Calkins awaits his fate

Pacific's fired public safety director, John Calkins, is awaiting word on how Pacific's civil service commission will rule on his dismissal. Mr. Calkins' civil service hearing on his firing by Pacific Mayor Cy Sun took place last week.

A fairly thorough (and presumably, accurate) report on this hearing has been presented on the blog for the Committee to Recall Cy Sun.

Of particular interest to me in the recall committee's blog were these three points:

• Police Lt. Ed Massey was a witness whose testimony appeared to support Calkins. It should be noted that, when Calkins was stopped for driving while intoxicated in Bonney Lake three years ago, it was Massey who he summoned and who quickly appeared, and who became a defense witness for Calkins during the pre-trial evidence hearings.

• City Council Member Clint Steiger, chair of the public safety committee, also presented testimony which appeared to favor Calkins. Steiger has been pretty close to Calkins since he was hired, and apparently was one of the city council members who all but yawned when a Kittitas County Sheriff's Department investigation determined that Calkins had on two occasions abused his authority. It was also Mr. Steiger who tried to suppress the taping of a public safety committee hearing, and who walked out, leaving behind a memorandum from Mr. Calkins that supported increasing city revenue by writing more traffic tickets. The memorandum made no mention of improving public safety by increasing the tickets written. That memorandum abruptly disappeared from city files, but I retained my copy.

• According to the recall committee's blog, Mr. Calkins testified he had never been investigated for anger issues. That's simply not true. In 2002, he failed a polygraph examination on the issue of whether he had ever menaced his wife's former husband with a handgun, and the Kittitas County Sheriff's Office investigated this issue in 2010, concluding that he quite likely did point the handgun at that individual. That represent two investigations on a rather serious breach of ethics, and something that conceivably could have resulted in criminal charges. You wonder why the city's attorney didn't ask him about this during cross examination. Did no-one remember any of this? Really?

This is the second time that the city's top public safety official has had a civil service hearing on improper behavior. The last time was in the 1970s, and resulted in a sea change in Pacific's political makeup. That story is told on a separate Web site, entitled 100 Years of Law and Order in Pacific 1909-2009.

What seems abundanty clear is that this time the procedure is more tightly controlled, offering greater advantage to the appelant, Mr. Calkins, than that enjoyed by his predecessor. This time around, a bumbling mayor is swimming upstream against the good 'ol boy's club that has allowed Mr. Calkins a very long, loose leash. It's highly conceiveable that Calkins will win his job back. There would be irony in that. The only reason he got this job in the first place was the dismissal of a more competent police chief who ran afoul of the mayor at that time, Howard Erickson, who was as much a bumbler as Cy Sun. Also, Calkins may win a job back only to find out that there is no city to return to, or that the city's credibility is so badly tarnished, it won't be a job worth having.

There are two reasons you might want to turn to the "100 years" site. The first is for an in-depth report on what happened in the 1970s and how that compares with more current history.

The second reason is for a little diversion. If you feel that Mr. Calkins is the kind of guy who needs to be locked up, you'll have a chance to put him in jail! I invite you to visit 100 Years of Law and Order in Pacific 1909-2009.

Knock yourself out!

Proclamation: Rachel Kringle

Years ago, I founded an organization called Pacific Candlelighters. Its purpose was to use a small steering committee of activists to create projects and draw in participants, who would emerge as the core of a growing community. The aim was to reverse the community disintegration that had been happening incrementally over many years in Pacific.

I abandoned that effort when I was elected to city council, because my direct participation would have represented a conflict of interest. However, there is an individual in the Pacific community who seems to have picked up the baton. Initially, she became involved in the effort of "Taking Back Pacific," which meant recalling Mayor Cy Sun. But she has transcended that lesser objective for a greater and, I hope,  a more lasting one—identifying  the people in the community who are part of a rich resource of human talent, and illuminating them for the rest of the community to discover, or rediscover.

Rachel Kringle regularly produces these reports on her blog's features page, and she must have hit the right nerve, because it is my understanding that people are reading what she has to say and are finding pleasure in it. Based on the numbers of visitors she tracks, she may have become one of the touchstones for many Pacific residents. I'm awaiting her discussion of more of the members of Pacific Partnerships, whose organization is known in the community, but whose actors have gone too long unrecognized. Fortunately she's already started recognizing that group with a profile of Glenda White, Pacific's postmistress and a notary for the community. Contrary to the common wisdom behind commercial media, in some venues, good news does sell.

