Elected through Terror

Untitled Part 11

As Sheriff, elected by the citizens, I answered directly to the citizens. I learned early on when I asked another elected official for advice about something that 'elected officials don't tell other elected officials what to do.' While that wasn't entirely accurate it pretty well defined my role in the county.

I answered to the County Commissioners in as much as how my activities affected the county – however, they could not tell me what I could or could not do in the Office. As long as I obeyed the laws they had no say in my Office – EXCEPT when it came to budgeting.

We had to submit our budgets to a budget committee made up of the three elected commissioners and three private citizens appointed by the commissioners. They could control some of what we did by either withholding or giving funds to operate the Office.

I knew what the Office was all about, but, I had a lot to learn about the operation of the Office and how it interacts with the citizens. When I received my drivers permit I had yet to drive a car. I was bragging to a friend that I had aced my test, his comment was 'but that doesn't mean you can drive.' In short, I was too cocky.

Same point.

I had been elected, but I needed time in the Office to learn how to BE Sheriff. And there was a lot to learn.

While I knew there were problems within the Office, I found there were far more than I had known and some were dangerous to the deputies and the county as a whole. I had a lot more work to do than I had appreciated.

My objectives for the Office when I was running FOR the Office were:

Professionalizing the Department

- More Training for Employees

- More Accountability for actions

- Meaningful Evaluations

- Weeding out management staff that are ineffective – but giving them an opportunity to prove themselves to me

Open Communications with the Media and Citizens

Dealing with conflicts between Rajneesh and other citizens of Wasco County

More presence in the south part of the county

More Volunteer Programs

The citizens also had some objectives for us:

- Dealing with the Rajneesh was far and away Number ONE priority for them

- More Visibility throughout the county of both the deputies and the Sheriff.

Once elected, however, I started re-evaluating what I thought needed to be done, some of it because of what I was seeing while orienting to the office and some mandated by law.

In ADDITION to the above I had to add these other objectives:

- County wide 9-1-1 Program, a county wide contract had to be completed by the end of 1985 and we were a long way off from meeting that requirement

- Jail had some serious personnel and operational issues, in addition to being a substandard facility and an attorney lurking around who was very eager to sue us on behalf of the imates.

- Some of the supervisors just needed more training and we needed to get them on the same page with me – others were just incompetent, or acted in an adversarial manner and I would have to document their mishaps

- Because a lot had been allowed under previous Sheriff's – I felt I was going to have to create a new standard for the Office and that was going to take a longer time than I had originally thought – we were going to have to go from a slack Office to a more regimented and professional office and I was going to face resistance

- Dealing with the Rajneesh encounters with my Office and other County agencies was much more involved that I had been appraised of initially

In that first year I had to add Rajneesh investigation to the list; fortunately the state was the chief investigator and while I, at first, didn't really appreciate them taking point, it became obvious we couldn't handle it at our small county level.

It was hard to prioritize my objectives, mainly because so many were very important, and in other lists each would have been priority one. I will elaborate on them in the future.

But my first unexpected surprise, and thus became my first priority even before taking Office, came during a County Commissioner's meeting on December 2nd that dealt with the Rancho Rajneesh's festival the next summer.

I was about to enter the world which revolved around the Rajneesh and had sucked Wasco County into the vortex.