One of the things the Corrections Manager did, that ‘irritated me’ was to ‘order’ the clerks and CO to do, was call him before anybody else, and he would come down to evaluate the situation and decide if anyone needed to be advised.  While most of the calls were mundane, there was more than one that was serious and the patrol sergeant should have been told, immediately.  Failure to do that would get them on his ‘list’ and he would make them ‘pay’ one way or the other.

When that finally came to my attention, I ordered that the on-duty sergeant would be advised and he would decide if the manager or I needed to be contacted.  The manager was not happy.

We were in my Office when I told him what was going to be done, and reaffirmed that I wanted him to be more open with me.  He said ‘my responsibility begins at that door’ pointing back towards the jail area.  I said, ‘MY responsibility begins at the front door and includes all of it!’

He got the message.  However, he still undermined me whenever he could. 

We had weekly staff meetings where the sergeants and the Manager could bring up things and help turn the Office around.  CO would ask him to bring things up, but he didn’t, after a while I learned that he would go back and tell them that the sergeants cut them down and the Sheriff said no.

Talking about undermining, me, the rest of management and the morale of the CO - they had some good ideas once they were presented.

It took a while, but he was eventually terminated.

During my first meeting with the County Budget Committee, I reviewed what was happening with the law suits across the state.

I had not digested all of what I learned and would learn as I continued to talk to the other Sheriff’s but, at least we had a plan of action – and expensive one, but it needed to be done.

I took the recommendations from the advisor and a five year plan to address those recommendations.  They were prioritized so the most important could be done first.  They signed off on the plan.

As I did more research and looked at our facility it became more apparent that there would be things that we couldn’t overcome.  What we would hope for is that what we were doing would be enough to hold off until we could get a new jail built.

I told the County Judge that if we are sued we would not fight the suit, but try to work with the attorney.  In a law suit of this kind if any part of the complaint is upheld then the Federal Judge can award attorney fees and other fees up to three times the amount requested.  We could not afford to run that risk.

When we were finally sued, and the brief filed by the attorney as the basis for the suit I reviewed them and thought that we could negotiate a lot of it out, because some of it conflicted with the plan the Advisor from the Corrections Division had given us.

I sent the suit to him and asked him to come to the jail.  A few days later he came and inspected the jail, he said that the changes requested by the attorney were good ideas.

In the plan he had given us we were to spend a great deal of money making changes that the attorney was opposed to, if we had made those changes then it would have been for naught.  Even some of those that were made by my predecessor had to be scrapped.

I challenged him about his prior inspections and the plan he had devised for us, he said something like “the inspections were not meant to make it hard on Counties, especially smaller ones like ours.”  So his inspections were just scans.  The jail was clean, inmates well fed, (among other things) so he didn’t see any point in putting the jail down.

While that was ‘nice’ it proved detrimental.  I was less than happy.

We started to negotiate with the attorney.  In the process we ended up making our jail a ‘72-hour holding facility’ so it didn’t have to follow all the guidelines and requirements the attorney was trying to put through.  Part of our salvation was we were able to negotiate that an inmate could sign a waiver and remain in our facility for a longer term than 72 hours – for them it was a jail.

For those that thought they could wrangle a get out of jail card by not signing – and were too dangerous or in otherwise scored to high of a point we took them to another jail, adjoining our county – Hood River, Oregon just to the west of us or Klickitat County Washington which was across the Columbia River – but adjoining Wasco County.

That was an important fact.  Oregon law allowed a Sheriff to hold a pre-trial inmate in a jail of an adjoining county.  We had several adjoining counties – Hood River County in Hood River; Clackamas County in Oregon City; Marion County in Salem; Lynn County in Albany; Jefferson County in Madras; Wheeler county (which didn’t have a jail they housed some of their prisoners with us and other ‘adjoining counties;) Sherman County, that housed their prisoners with us: and across the river in Klickitat County in Goldendale.

While some of those couldn’t have helped us and most were just too far away in both distance and driving time, we did have some options and once the word got out we had few who refused to sign the waiver.  As I said we treated our inmates with respect and they were near their relatives.

We signed a long term contract for beds with Union County in LaGrande, Ore where we sent convicted misdemeanants.  They were about 200 miles away and not adjoining, but didn’t have to be when the inmate was convicted.

They had been sued by the same attorney and were in compliance, so we knew that our prisoners couldn’t sue Union County.

I knew from the beginning that we needed a new facility and had started planning on how we could get a bond levy through the citizens of our county to build one.