Rachel is not alone in her effort. My friend, Jeanne Fancher, has been casting about for some time to find a way to create a common communication medium for the community, hoping to obtain grants to facilitate that. What Jeanne probably has figured out by now is that her Pacific City Signal has become a source that people turn to in order to find out what's happening with city government. Both women are doing the community a great service in reconnecting people in the way print media used to.

There is no shortage of blogs in Pacific. A blog to recall the mayor is updated regularly. My blog was created to serve the purpose of community gadfly.

Of all the blogs that have cropped up in Pacific, Rachel’s is my favorite. While I don't wish to diminish Jeanne's contribution, I want to focus on Rachel's, because she is a neophyte, coming to this avocation cautiously, carefully, by fits and starts, and then finally finding her way. There is no pay, just the joy of service. But her blog is truly an expression of her personality, and it serves this community well. She is illustrating that old adage that a fool curses the darkness, but a wise man lights a candle.  I hope she continues to find the time to discover and rediscover the positive  individuals who can shape and reshape the soul of this community.

As Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, 

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal..."

Pacific is caught in that peculiar position for which both are true: it is time to wound and heal at the same moment. Rachel has chosen to be the healer. What she is discovering in this community, and what she expresses in her service, is an idea that 

 in every life, no matter how seemingly insignificant, there are opportunities for endeavor, courage, grace and nobility. And in that, there is majesty.

Therefore, by the power vested in me, as founder of Pacific Candlelighters, an observer of the Pacific community, and a person with a hope that Pacific's people can rise above the rancor that has choked the community for many years, I hereby bestow upon Rachel Kringle, author, blogger, activist and creator of community infrastructure, the Honor of the Order of the Pacific Candlelighters. Accompanying that honor are 19 personalized postage stamps with the legend, Rachel Kringle, A Pacific Candlelighter.*

Shine On, Rachel! Shine On!

*Although anyone in the community could so honor someone with a stamp, I would ask that the prerogative to bestow the Honor of the Order of Pacific Candlelighters be reserved to me, out of courtesy, so that the honor does not become diluted.

On taking the bit between your teeth

The people who are pushing recall of Pacific Mayor Cy Sun might want to know where the title for today's blog comes from. It was in a stanza in a John Dryden satirical poem, the Medal, written in 1682:

But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mounted horse,
Instructs the beast to know his native force,
To take the bit between his teeth and fly
To the next headlong steep of anarchy.

Recall might get you everything you hope for, but you are playing the game of brinksmanship with a man who may be able to determine the fate of the city simply by ignoring you.

There might be another way to get things done, if you think creatively. It's always exhilarating to have a good donnybrook, but even if you win, you can lose. Sometimes it's better to lose, so that you can win. Thinking is the hardest work you can ever do. It can be far more exhausting than physical labor. But now it's time to think, and think hard.

I was involved in an almost useless political experiment 11 years ago, working with people who had the bit in their teeth and wouldn't spit it out. And they clearly lacked the determination to think. They took the easy way out. Before you dismiss this as old history, you might consider the fact that this particular piece of history built the foundation on which we stand today. Both action and inaction have consequences.

Here's the story:

In the year 2000, Gary Van Hee was booted off the city council. Prior to his removal, there had been a heated election over the possibility of the city obtaining a "prison." It actually was a detention center for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, to hold undocumented immigrants. But the opponents were arguing that Pacific would become the home of felons, and all sorts of bogeymen. The campaign was crazy. When it was over, there was a split on the council, with almost half the members in the camp of Mayor Howard Erickson.

Mr. Van Hee had worked out an agreement with the previous council that he would be excused to attend night classes. However, the new council discovered that they had not taken formal votes to excuse him, and they took the opportunity of that oversight to oust him. The vote was 3-3 and Mr. Erickson broke the tie. Strangely, as I recall, Van Hee did not vote on his own behalf.

The community was aroused and came to observe. The council met in the old school gymnasium by city hall to decide Mr. Van Hee's fate. The gym was packed with ordinary folks. In the front row of spectators, the local crazy lady was mouthing the words toward Councilwoman Bernadine Harrison, "and you're next!" Nothing subtle about that. When the meeting was over there was a seething rage among the voters.

Mrs. Harrison and others circulated a petition to take the city to a council manager form of government. There was no difficulty gathering the requisite number of signatures from the restive populace. The petition was submitted to the county and the paperwork came back to the city to authorize a spring election for Proposition 1, converting Pacific to a council-manager form of government.

