Gloves long off in race for sheriff

SANDPOINT – Harvey Thompson, a longtime Bonner County cop who is currently on suspension, took the left turn off U.S. Highway 95 and chugged his pickup truck up the hill toward the sheriff’s office north of Sandpoint early in the morning of Oct. 12.

When he got there, Thompson nosed his truck, festooned with campaign signs for someone else, right into Sheriff Phil Jarvis’ personal parking slot and – voila! – several issues about the 2004 race for Bonner County sheriff seemed to click into focus: The campaigning has often been bare-knuckle and angry. Its essence comes down to a referendum on Jarvis. The behavior of officers is a hot topic.

Seven candidates filed last spring to replace Jarvis, who got into a highly publicized fight with a girlfriend (now his wife) and another man two years ago and faced felony battery charges until the county prosecutor decided to reduce them.

As one former supporter bluntly said, “He fell in love and stopped being sheriff.”

Three candidates are left. Undersheriff Elaine Savage, 49, said the department is getting a bad rap from people who hate Jarvis and who feel threatened by his installing changes that, she said, bring overdue professionalism and modernism to the office.

Tony Lamanna, 55, a school resource officer in Priest River, said Jarvis has alienated and demoralized deputies, has slacked off on state-sanctioned training and is four years overdue on a promise to institute a policy and procedures manual.

James “Bean” Johnston, 37, recently quit his job as a backcountry counselor at Rocky Mountain Academy, a private school for troubled youth, to campaign full time.

“I got tired of hearing horror stories from my friends about how they were treated by police,” Johnston said, citing tales of overly aggressive behavior by deputies.

All these elements were present when Thompson swung a pickup truck plastered with Lamanna campaign signs into the sheriff’s parking spot at 6:50 that Tuesday morning, videotaped by security cameras in the parking lot. Lamanna, the cameras show, was right behind and gave Thompson a ride away from the parking lot.

Lamanna said he and Thompson were headed to Clark Fork to speak to a high school government class Oct. 12 and, as he lives in Priest River and Thompson in Sagle, agreed to meet in Sandpoint.

“Harvey said it would be a safe place to park his vehicle,” Lamanna said. “I didn’t know it was Jarvis’ slot. I wasn’t thinking about that. It was a brain fart.”

Consider Thompson as a symbolic lightning rod for this race: He is, 63, has spent 29 years with the sheriff’s department and was weeks away from retirement. But, he said earlier this year, he blames Jarvis for the department’s sinking morale and became so incensed he put retirement on hold and ran for sheriff. He finished second to Jarvis protégé, Savage, in the May Republican primary.

Now he is on paid administrative leave for a peripheral role in an incident involving use of force.

Sagle resident Trever Rogers was detained by deputies one late summer day when they found him with a television in a car that seemed to match up with a 911 call reporting a home-invasion burglary.

Police say Rogers went crazy in the back of a sheriff’s SUV, kicking so hard he bent out the window frame. What happened next was caught on video from another sheriff’s rig: Deputies removed the handcuffed Rogers from the SUV, ordered him to the ground to apply leg restraints and, when he refused to comply, beat his legs and knees with batons to get him down.

“They beat him all right; a handcuffed person,” said Bryce Powell, a Sandpoint attorney who has filed a $400,000 tort claim against the sheriff’s office on behalf of Rogers. “This case is an ugly case.”

The tort claim prompted the insuring agency, Idaho Counties Risk Management Program, to investigate. Two internal affairs officers and the chief of the Garden City police reviewed the reports, the videotape and conducted interviews, The Spokesman-Review has learned.

Thompson, as patrol lieutenant that day, was interviewed about the lack of any superior officers showing up at the scene, the newspaper was told by several sources.

“I received a telephone call from down south and they recommended Harvey be suspended from duty until the investigation is complete,” Jarvis said last week.

Attorney Dave Sasser at the Boise office of ICRMP, did not comment on who made the call to place Thompson on leave. Thompson didn’t return several phone calls this week.

Thompson has been on leave since Sept. 1 as officials wait for a final report from the investigation.

