Officer Dan Saba's Fall into Addiction

Within months of joining the Minnetonka Police Department, a young officer named Dan Saba won high praise from his chief for saving a woman's life on Christmas Eve in 1996.

Shortly before Christmas last month, that same officer sat in the Hennepin County jail on the verge of losing his job, addicted to pain medicine and awaiting sentencing on one burglary while being investigated in two others.

Strung out on Vicodin, Saba also has admitted to breaking into at least 10 homes last year looking for drugs. Many of those burglaries, he said, involved breaking into homes he'd responded to earlier while on duty as an officer.

"I have seen many officers make many mistakes of varying degrees," Robert Fowler, Saba's attorney and the general counsel for the Minnesota Fraternal Order of Police, said in court documents. "I have not seen a more tragic case involving the fall of a peace officer."

Those sentiments are echoed by friends, relatives, and colleagues who know Saba, arrested and convicted last year for burglary after breaking into a Chanhassen home looking for prescription drugs.

Saba, 38, was to be sentenced next week in Carver County District Court, but that has been postponed.

In the meantime, Saba also faces a burglary charge in Hennepin County District Court and a disorderly conduct citation in Carver County in connection with break-ins last month.

"It's a very complicated issue," said Minnetonka Police Chief Mark Raquet, who placed Saba on unpaid leave last year. "To navigate through this is difficult. I don't have any complaints about Dan as an officer. I would not describe him as a problem officer."

Rise and fall

By most accounts, Saba was a dedicated officer, joining Minnetonka in 1995 in what Saba described as his dream job.

Almost immediately Saba made an impact. On Christmas Eve in 1996 he saved a motorist who had suffered a stroke by running alongside her moving car and steering it into a snowbank before pulling her out.

"Officer Saba displayed an extraordinary amount of courage and good judgment at this call," then-Chief Richard Setter wrote in commending Saba.

But things began to fall apart by 2005. Saba's drug habit began after a doctor prescribed the painkiller Vicodin to help him deal with migraine headaches, according to court records.

As his addiction grew worse, so did his conduct, according to court papers and letters from friends, relatives and fellow officers in the department.

After Saba was caught in the break-in last May in Chanhassen, he also was arrested in December on suspicion of a similar incident in Hennepin County, where he has been charged with first-degree burglary.

A second Hennepin County complaint, in a burglary in Excelsior in early May, included an interview with Saba.

"He estimated that he has entered ... 10 residences without consent since February 2009 and has taken prescription medications in many of them," the complaint said.

A week later, the Carver County Sheriff's Office investigated an attempted break-in at a home in Victoria in which Saba was ultimately cited for disorderly conduct.

While investigators were talking to Saba he "made some suicidal threats," according to a Sheriff's Office report.

Unintended consequences

Saba has told police investigators he doesn't remember all of the details of his break-ins because his mind was so clouded by narcotics.

Saba has been through rehab at least twice. He also has been treated by a psychiatrist, according to court records.

Raquet and others who know Saba attribute much of his behavior and lapses in judgment to the grip that they say drugs have had on him for at least four years.

"Dan never intended for this to happen," his wife, Sheila, wrote to Carver County officials last year. "He did not choose this for himself, his family or his friends."

Many of his fellow officers in Minnetonka agreed, saying in letters to the court that they had witnessed changes in Saba over the past several years as the drugs slowly took over.