Mayor Erickson "lost" the paperwork.
The paperwork was delivered again.
Mayor Erickson "lost" the paperwork. Again.

Meanwhile, I contacted Mrs. Harrison and asked her, "well, are you folks going to form a committee, or just sit around?" I initiated the creation of the Proposition 1 committee, volunteered to coordinate it until a chair could be selected, and we began meeting at the library on Ellingson Road.

Councilwoman Karen McIver, who had voted for Van Hee's removal, was having a change of heart, and volunteered to file the paperwork for the election, since the Mayor obviously wasn't going to. (This should have been grounds for recall, but a prior effort to recall Mr. Erickson when he had been mayor before had failed.)

As coordinator, I tried to persuade the committee to adopt a rather unusual position: Allow Howard Erickson to sabotage the election.

I pointed out to the Proposition 1 committee that Mr. Erickson had managed to defeat his prececessor, Mayor Debra Jorgensen, because she had lost her credibility over the detention center issue. Now it was Mr. Erickson who had lost his credibility over the removal of Mr. Van Hee from office.

Why would anyone at this stage believe us, I asked. What credibility does this committee have? We are going to lose this election. Wouldn't it be better to simply let the mayor  show his true colors? He would be thumbing his nose at the voters, the public and the election process and save us the embarrassment of losing. There would be a firestorm of press coverage. The voters would be outraged and ready for a change.

"Oh, no!" decided the committee. We MUST have our election!

Yeah, right. King County took over the city's voting booths to prevent further irregularities. We lost by two thirds. The following November, there were five council positions open, and supporters for Mr. Erickson were running for all five seats. Four of them lost, and the fifth one would have lost if we let the mayor have his way.

You see, the crazy person, sent out a mailing opposing Proposition 1, and she used that to savage Bernadine Harrison, softening her up for defeat in November. (Of course, her name didn't show up any place, because it was an illegal mailing, but no-one with a lick of sense doubted who was behind it.) If there had been no election for Proposition 1, there would have been no character assassination of a council candidate in the fall election.

If these people hadn't taken the bit in their teeth, if they had thought rationally about the benefit of losing, there is an exceedingly good chance that an angry electorate, well aware of Mr. Erickson's abuses, would have cast aside ALL his cronies and cooled his jets. There would be a supermajority of non-Erickson council members, able to override his vetoes, if they stuck together.

My message to the recall committee is this: take the bit out of your teeth and figure out how to get some decent department heads hired. Consider the value of losing. If your only focus is on destroying Cy Sun,you are playing a high risk and irresponsible game. You might start by talking to Mr. Sun's friends to see whether they want the outcome that Pacific is heading for. They might be a little upset with what's coming down the road. He might listen to them.

And here's a question for you: Has anyone ever apologized to him for calling him a liar about his war medals? You need to make sure that base is covered. Never underestimate the power of an insult. This is no prediction that an alternate method will succeed. But if you don't try something other than what you are doing, you are as bright as the Proposition 1 committee was 11 years ago.

Afterthought:  There was a useful piece of information generated from the Proposition 1 election. On election day, Richard Hildreth, who would be mayor in only a couple years, stood with me at the Pacific Post Office and we watched voters show up to cast ballots across the street. He took the time to regale me with stories about the crazy lady, and the rap sheet he had collected on her. I might be wrong, but I think he said he had a few hundred pages of documents, including one that she had provided, identifying her mental illness.  I find it particularly disgusting that there were people in town who clearly knew she was ill, and cynically exploited her anyway. One of them was a very close neighbor. This is just one more reason why I have no pity for this government.

Let's reinstate John Calkins

On Monday, Pacific City Councilman Josh Putnam voiced the concern that due to hiring freezes and attrition, the Pacific Police Department may soon be short two patrol officers. Meanwhile, he observes, 

"the terminated Public Safety Director's civil service appeal is proceeding, with a real possibility that the City could be ordered to reinstate him in his position, so Council deferred discussion of municipal code changes to the Public Safety Director and Police Chief positions."

