi was made aware of an online conversation where women were discussing Chaput, saying he had asked them out while on duty and they had been in his patrol car while he was on duty, Hendricks said. 

When he was called in to talk about it, he resigned. 

Hendricks said in a statement, which he offered as evidence, Chaput admitted it happened, "and he acted in a deliberately shameful manner and that he brought disrepute to, not only his agency, but on other law enforcement across the state by his conduct."

At the hearing, Chaput's attorney, Dustin Garrison, said they acknowledged that perhaps there were grounds for his termination for doing something the sheriff told him not to do. 

But a law enforcement officer only can be decertified for "serious misconduct."

"It's just not enough," he argued. 

Garrison said there was no evidence he had sex with anyone in his patrol car. There was only an allegation he turned his body camera off, and he'd never been given any formal training on it, he said.

"This was him giving a ride home to somebody with which he had a sexual relationship with but didn't have a sexual relationship while he was on duty," Garrison said.

He said he didn't think the council could say that was inappropriate.

Garrison argued a period of probation and training would be appropriate. 

"Even if this is misconduct, it's not serious misconduct," he said, saying it "doesn't come close."

Asked if he considered lying serious misconduct, Garrison said he didn't think there was any evidence of Chaput lying. 

"There's evidence that he wasn't completely forthright about his personal life," he said.

Chaput said he was asked questions about his personal life that he declined to answer. 

"I've done my best to be forthright whether that's going to make me look like a scumbag or not. The truth is going to come out whether I try to hide it or I don't," he said.

Chaput said it all revolved around one incident, not multiple, as Hendricks and the sheriff's office allege.

Council members pushed back, going through the specific dates outlined in reports. 

"Here's the problem I'm having," Assistant Lincoln Police Chief Jason Stille, a member of the advisory council, said, pointing to Chaput's own statement where he admitted, when asked about the rides, he hadn't initially been truthful.

In the statement, he appeared to be taking accountability for it. 

"But here today you deny it. So which is it?" Stille asked.

Chaput said when asked personal questions, he "glossed over it."

"I didn't see how what I did in my personal time was any of their business," he said. "I can understand in retrospect how they may have been trying to protect the image of the department. But what I was doing isn't anything that other deputies weren't doing at the same time, not that that is any excuse."

In his closing remarks, Hendricks said the basis for the revocation was Chaput's repeated violations of department rules and policies. He'd been told to have his body cam on for transports. 

"This was unmistakably made clear," he said.

Hendricks said he thinks Chaput tried to misrepresent to the council what occurred.

After a brief executive session, members returned and voted 9-0 to recommend revocation to the Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, which is expected to consider the matter at its meeting later this month.