As treasurer of Garden City police group, she stole $30,000. Here’s her sentence
Months after the Garden City Police Officer’s Association uncovered a significant amount of funds missing, the treasurer who stole the money has been sentenced.
Jenna Nicole Rodriguez was placed on probation for the next decade after she admitted to embezzling roughly $30,000 from the organization over the course of two years. She pleaded guilty to felony grand theft in February, court records showed.
The nonprofit, made up of both sworn and unsworn personnel from the Garden City Police Department, provides funding for officers injured or killed in the line of duty, victims of violent crimes, and local community events and donations.
Garden City Police records supervisor Samantha Barghoorn, a member of the association, said in court that the money Rodriguez “selfishly stole” not only impacted their members but “countless” families, including kids from the local Boys & Girls Club.
“This is a serious case,” 4th Judicial District Senior Judge Richard Greenwood said. “This is a violation of trust — there’s just no question about that.”
Greenwood, who presides over cases in Ada County, underlaid a 10-year sentence, meaning that if Rodriguez violates her probation, she’ll be sentenced to at least two years in prison, with another eight years she could spend behind bars, on parole or both.
Before her probation starts, Rodriguez will spend six months in the Ada County Jail, Greenwood said. She’ll be eligible for the Ada County Sheriff’s Office Community Transition Center after 60 days.
If she’s able to find a job, she’ll spend the remaining four months working during the day and behind bars at night, Greenwood explained. Rodriguez is also expected to pay the police association back, though an exact amount hasn’t been decided by the court.
Rodriguez expressed remorse for her actions and assured the judge that “nothing like this will ever happen again.”
“I’m just so ashamed of what I did and what it put everybody through,” she said.
Rodriguez’s defense attorney, William James Young, said his client was going through desperate times after going through a divorce, and Rodriguez wanted to be able to provide the lifestyle her children were used to.
She’s a good person who made a “very bad series of decisions,” he said. But Delia Hanes, a deputy prosecutor with the Canyon County Prosecutor’s Office, said there was “no excuse or justification” for her actions, adding that she was put in position of trust and she abused it.
“The Garden City Police Officers Association, and more importantly the community, are the victims of this crime and the actions of Ms. Rodriguez,” the association wrote in a news release.
