Great Bend ? The patrol car that Barton County Sheriff’s Deputy David Paden was driving when he pulled in front of Brian Frenzl’s motorcycle on Sept. 1 had illegally tinted windows, the Kansas Highway Patrol said.

The deputy’s vision also was obscured by equipment that was installed in his car for the dog he carries as part of the county’s K-9 unit, the patrol said.

Now, three weeks after Frenzl’s death from the collision, friends and family members of Frenzl and another person whose death was connected to Paden’s driving are enraged that the deputy still has a job.

“It’s terribly frustrating,” said Rita Budig, who was Frenzl’s girlfriend. “I mean, there’s no way that guy belongs back out on the street. I hold (Barton County Sheriff) Buck Causey personally responsible for him being on the street. People are paying for that with their lives. Someone’s got to get him off the street.”

Paden has been involved in three accidents with his cruiser in less than two years. Two of them resulted in death, and the third seriously injured a motorcyclist.

“These people are paid by us to serve and protect,” said Marie Mayers, the mother of 16-year-old Adam Mayers, who was killed Jan. 5, 2002, after a high-speed chase. “Just exactly where did this guy serve and protect Adam?”

Frenzl, 40, was killed when Paden attempted a U-turn on U.S. 281 to join a pursuit and pulled into the path of Frenzl’s motorcycle. Frenzl’s Harley Davidson slammed into the left front of Paden’s patrol car, and Frenzl cartwheeled 168 feet before coming to rest on the opposite shoulder of the road.

Patrol Lt. Steve Billinger and trooper Shawn McWilliams found that Paden’s vehicle windows were illegally tinted, transmitting only 25 percent light on a KHP tint meter. Kansas law requires at least a 35 percent light level.

They also found that modifications to the car for the dog forced the driver to “roll down the driver’s window and lean out the window to look behind the vehicle for obstructions.”

Mayers was driving his father’s pickup truck when he was clocked going 70 mph in a 55 mph zone before the crash in January 2002. He was trying to elude Paden when he lost control of the vehicle and went into a ditch, where the truck overturned and began to roll. The truck slammed into a power pole and came to rest on its wheels as Paden pulled up.

The third accident involved a chase that ended when another deputy bumped a fleeing motorcyclist and Paden ran over the downed cycle driver.