Powell police officer resigns after driving with alcohol in system
POWELL — A Powell police officer agreed to leave the department in late January, after he was found to have driven his patrol vehicle with alcohol in his system. Officer David Salters, who had served with the department for roughly four-and-a-half years, resigned on Jan. 28.
Salters’ departure followed an incident in the early morning hours of Jan. 21, when he agreed to come into work and transport a woman from the police station to the Park County Detention Center.
However, alcohol was reportedly smelled on Salters’ breath before he left the station, and while he was en route to Cody, his supervisor told him to pull over so Cody police could check his sobriety.
A Cody Police Department report on the incident says a portable breath test estimated Salters’ blood alcohol level to be at 0.071% — below the legal limit of 0.08% — and Cody police did not find cause to cite or arrest the officer.
“There were no indications of impairment,” Salters told the Tribune in a Friday statement.
He added that a more official breath test he took a couple hours later put his blood alcohol concentration at 0.018%.
Still, Salters said having alcohol in his system violated Powell Police Department policies, and he was asked to resign.
Asked about the incident, Police Chief Jim Rhea said he couldn’t comment; state law generally requires government agencies to keep employees’ personnel files and records related to internal investigations confidential.
Although I cannot comment on personnel matters, I can say that this Department is built on a foundation of high professional standards,” Rhea said in a Wednesday email. “We maintain and uphold those professional standards through accountability.”
An early morning call
The sequence of events began around 2:40 a.m. on Jan. 21, when Salters was called and asked to take a 37-year-old Powell woman to jail on a Park County Circuit Court warrant. Records show the warrant stemmed from her repeated failure to pay roughly $672 for a years-old misdemeanor conviction of unlawful use of a credit card.
Salters was off-duty that night and not on call, he told the Tribune, and he’d had some drinks before going to bed. However, when he awoke to the call from the station, Salters said he “felt no impairment” and decided to go into work.
While he was at the police station, Salters said the woman remarked that, “You’ve been drinking, I can smell it,” but he told her hadn’t had a drink since 8 p.m. and “shrugged the comment off.”
Salters added that the officer who’d arrested the woman didn’t voice any concerns about his alcohol consumption.
However, a Cody police report indicates the other officer did notify a supervisor, Sgt. Matt Koritnik, who later called Salters and told him to “pull over wherever he was at.” Salters had made it as far as Cody’s eastern edge, and he pulled into a business parking lot just off Big Horn Avenue. Koritnik then called Cody police and asked them to check his officer’s sobriety,
Cody Police Sgt. Josh Van Auken recounted in the report. Van Auken and another officer arrived at Salters’ location at 4:14 a.m. and administered a portable breath test, which put his alcohol content at 0.071%.
After learning of the results, Koritink asked Cody police to take custody of the woman and finish transporting her to jail; an officer got her to the detention center at about 4:27 a.m. Koritnik then asked Van Auken to administer field sobriety tests, the report says.
The document indicates that Salters initially agreed, but expressed some apprehension.
“I know this is going to sound vain, but I don’t want my name thrown around,” Salters reportedly said, with Van Auken writing in an incident log that the officer was “concerned about cameras.”
Ultimately, after learning the sobriety tests were part of a criminal investigation — and after confirming with Van Auken that he didn’t have to complete them — the officer refused the tests.
“Salters stated he was sorry of the inconvenience,” Van Auken wrote.
Criminal and internal investigations
When a driver’s blood alcohol level falls between 0.05% and 0.08%, as may have been the case with Salters, state law says “that fact shall not give rise to any presumption that the person was or was not under the influence of alcohol, but it may be considered with other competent evidence in determining whether the person was under the influence of alcohol to a degree which renders him incapable of safely driving a motor vehicle.”
Though Salters’ eyes were “very bloodshot” and he smelled like alcohol, Van Auken said the officer’s speech was clear, his balance appeared to be fine and there were no observed issues with his driving, as he’d parked before Cody police arrived.
“Based on my observations of Salters, coupled with the lack of traffic violations and the PBT [portable breath test] indicating he was below the legal limit, he was not placed under arrest [for] driving under the influence,” Van Auken wrote in his Feb. 2 report.
Salters was instead told to wait in his patrol vehicle until his supervisors got there. Lt. Matt McCaslin and Koritnik arrived just before 6 a.m. and took Salters and his vehicle back to Powell, the report says.
Salters said he did complete standardized field sobriety testing back at the Powell Police Department and they found “no indication of impairment.” That was in addition to the 0.018% reading logged on the department’s more reliable, calibrated intoximeter.
Blood alcohol levels drop over time — typically by around 0.015% per hour — and at that point, it’d been more than two hours since his initial breath test in Cody.
Rhea declined to say if Salters was put on administrative leave following the incident, but he confirmed the officer resigned on Jan. 28.
Prior to joining the Powell Police Department in 2021, Salters served for two years with police in Birmingham, Alabama.
This story was published on March 10, 2026.
Requesting public records
The Tribune learned of the incident shortly after Salter’s resignation and submitted a public records request to the City of Cody on Jan. 30, seeking a copy of any related Cody Police Department reports.
On Feb. 17, the City of Cody notified the Tribune that the request was being denied and that it would not be releasing the report.
The message, sent from the city’s public records software system NextRequest, appeared to contain boilerplate text and didn’t provide a specific explanation for the denial.
“After careful review, the City has determined that one or more of the records you requested are exempt from public disclosure under the Wyoming Public Records Act (W.S. § 16-4-201 through 16-4-205) and will not be released,” the message read in part.
However, after a Tribune reporter followed up and looped in City Attorney Scott Kolpitcke, the city reopened the request.
Kolpitcke, who hadn’t been involved in the initial review of the records, said the reports would be in fact released.
“There are some things that need to be redacted from the reports, but otherwise they are public records,” Kolpitcke wrote just a couple hours after the Tribune’s inquiry.
The city then released the documents to the Tribune on Feb. 27, with only the parties’ dates of birth, addresses and other sensitive personal information blacked out.