Couple of observations here:

1. The council should have eliminated the public safety director position a few years back, since it had become meaningless once the Regional Fire Authority took over management of Pacific's fire department functions. It appears that the council is considering eliminating the director's position and re-creating the police chief position.
2. With a smaller department, what will Mr. Calkins do to earn his keep? His predecessor, Stan Aston, not only obtained accreditation for Pacific's police department, but he also pulled patrol duty along with his officers. So here's a possible approach to take with Mr. Calkins:

Why not just give in, kinda, sorta? Let him stay on the payroll  and negotiate a new position for him (at an appropriate salary): He can be police chief if he can immediately comply with certain very modest standards and continues to maintain them. And he can be terminated immediately for any failure to meet these standards.

Here's the understanding:

1. No racial profiling.
2. No suppression of civil rights or intimidation of the public.
3. No more shouting at city council members.
4. No more bullying of fellow employees.
5. No porn in the office.
6. No aiming handguns at his wife's ex-husband.
7. No arrest for drunk driving.
8. No wearing of garments that celebrate police brutality.
9. No comp time, since he would be a salaried employee.
10. No witness tampering.
11. No use of ticketing as a revenue measure.
12. No botching of investigations into misuse of the city's credit card.
13. No news releases that increase the vulnerability of crime victims.
14. No failed polygraph examinations.
15. No allowing the department to intimidate political candidates.
16. No release of police files to embarrass individuals critical of police conduct.
17. Perform patrol duty along with subordinates.
18. When a member of the city council asks a question, that individual receives a courteous, complete and accurate reply.
19. One year to get the department accredited, as it was before Mr. Calkins was hired.

Mr. Calkins should breathe a sigh of relief, if this is all the city expects of him, because these are the standards a sane city government would expect anyway. And we're not saying he did any of these things. We just want to be sure they don't happen.


The only task on this list that is above and beyond what you might expect a police chief to perform is the accreditation. I can see the possibility that the city of Pacific might extend the deadline on item 19, if Mr. Calkins meets these other very normal, minimum standards.

If he keeps his nose clean, he could become a real asset to the community.

The 80-20 rule, and recall

Everyone remembers going through school and being graded “on the curve.” But did you ever wonder what “the curve” is? The answer is that it describes the distribution of behavior in nature. Practically every behavior we can track follows the bell curve. Let’s avoid the long discourse and cut to the chase: It’s called the Pareto Principal (you can read about it at Wikipedia, if you are interested) and it basically predicts that 80 percent of the money to recall Pacific Mayor Cy Sun will come from 20 percent of the donors.

The committee to recall Mr. Sun seems to be gaining steam. $11,000 has been raised, according to the recall site, and another $10,000 may be needed. There are a lot of $25 donations. However, there was also a $5,000 donation offered, and turned  down because it was over the allowable limit. 

Who has $5,000 to give, and why? And who are the other deep pockets? If Mr. Sun is going to be recalled, the process should be transparent. Mr. Sun ran on a platform of removing corruption, and it would be a bit disgusting if the people who removed him weren’t honest about the source of the funds that accomplished the task, and what the donors stood to gain.

It wouldn’t bother me to know that XYZ Storage (made-up name) was putting up the money because the company was losing its shirt due to inability to obtain a building permit. Who could blame them? But in a case of changing the city’s administration, you want to know who is making the large donations, and why.

The people involved in the campaign want to save the city of Pacific. There have been campaigns before to change things in Pacific, and they were betrayed by the winners, who just retained the same old bad practices, which were the reason Mr. Sun  was elected in the first place. And while it looks like a lot of people are up in arms, you can’t predict the outcome of an election without some sophisticated polling, and even then you won’t know until the ballots are counted.  Lose this one, and he’s there for his full term, or the city folds, whichever comes first.

So, if there’s going to be a change, it would be good to know that the people funding the change have something to offer beside the same-old same-old.

And if they really are interested in saving the city, they have to keep in mind that the recall may not come in time. The recall supporters need to be working on a second front – getting qualified people appointed as department heads to meet the city’s obligation to its insurance carrier at the same time they are racing to decapitate the administration. That's a tall order.

In a way, Mr. Sun is holding the city hostage. Maybe it’s time for a hostage negotiator.

The hunter comes to Molehaven*

It came to Molehaven this Sunday morning. On long straight legs built for speed it trotted out of the blackberry thicket, rounded the pond by the pipe that crosses under Milwaukee Boulevard by the Christmas tree farm, passed beneath the fir tree by the hedge where the children hide on their way home from the school, and headed toward the far end of Molehaven.

It paused at the top of the low bank by the holly tree and listened. I raced from my upstairs window to the bedroom window to see where it would appear next, but couldn’t find it. So down to the laundry room for a clear look at ground level to the back, where the coyote was in plain view, nosing around the grape arbor. It sniffed the ground, then lifted its nose almost in howl fashion and sampled the air. No stray pets today, apparently.

