Porn, forgery, and suppression: The disconcerting tale of Tom Jowers

A sidetracked investigation

At this writing, Pacific Mayor Richard Hildreth and the Pacific City Council have been wrangling over the mayor’s unauthorized use of a city credit card. Council members have said the mayor lacked authority to use the card, but he has claimed to be exonerated by a prosecutor who has declined to press charges. The alleged reason the prosecutor declined:  Mr. Hildreth didn’t intend theft or fraud. What gets lost in the translation are two points:  First, intent isn’t an essential element. Using the state’s credit for personal reasons is a serious violation all by itself, regardless of intent and even if theft and fraud weren’t involved. Second, it appears that the council’s demand for an investigation was sabotaged by the public safety division.

Background issues

This raises issues that have been raised before about the character of the individuals involved. The public safety division didn’t follow council instructions in its investigation, and the mayor ignored directives on how the card was to be used. Behind these issues lurk other issues which have been swept aside in the past year and which raise some enormous questions about the integrity of this government. The questions are raised in a lawsuit that was pending in spring 2010. The lawsuit was dismissed and cannot be filed again. That’s a disappointment for the plaintiff, but not necessarily good news for the city, because it makes public some allegations that can’t be easily ignored, if Pacific residents care about respectable government. 

Also, since the city is no longer at risk, there is no reason not to openly discuss the lawsuit.

Plaintiff Tom Jowers, and former Pacific police officer Brian Aldridge claim:

• While they were probationary employees, Public Safety Director John Calkins called them into his office to view pornography on his computer during duty hours.
• The rights of employees for civil service and union protections designed to prevent abuse of power were suppressed.
•  Public safety division documentation submitted to a hearing judge was falsified and contained a forged signature. (The document can’t possibly be true, due to contradictions it contains regarding the chronology of events.)

Naturally, there’s more to share.

Documents support allegations

 Jowers says his lawsuit was quashed for procedural reasons, not because of the merits of his claims. If his allegations are true, something awful was going on, and his story demands to be heard  even if he can’t recover damages. Jower’s claims are backed up by witnesses and by city documents.

Risk-free honesty

In the topsy-turvy world of the courts, the function of trials is not to obtain justice, but to produce winners. And city councils have a duty to preserve the city’s resources by winning court battles, even if they don’t deserve to. But now that Jower’s suit cannot be refiled, the city runs no risk from an open and honest discussion of exactly what was going on in the Public Safety Division, and whether the mayor knew.

Did mayor blindside council?

 Jowers’ lawsuit was pending at the very time that the mayor was rejecting findings by Klickitat County Sheriff Department officials that Mr. Calkins quite likely had abused his power. One of the claims against Mr. Calkins is that he threatened another individual with a hand gun.(Mr. Calkins failed a polygraph examination when he denied the allegation.) It would appear that the Sheriff’s Department investigators weren’t provided details of the lawsuit, and it would also appear that Mayor Hildreth withheld those details from city council members. Mr. Hildreth reportedly met with Councilmen Gary Hulsey and Clint Steiger  to discuss the Sheriff’s Department report, after which he disregarded its findings. Mr. Steiger and Mr. Hulsey are members of the council’s public safety committee and by virtue of that might have been compromised by Mr. Hildreth’s action.

 Is porn OK on City of Pacific computers?

It doesn’t seem credible that Councilmen Hulsey and Steiger would have consented to ignore the Sheriff’s Department investigation if they would end up looking like they were soft on using city computers for porn surfing. So what did these public officials know, and when did they know it?

There will be more details in  the  next Speed Trap City  blog.