A former St. Paul police officer was sentenced to a month in the Ramsey County workhouse and three years of supervised probation on Friday for causing a negligent fire at a building that housed his and his wife’s restaurant.

Prosecutors initially charged Tou Mo Cha, 56, of St. Paul, with second-degree arson, which was dismissed at sentencing as part of a November plea deal for admitting to the added negligent fire charge, which is also a felony.

Judge Joy Bartscher stayed a one-year prison term and sentenced Cha to 30 days in the workhouse, with six days of custody credit. He was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution for an insurance deductible, while also leaving restitution open for 90 days.

The fire at Checker Board Pizza on Arcade Street at Jenks Avenue in St. Paul happened just before 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2023. Law enforcement reviewed video from several cameras and saw a person, later identified as Cha, leaving the business and then going into the building’s apartment entryway, according to a criminal complaint.

Cha walked away, and the entryway started on fire a few minutes after he left in his vehicle.

Cha told police he had not gone to the entryway, “however, the video shows him to be there,” the complaint said.

The blaze caused more than $100,000 in damage to the building, which neither Cha nor his wife owned.

Past trouble

When Cha was a St. Paul police officer, he was charged in 2004 with lending his department-issued handgun. The gun was used in a pair of drive-by shootings that targeted members of the Hmong community; no one was injured. Cha pleaded guilty to making terroristic threats in 2005 and the 11-year department veteran resigned from the police force.

He was convicted of misdemeanor DWI in 2007 following an arrest in Little Canada.

In 2019, Cha was sentenced to 90 days in jail for an assault outside Checker Board Pizza the year before. The police department said five officers failed to intervene and lied about what happened, leading to then-St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell firing them.

Cha was convicted of misdemeanor DWI in Ramsey County in 2023.

Last year, on March 22, Cha was arrested on suspicion of DWI after a Maplewood police officer found him slumped over in the driver’s seat of his 2014 Cadillac Escalade. He was charged with second-degree DWI for refusing to submit to a chemical test and third-degree DWI on March 25. The case remains open.

The next day, Cha was cited with possession of an open bottle in a motor vehicle after he drove to the Maplewood Police Department to get a police report for the DWI case and officers smelled alcohol when he spoke, according to court records. Cha admitted to taking a shot of alcohol and provided a preliminary breath test, which showed his blood-alcohol concentration was 0.05. Officers discovered a bottle with “remnants” of alcohol inside. He pleaded guilty June 1 and was fined $100.

‘He did something really stupid’

On Friday, Cha’s attorney, Jack Rice, told Judge Bartscher that Cha understands the seriousness of the negligent fire charge and that he has taken responsibility.

“And he understands that this was a big mistake,” Rice said. “He’s paying the price for it. It’s going to be a lot of money. He lost his own business at the same time.”

The comment prompted Bartscher to interject, saying: “He lost his own business because he did something really stupid. And I don’t mean that your client is stupid, but what he did was stupid.”

When given the opportunity to address the court, Cha apologized “for my behavior, stupidity that caused a fire. … I started that business back in 1998, and I put my three sons in college. And I took care of the building like my own. But somehow my stupidity and negligence caused the fire. I lost everything.”

Bartscher noted the plea agreement in the case and what he admitted to.

“I’ll tell you what I have written on the face of this,” the judge said, while holding up a piece of paper, “which is, ‘Why was the fire started?’ … And I’m not asking your client to answer that question, Mr. Rice, because of what he pled to.”