Bonner County Sheriff Won’T Run Again Three Candidates In Line For Roos’ Job; Style Could Be Key Issue In Race

Sheriff Chip Roos has chosen not to run for office again, opening the door to an election bid by Sgt. Larry Schulze, the embattled head of the county’s marine patrol.

Roos announced his decision to the county’s Republican central committee Tuesday night.

“I feel good about what I’ve accomplished,” said Roos, who’s been sheriff for 11 years. But, “I’m getting too thin-skinned. When I get attacked, I don’t like it anymore.”

Schulze has made it clear that if Roos were not to run, he would likely enter the race.

“I happen to believe in him 100 percent,” Schulze said recently of Roos. “If he doesn’t run, then I feel that I need to get into the action.”

But Schulze could face an uphill battle, at least in the Priest Lake area where many residents are weary of his presence and what they consider heavy-handed law enforcement.

“There’s absolutely no justification for what we’ve experienced up there,” said Chuck Bauer, retired president of Panhandle State Bank and a Priest Lake property owner.

“In my opinion Sheriff Roos has been a good sheriff,” Bauer said. “This is the only issue I have a problem with.”

Property owners, some from the Spokane area and some Idaho residents, are organizing to form a political action committee in order to get their own candidate into office.

That candidate could be Bill Litsinger or Phil Jarvis. Both men announced to the Republicans their candidacy Tuesday night. Schulze was not at the meeting.

Litsinger, 51, is a former Los Angeles police officer who now works as a community resource officer for the Newport Police Department. He also teaches at Lewis-Clark State College in Coeur d’Alene and served as coordinator of the North Idaho anti-terrorist task force for three years.

Jarvis, 63, of Hope, has 33 years in law enforcement, and retired as a captain supervising more than 200 employees with the San Diego Police Department. Among other assignments in his career, Jarvis served as a homicide investigator.

Litsinger, who lives in Sagle, said the controversy over law enforcement at Priest Lake contributed to his decision to run for office. He’ll be running on the Republican ticket.

“I see a complete lack of confidence among the people in the Coolin/Nordman area in the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department,” Litsinger said Tuesday. “It doesn’t seem like it would be so difficult to adopt a policy that wasn’t so intrusive.”

But the way Roos characterizes enforcement at Priest Lake, where the marine deputies ran emphasis patrols all summer to nab drunken boaters, the officers are just doing their job to protect the boating public.

As Schulze put it, “Until people have been in my shoes, they have no reason to knock what’s been happening.”

But knock it they do. Business owners complain of lost business. Several residents say they stayed off the lake to avoid being stopped.

A recent newsletter of the Priest Lake Association was devoted entirely to complaints about law enforcement. One writer decried Roos’ statement to association members that “the days of Officer Friendly are over. Get used to it.”

Roos admits he made the comment, but claims that it was in the context of being asked to simply warn law-breaking boaters.

“No matter who gets elected, they can choose to do one of two things; either honor their oath of office, or not,” Roos said in an interview Monday. “Anyone who stands there and says they’re going to do things radically different, either they’re lying or they’re no peace officer.”

Litsinger disagrees.

“There are two ways to enforce the law,” he said. “You can be real arrogant, self-centered and egotistical, or you can be a gentleman. You don’t have to be heavy-handed. You don’t have to treat an old lady like you treat a bank robber.”

Jarvis also said that there’s some degree of latitude in how laws can be enforced - but he’s not taking sides in the controversy until he gets the full story, he said.

“But I’ve worked long enough in law enforcement to know that where there’s smoke, there’s got to be fire,” Jarvis said.

A new organization formed by Priest Lake property owners, called Citizens for Responsible Law Enforcement, has contacted Jarvis about his candidacy - but Jarvis hasn’t had a chance to meet with them because he was out of town.

The group has taken advertisements out in local and regional newspapers looking for people who have had run-ins with the Bonner County marine patrol on Priest Lake.

“I’ve talked to over 100 people,” said Gary Fry, a retired Spokane educator who is one of the group’s founders. “Out of 10, you might get two that are positive.

Roos acknowledges that he’s had some problems with the rookie officers who are hired for marine patrol. The officer who was the subject of the most complaints, Matt Hathaway, wound up in a shootout on the lake at the end of the boating season.

The incident provided more grist for critics who thought the situation on the lake was getting out of hand.

But Roos said that in his review of 13 hours of tapes of Hathaway’s traffic stops, he could find nothing objectionable in Hathaway’s conduct.

The complaints were down by the end of the season, Roos said, after the rookie deputies had more experience.

Whether that’s the case or not, a lot of Priest Lake residents - summer and year-round - are ready for a new approach.

“The people skills that have been displayed (by the Sheriff’s Department) are definitely lacking in my opinion,” said Ron Marak, chairman of the Priest Lake snowmobile grooming committee.

“I think it’s time for a change. I don’t think Larry’s the change.”