I had always known it was there, somewhere out in the field by the school. Its pups would yip and howl at night every time a train passed. But this was the first that I had actually laid eyes on it. And it was magnificent.

It was leading a good life. Its gait was almost a canter. Its coat was a rich, velvety gray, and the tail fur fluffy as a feather duster.

This hunter didn't dawdle. After checking the ground thoroughly, and testing the wind from several directions, it retreated back the way it came, pausing under the fir tree for a moment, then darting to cover in an effortless burst of movement to seek concealment from two passing autos. It didn't lope; it flew, straight as an arrow or a gliding airplane, and faster than a greyhound. It was almost a blur.

It waited quietly, patiently, for silence to return. And then it ambled off into the blackberries. And then it was gone.

* Molhaven was the home of the writer, so christened in about the year 2000, before the madness gripped the city. It was named for Dustinian Mole, the city's Pacific Days mascot for a brief period prior to the madness. At that time, he was the Grand Klekug of Molezania, the subterranean underworld where the creatures gathered to guide the future of their domain, over which the founders of Pacific had become temporary squatters a century ago. There are no mole traps at Molhaven. No-one tries to drown the sovereign lords of Pacific with garden hoses. Or kill them with poison peanuts. Or asphixiate them with burning smoke pellets. Or drive them crazy with vibrations from whirling, spinning plastic sunflowers. Forseeing the coming of the madness, I publicly declared, Chief Joseph Style, that "where the sun now stands, I will fight no mole forever." I've kept my word. At Molehaven, the sovereign lords of Pacific enjoy sanctuary and gather their earthworms in peace, and molehood.

Sedition

There is a remarkable letter on the Web site of the committee to recall Pacific Mayor Cy Sun. Written by Police Sgt. Jim Pickett on April 21 of this year,  the letter pointedly states, “I submit for your consideration that sedition and mutiny have no place in our business.”     What makes this letter so remarkable is that Sgt. Pickett personally witnessed sedition in the Pacific City Council chambers on Nov. 10, 2003. The person committing sedition was Public Safety Director John Calkins, wearing a police uniform he was not qualified to wear, and bearing a sidearm. Mr. Calkins is currently anticipating a civil service hearing, at which he will contend his firing by Mayor Sun for bullying another city employee.  Mayor Sun is the first Pacific city official who has ever called Mr. Calkins to task for bullying others.

Mr. Pickett’s letter was written to officers of the Pacific Police Department to explain why he was not signing a letter of no confidence in Mayor Sun, and why he was encouraging them not to sign as well. Among his reasons for discouraging the letter was that signers would find their credibility compromised if they were to arrest the mayor for a crime. He added that signing the letter would also violate the department’s policy manual and the officer’s oath of office. In his words,

“In our business, it is an absolute necessity that we remain neutral in the political functions of the city. If you resided here, perhaps you would have a legitimate voice. But none of us live here. We are merely employees. We are civil servants. The residents and voters of the City pay for our service. They don’t pay us to meddle in their affairs.”

Sgt. Pickett quoted Wikipedia, the online dictionary:

“In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition….”

 “Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals (typically members of the military; or the crew of any ship, even if they are civilians) to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject. The term is commonly used for a rebellion among members of the military against their superior officer(s) but can also occasionally refer to any type of rebellion against an authority figure.”

Referring to the department’s policy manual, Pickett added,

“The policy manual specifically prohibits disobedience or insubordination to constituted authorities. Like him or not, the Mayor is a constituted authority. He’s our constituted authority. As long as his conduct is legal and constitutional, we should support him or, at the very least, refrain from opposing him.

“I encourage you to be loyal to your employer—the City of Pacific.”

I want to lay down some background for Mr. Calkin’s sedition. We’ll start with his hiring. Pacific’s department of Public Safety was supposedly the brainchild of Mayor Howard Erickson, who took office in 2000. He proposed combining police and fire into a single department, eliminating the office of police chief and creating the office of Public Safety Director as an efficiency move. Within two days after applications for the position were closed, he announced Mr. Calkins as his pick. As I recall, Mr. Calkins had been an officer of the Auburn Police Department, retired, and working as a private investigator. The council bought the idea and Mr. Calkins was hired. But some time afterwards, Councilwoman Bernadine Harrison told me something alarming – Mr. Calkins was the cousin of Mayor Erickson. She wouldn’t tell me who told her this.

