Elected through Terror

Untitled Part 20

I realize as I write and re-read this it might appear that I was or have become bitter about that first few months. That is not the case.

I was disappointed in what I found, the situation was worse than I expected. There were some excellent deputies that embraced professionalism and wanted to do a better job. They needed good leadership and unfortunately many of the leaders I inherited were lacking in a number of ways.

It did take much longer than I had imagined, I was very naïve in many ways about how my ideas would be accepted. I was frustrated by the abilities of some of these people and the disruption others caused by their disagreement with our ideas.

But eventually, over the course of several years, we ended up with a very good Sheriff's Office and accomplished many things thanks to the dedication of the men and women who worked with me.

I would never have accomplished the things I did without the hard work of our personnel. We became a solid team.

These accounts of what I was working with upon taking Office, is just to help place my encounters with the Rajneesh – which we will return to shortly – in perspective.

Many people look at that first year in relationship to our interactions with the Rajneesh. That of course is the interest that they have because of who the Rajneesh were and what they did to the citizens.

However, they were only one part of the challenged that I had to undertake, and in many ways, at least in the first few months, they didn't take up anywhere near the time it took to attend to these other problems.

That is why I want to give some idea as to the problems we faced that first year.

Back to some of those experiences of that first year, continuing with the Jail:

Oregon Law required that inmates could not go longer than 14 hours between meals. To insure, as much as possible, the officers would be safe, meals were served at shift change in the morning, 0700 and afternoon 1600 so two CO were there. We also furnished a 'snack' usually popcorn later in the evening to be sure we complied with that law.

At about 1800 hours the inmates went from the more open bull pen, to the brig/cells where they were confined to a narrow, barred hallway and their cell.

Oregon law required an inspection, by the Grand Jury, once a year. There were no problems listed, in fact the comment was often made about how clean the facility was – that cleaning was done by the trustees. But these were civilians, quickly passing through and not really understanding what they were looking at.

We were not a 'bad' jail. We treated our inmates with respect. When we were eventually sued the lawyer told me the inmates had asked him what would happen to the jailers when he told them he was going to 'shut' us down – he had never had that question asked before, they were genuinely concerned about the CO.

When we did shake downs we rarely found weapons; the inmates felt safe enough that they didn't think they had to defend themselves – although a fast turnover probably helped in that matter.

What we would find is a few food items, such as fruit or extra milk in cartons – we would also occasionally find 'pruno' – a crude alcoholic drink made of fruit and sugar fermenting in a bit of water. All were considered contraband and violations.

We did have television – we needed something to keep inmates busy, some books, and board games and that was about it for distractive activities - and we had down home cooking. We had a cook that prepared meals for all inmates, juveniles and the staff - the CO and clerks.

The inmates are in the jail 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Dissatisfaction with anything, even minor issues, can work on their minds. Food quality is one of the major complaints of inmates – no one ever complained about the quality or quantity of Wasco County meals. Our cooks did a good job.

They would prepare meals for the weekends and place them in the refrigerator for trustees or CO's to throw in the oven; and then serve.

Upon taking Office I found out that the Wasco County Jail was on an attorney's hit list. He had successfully sued a number of older jails, such as ours, in the state. Wasco County had a target on its jail, he but needed an inmate to complain to him; and word travels fast when you are a prisoner in the State Prison system.

In Oregon, jails are to be inspected each year by the Corrections Division of Oregon; our jail passed each inspection. But as I was to find out, that was more of a rubber stamp than a real evaluation that would encourage changes that could have prevented us from being sued.

What bothered me, and I will get more into it later, was I learned that even though several jails had been successfully sued, the Corrections Division Inspectors did not review them, or at least well enough, so they could help Sheriffs who had jails that were being targeted.

For whatever reason, it appears my predecessors did not discuss those issues with the Sheriffs that had been sued.

While it wouldn't really have made much difference in the outcome of 'our' suit, it would have at least helped us be better prepared for it.

To help keep the jail from being sued, my predecessor had asked for advice from the State Corrections Division on how to change the jail to avoid a suit.

They came and drew up a plan that would help the Sheriff improve the facility, and hopefully, either keep us from or allow us to win in a law suit. More on that later.

Some of the work had been done; downsizing the cells was one of them. The majority of the changes, though, had not been started. The main reason was the expense of doing all that was suggested by the consultant.

Finances were tight, but it should have been a priority for the Sheriff and therefore the County and it wasn't; the Commissioners had a lot on their plate and this, to them, was not that critical.

I do feel sorry for my predecessor, he wasn't experienced in either law enforcement or public administration; he was being lied to by some, there was incompetence by others - he had a lot working against him. But even with that he let many things slide, obvious things, that he could have resolved and didn't.

He really is a great guy, I like him; but he didn't address issues he should have and I, along with others I appointed into key positions, had no choice but to fight through the animosity and reluctance of change to get it done.

Because the jail could not hold every one that was arrested, on advice of the advisor, they had also instituted a point system. Borrowing from the system from other agencies and adapting it to Wasco County.

Each inmate was judged on several criteria, points assigned to each criteria with recidivism and seriousness of the crime being the highest priority. If the points were low they were often released on their own recognizance (RO) or if the incoming inmate was more dangerous than one already housed, that person would be released.

Some of that was done by the CO on duty based on the point system, but there were times when there were too many with similar points and we had to make a decision on who to release.

It was a frustration; I had come from being a Police Officer that threw people in jail, to having to approve which one(s) was to be released; which was almost a daily occurrence.