While that first year, with the hundreds of extra hours dealing with the problems, including personnel, in the jail was a real challenge for me, it continued to be an issue and a burden I had to deal with my entire time in Office. 

It required literally untold thousands of hours I would have preferred and needed to be doing something else.

I will write about some of what we went through before we were able to pass a bond levy for a regional jail, as I retired, at a later time.

Mathew 7:13-14  Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

¹⁴ Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

I woke up this morning, thinking about these verses and Oregon Highway 128.

Oregon Highway 128 is part of a highway system that connects Highway 97 in Central Oregon, south of Bend, to I-5 in the Willamette Valley at about Roseburg.

While I know many of you have straight roads in your area, they are not so straight here in Oregon.  They have to go around and over hills and mountains.  We do have some straight stretches but they are not magnified so much as Highway 128.

If you are going eastward you come up over a rise in the road and look straight out and down, that straight stretch is visible all the way to highway 97 about 13 miles away (can’t remember exactly could be more or less – the stretch is actually about 15 miles total.)  There is no horizon to block the view. 

It is quite an impressive sight.  The road is as straight as it can be no jots or jiggles, just paved road, straight road for 13 miles. 

The road has a high elevation; it crosses the Oregon South Cascade Mountain Range.  It runs between Mt. Bailey at 8363 feet, Mt. Theilsen at 9182 feet and Crater Lake, next to Mt. Scott at 8929 feet.

Along the way there are numerous distractions, among side roads that lead to camp grounds and small lakes there is the road, south, into Crater Lake.

If the goal is Highway 97, it is straight ahead, there is no question of where it is heading.  However, a person can get sidetracked on that stretch of the road and if they think they have time, they might take a quick run south to Crater Lake or visit one of the camping spots along the way.

If you take these side trips it will delay your arrival at your goal.  Not too serious, after all if we are not in a hurry the side trips are beautiful and very tempting.

But if time is critical taking the side trips could put you much too late for your arrival.  In bad weather that could be dangerous.  The snow falls early in the Fall of the year, last late into the Spring and dumps a lot of it on the highway.

I have been in one of those deep snow storms where I pushed snow with the bumper of my car and it was still snowing.  (Not my brightest hour.)

Jesus made it clear that the road to heaven is narrow and straight.  We may not actually ‘see’ our goal, but we know it is there; straight ahead.

However, in this life there are many distractions.  Some are fun, others are tragic, but all can take our heart and mind off the goal. 

We may be okay; we can come back to it and still make it – but not always.  We may think we have all kinds of time.  We know that man lives for about 70 years – so when we are young that age is far away.

The distractions pull us away.  But we really don’t know how much time is available to us as an individual – we may be dead in the next few minutes – tragedies happen.  We may push it too much and one of those snow storms will pile up on us and keep us from reaching the goal.

We have all heard the comments, I don’t want to accept Christ now, I am having too much fun.  I will wait until later, when I grow old and can no longer do the things I can do now.

How do we reach them?  We can’t just grab hold of them, shake them and tell them that they may not have time and to accept Christ NOW!

Most of these people that we have that kind of contact with are people we see regularly.  They can be co-workers, members of the same clubs, neighbors, etc.  IF we live OUR lives that show we are living for Christ, we can hope they will see that.

But that is not quite enough, they need to understand we are different than others.  That we have a purpose and peach through Christ.

Evangelists are not just the ones that stand in the pulpit and preach; they are men and women, just like you and me, who live their life for God and tell others about Him.

Mathew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

A while back I received a letter in the mail from a class mate and good friend of my son.  In it he wrote that he didn’t know what it was about me, but he was always watching me and admiring me – I had something special; he knew I was active in our church and a Christian, but he didn’t understand.  His parents were great people, but not Christians.  He was now writing as a Youth Pastor at a local church and just wanted me to know the impact I had on him.

We can all tell similar stories.  People from our past that let us know that they appreciated our stand for Christ and how it made a difference in their lives.  Some, such as that young man, we may not even have known they were watching us.

We don’t want to get distracted and veer off that straight and narrow way.  We want people to see God in us as we take our walk through this life.

We want to show His Compassion and be available when the Holy Spirit leads us to help them find Christ. 

We want to be good examples of staying true to Him never letting the world’s distraction to interfere with our relationship with God.  We want people to help people find Christ is their lives, finding the gate and going on that narrow way.

Later, Art :-)

From the ColumbiaRiverGorgeous
May Our Good Lord Bless and Keep YOU....’til we meet again