Trooper charged with DUI made $141K while on restricted duty
The state police trooper who was drunk when he crashed his state-issued SUV into a pickup truck parked at a North Strabane fire station made nearly $150,000 in salary while on restricted duty for 16 months as he waited for his case to be adjudicated.
Trooper Jeffrey Alan Tihey was paid $141,159 over 34 biweekly pay periods spanning from the September 2021 incident until just before he was sentenced Jan. 26 to serve a year on probation for the DUI case, according to an open records request made by the Observer-Reporter newspaper.
State police responded Wednesday to the newspaper’s Jan. 19 request through the state’s Right-To-Know Law asking for Tihey’s salary from October 2021 until the end of December 2022. The department provided 34 paystubs dated from Oct. 15, 2021, until Jan. 20, 2023, showing Tihey’s financial compensation during that period. The records show Tihey’s gross salary was $108,504 in 2022.
Tihey, 39, of North Strabane, had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit to drive when he struck a firefighter’s personal vehicle in the parking lot of North Strabane Fire Station No. 3 at 430 Johnson Road shortly before midnight on Sept. 30, 2021. Tihey was off-duty at the time, but was driving his state-issue sport-utility vehicle that was damaged in the incident. No one was injured in the incident.
North Strabane police charged Tihey two months later with two counts of driving under the influence, and he has been free on $1,000 unsecured bond.
Tihey was accepted into the county’s Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program during his Jan. 26 appearance in Washington County Court, and Judge Gary Gilman sentenced him to serve 12 months on probation. If he completes the program, the record of his arrest will be expunged.
Tihey, who is assigned to the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation at the Troop B barracks near Washington, has been on restricted duty since the incident. Myles Snyder, the communications director for state police, said Tihey still remains on restricted duty – which is essentially administrative desk duty that does not permit a trooper to go on patrol – while awaiting the disciplinary outcome. A trooper with the state police’s internal affairs unit has traveled to Washington for each hearing, and he was present for Tihey’s sentencing through the ARD program.
The three pay periods after his sentencing were not included in the open records request, but Tihey’s gross paycheck has averaged $4,151 since September 2021.
Tihey’s defense attorney, David Shrager, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment on the case or his client’s current status with state police.
Less than eight month’s after Tihey’s incident, another state police trooper from the Troop B barracks in Washington County was charged with drunken driving while on duty and in a patrol vehicle. Jared Clyde Johnson was found by a fellow trooper to be intoxicated while on patrol with a bottle of rum in the front seat of his police SUV when he was supposed to be on patrol May 12, 2022. Johnson 46, of South Franklin, was immediately suspended without pay following the incident.
He was admitted into the county’s Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program on Aug. 22 – about three months after charges were filed – and sentenced to serve a year on probation. His current status with the state police was not known Wednesday.