Perhaps someone familiar with the intricacies of Montana law can answer these questions:
1. I understand that it is perfect legal for a sheriff in Montana to run a private investigation firm on the side. What conflict of interest rules exist to prevent a sheriff/PI from providing confidential information from police investigations, including criminal investigations, to the PI firm's clients? Is this specifically addressed under state law and personnel regulations? Does each county do their own thing?
2. Private investigators can surveil a person's home with high-tech equipment, use GPS trackers on vehicles and otherwise monitor computers and phones. What happens if a sheriff/PI uses these techniques on a person who later shows up dead under suspicious circumstances? Would it be legal under Montana law for a sheriff/PI to serve a client who hired them to do these things, while at the same time investigating or leading an investigation of the same suspicious death in their official police role? Would they be required by law to disclose and recuse themselves and their department from the investigation, handing all materials and investigation notes etc. over to a state authority which would step in to conduct a new, independent investigation?
3. What specific disclosure rules, if any, exist if a sheriff/PI is in this legally allowed but ethically questionable position? Would said person be required by law to disclose that he had been hired privately to track the deceased person whose death he was also investigating when wearing his sheriff hat?
Times have changed, and I question whether the laws have kept up. Thank you to anyone with legal knowledge for clarification. It's the legal knowledge of the inner workings of this system that I'm looking for.