Crowded Field Pursues Badge Bonner County Primary To Trim Seven-Man Contest For Sheriff

Bonner County Sheriff Chip Roos’ decision not to run for re-election has left a vacuum that seven candidates are eager to fill.

The Republican primary matches three men with law enforcement backgrounds: Phil Jarvis, Bill Litsinger and Roy Winter.

The three agree that the Sheriff’s Department needs to improve public relations and officer training.

They differ in experience, style and approach to problems.

Also in the race are two Democratic candidates, Lance Nichols and Maurice (J.R.) Banks, and two independents, Donald Parkison and David Morgan.

Morgan, 56, a retired Kitsap County (Wash.) deputy sheriff, ran for Bonner County sheriff as a Democrat in 1996 but finished last among four candidates. Parkison, 44, owns D&D Upholstery in Sandpoint and has no law enforcement background. He’s motivated by an interest in the constitutional rights of suspects, he said.

The May 23 primary election doesn’t affect the independent candidates, both of whom will appear on the general election ballot.

But it will eliminate two Republicans and one Democrat.

In the Republican primary, Jarvis, 63, is the oldest candidate and the most-experienced. As such, he’s framing his campaign around qualifications.

“It’s easy for the inexperienced to stand outside and criticize,” Jarvis says. “It’s difficult to work inside and change and improve without alienating employees.”

Jarvis claims he has plenty of practice doing the latter in his 33-plus years with the San Diego Police Department. He spent 23 years as a manager or supervisor of several divisions and retired as a captain and commander of the department’s Southern Area Command.

It’s that background that won Jarvis the endorsement of the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Jarvis moved to Hope, Idaho, in 1993 to retire. But when Roos announced his retirement plans, local officers encouraged Jarvis to run.

“I’m simply offering myself as a personal contribution to good government in Bonner County,” Jarvis says.

When asked about specific changes he’ll make managing the department, Jarvis says he’d rather take office and learn all the dynamics before making plans.

But he does have a few philosophies that he’ll apply. For instance, professional law enforcement starts from the top down, he says.

Officers need to rededicate themselves to the concept of public service, he says. “All persons deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.”

Jarvis says he would have to study calls for service and schedules before saying whether more officers are needed and where.

Litsinger has field experience from his six years as a police officer in Long Beach and Los Angeles in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

During the campaign, Litsinger has been confronted with tough questions about his past - particularly a shooting incident in L.A. in which he killed a handcuffed suspect, and his unfounded arrest on attempted murder charges in 1982. Litsinger has been cleared in those incidences.

After retiring from the LAPD, Litsinger returned to law enforcement as coordinator of the North Idaho Anti-Terrorist Program from 1996 to 1999. He occasionally teaches criminal justice classes at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston.

From the time he left Los Angeles until coming to North Idaho, Litsinger worked for a power company, sold mortgage loans and investigated real estate fraud.

He’s currently the community resource officer with the police department in Newport, Wash., and managed five programs there, including Block Watch and Crimestoppers.

“I’m a firm, firm believer in community involvement and input in law enforcement,” he says. If elected, he plans to establish a citizens advisory board, to include a high school student, and implement programs such as Crimestoppers in Bonner County.

Complaints about aggressive marine patrols on Priest Lake are mostly due to a lack of training, Litsinger says.

“Perception is reality,” he said at a recent candidates forum. “We need tourists. We also need professional law enforcement.”

Just as the department needs to repair its relationship with the public at Priest Lake, the sheriff also needs to work on better relations with the county commissioners to overcome budget impasses, Litsinger says.

“Commissioners have to trust that what you put before them is what you need,” he says.

Winter, 55, is a retired private investigator.

His law enforcement background includes a three-year stint with the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department, two years as a welfare fraud investigator, two years with Idaho Probation and Parole and 20 years as a private investigator.

Winter wants to get the patrol deputies off the highways and out of the incorporated cities and onto county roads.

“Every time a deputy stops and writes a ticket, he’s off patrol,” Winter says. “High visibility of a deputy is a deterrent.”

Also, to save money, he’d get free license plates for sheriff’s vehicles from the state, instead of paying $80 per plate for the letters BCSD.

He’s also fed up with the Sheriff’s Department’s automated phone system: “When you call on the phone, you’re not going to get, `If you know your extension, dial it now,”’ he says.

Instead, he’d like someone answering the phones at the Sheriff’s Department 24 hours a day, as well as a 24-hour hotline for senior citizens, and a resident deputy for the Priest Lake area to improve response times there.

Winter, like Litsinger and Jarvis, is a fan of using federal grant funds to boost department revenues.

“Let’s get it and take the burden off the taxpayer,” Winter says.

Banks, 55, is the only Democratic candidate with a law enforcement background. Banks was a sheriff’s deputy in Lorraine County, Ohio, for 17 years and served as sergeant of the mounted posse.

Now he’s a long-haul truck driver and wasn’t available for an interview for this article.

Nichols, 39, touts his administrative ability. He was a car salesman for seven years and managed a car lot in Wasilla, Alaska, and served on the Matanuska Valley School Board. He also claims to have turned around the troubled finances of the Klondike Resort, near Palmer.

Nichols has no formal college education but has taken private management courses.

While in Alaska he worked for the state as a foster parent of troubled teenagers, which he described as a dangerous field because some of the kids were involved in drug networks.

Now, Nichols is helping his parents develop some property along the south banks of the Pend Oreille River and is raising two children as a single father.

“I didn’t think I was qualified until I found out it’s an administrative job,” Nichols says.

“I’ve worked with rather large budgets,” he says. “We could provide the coverage the county needs with the budget that is already there.”

Nichols suspects that the department has too many vehicles for the number of deputies. That’s the type of thing he’ll look at to eliminate waste, he says.

He also proposes to take the marine deputies off the water and replace them with Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteers. However, the auxiliary volunteers don’t have any enforcement capabilities, said the flotilla leader Rich Crettol. “We are strictly education and safety,” Crettol said.

Also, marine deputies typically are seasonal employees who are not certified as peace officers, and therefore could not work regular patrol.

Nichols says he is working on other plans to make the department more efficient and will have them in place by the time he is elected.