For Lamanna, the suspension of the veteran officer is simple: “He is a scapegoat for the county. They were waiting for some way to get rid of him. That’s my take, his take and it’s unanimous from the troops.”

Lamanna, after winning the Democratic primary, crossed party lines and asked Thompson to be his undersheriff.

“This is not good-old boys. I’m accused of being a good-old boy and I’m totally against that,” Lamanna said. “Good-old boys believe in archaic systems. My two most important things are training and education and we need to go forward in this world, not backwards.”

Lamanna said Thompson’s failure to respond to a significant crime call are symptoms of the larger morale problem under Jarvis.

“They are so frustrated by the administration, they do things that normally they wouldn’t do.” It’s a result, Lamanna said “of what happens when you live with anger every day because you have poor leadership.”

Morale, Lamanna said, will only get worse and result in more lawsuits. If elected, Lamanna said he expected the problem to ease because he is known and trusted by deputies and he promised to pursue an aggressive policy of state-sanctioned training offered in North Idaho through the POST (peace officers standards and training) Academy.

Asked for a thumbnail of his opponents, Lamanna said: “If I were in a bar fight, I wouldn’t want Elaine with me. Everybody says she has so much law enforcement experience – well, put your money where your mouth is.”

About Johnston, he chuckled: “Bean, Bean. What can I say? He’s a nice fellow but has very little experience.”If experience counts for so much, Johnston asked, why is the sheriff’s office in such turmoil? “They have a combined 100 years of experience over at the sheriff’s department, and look at what they are doing,” he said.

Johnston said the incident with Rogers is appalling to him on several fronts. One is the hard-core treatment by police. The other is that while Rogers probably “deserves to be in jail … you don’t pull him out of a car and beat him with nightsticks.” Now, Johnston said, Rogers is an inmate “who is going to win a tort claim.”

Johnston said deputies tell him they are concerned he is some sort of peacenik who would take away their tools. He tells them they are feared by citizens, an experience he said he shared while working seven years as a deputy in Michigan.

“They don’t understand I would put more tools in their toolbox and make their jobs safer,” he said, by providing conflict resolutions skills that can de-escalate encounters without resorting to force. Johnston said several nationally recognized trainers in such skills are based in or near Sandpoint who train police agencies across the nation. He has asked if they would train the local force.

Johnston said his job at Rocky Mountain Academy, leading youth groups on backcountry trips, where the unexpected is just around the corner, has taught him to think on his feet.

He said he is aware deputies think he’s green as grass and promised to spend six or eight months working his way through the department to become acquainted with the realities deputies face.

Asked to sketch his opponents, Johnston said, “Tony Lamanna is a really great guy. If I weren’t running for sheriff, I’d support him.” Of Savage, he said, “I like her. She’s very witty and has a great resume, but I think she got caught up in a bad administration with Jarvis.”

As far as she can tell, Savage said, she’s the only one of the three finalists who has the resume to be sheriff. She’s tired of Jarvis-bashing, she said, and tired of being slammed for her gender.

“Phil has instituted programs that should have been in place years ago,” Savage said. “The county is growing and there is a greater level of expected professionalism from the people we serve.

“People hate change, and some felt threatened that we were going to make this a big-city police department,” she said. “This will never be a big-city police department, but we can make changes for the betterment of our department.”

Undersheriff the last two years, Savage said she has had the time to make mistakes and learn from them. She said most departmental changes are nearly invisible – establishing a purchase order system, for instance, and other efficiency measures. Jarvis also divided the county into patrol districts and created sheriff substations.

“People are not shy about telling me, ‘You are very well qualified, but you are still a woman,’ ” she said. She doesn’t get too concerned, Savage said, “Because women vote.”

Asked about her opponents, she said “Tony and I are neighbors. I’ve known him all my life. His brother was my eighth-grade teacher and his sister was my fourth-grade teacher.

“My impression is both Tony and Bean are not familiar with all the responsibilities and duties of being sheriff. Our county is growing and I think training a sheriff, well we don’t have the luxury of doing that.”

So who is going to get the parking slot?