I believe it was after I joined the council in 2002 that I looked for the employment application for Mr. Calkins. I was able to obtain two different versions of the application, and I believe at least one of them asked whether the applicant was related to anyone in the city. But Mr. Calkins didn’t answer that question, because he didn’t fill out an employment application. Apparently the man hired to head a major department in the city didn’t think it was necessary to follow what should have been a standard practice for any job applicant and fill out an application form. Of course, the good news is that if there was a relationship between him and the mayor he hadn’t lied about it on a job application. 

Over the course of the next year I learned the rest of the story from two individuals who are now long gone and therefore safe from recriminations, and I have no qualms about indirectly identifying them. One was the director of the community center, who said that Mayor Erickson, in a private conversation about Mr. Calkins, divulged that they were cousins. The other person who disclosed the relationship was the Police Chief of Algona. Neither of these people knew each other, or had any reason to interact with each other, so they couldn’t have coordinated these stories. The Algona Chief added that Calkins had acknowledged the relationship as well. 

There’s a ticklish thing about Mr. Calkins. He has an explosive temper. The public got a really good look at that temper on March 26, 2001, shortly after a home had burned to the ground in Pacific, partly due to poor training on the part of the fire department, and partly due to the fact that a hydrant was dry. The fire was able to get out of control because young people renting the house has disabled the smoke detectors. And the fire response was hampered by the fact that the department’s command staff were out of town, ironically driving a recently-purchased fire engine across country to Pacific, to improve the department’s fire response.

Councilwoman Harrison sent a letter to Mr. Calkins asking for an explanation. This was about the time Mr. Erickson had been “losing” official documents authorizing a special election to consider converting Pacific to a council-manager form of government. Support for the conversion came from a group of disgruntled voters who didn’t like the way the council ejected one of its members, Gay Van Hee, on a technicality:  While Mr. Van Hee had thought he had been excused from several meetings to attend classes, no formal vote had been taken, and a political faction favorable to the mayor seized the advantage and booted Van Hee. So the context is a political power grab, followed by the mayor’s misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance in losing election documents, followed by the burning down of  a home, followed by a tantrum by Mr. Calkins. This was when the practice of discrediting and demeaning people who asked legitimate questions began to pick up steam.

Wearing a formal fire chief’s uniform, complete with Hash Marks on the sleeve, Mr. Calkins rounded up his officers outside the council chambers and prepared for war. It should be noted that he is not a certified fire fighter and had no authority to wear the uniform. But that didn’t stop him from bellowing, before the TV cameras that were rolling, that Mrs. Harrison was a “disgrace” and ought to resign. Supporting this sedition was Mayor Howard Erickson who, on camera, accused Mrs. Harrison of  “going behind my back.” It’s unclear why a letter from the lawmaker to a department head constitutes going behind the mayor’s back, but that was the statement that was made. Given the fact that the Mayor encouraged the tantrum instead of calling Mr. Calkins on the carpet, and the council didn’t protest, you might understand why I was pretty circumspect about who I talked to regarding the alleged relationship between the two. By the way, much later it was further corroborated by long-time Pacific resident Audrey Cruikshank, who told me that the relationship was established through marriage of an Erickson relative, and the adoption into that family of Mr. Calkins. Since I’m not the family genealogist, I’ll let the two gentlemen flesh out the details for us. 

During the course of my service on the council, the Pacific Public Safety Division became what might be known as a sacred cow. As a member of the finance committee, at one point I compared  the expense of comparable services in surrounding cities with  the costs Pacific sustained, as they related to the citys’ general funds. It appeared that Pacific was at the top end of the scale. I do not pretend to be a financial expert, but there is no reason as a councilman I couldn’t bring up the question. Going on information provided by other cities, I presented my findings to the council. To my surprise, the first words out of some mouths at the table was that these were lies! 

Lies? 

When you lay out the method by which you framed the question so that everyone can see what data you are relying on and how you arrived at your conclusions, so that they can be honestly analyzed, I don’t see how you can be accused of lying to people. What I have since come to conclude is this: in Pacific, you are a liar if you disclose information that some public official wants to conceal. The fact that there was such an outcry over a legitimate examination of expenses got my attention. Maybe this fear of questioning the expenditures of the Public Safety Division explains why the tiny city of Pacific purchased a paddy wagon a few years ago.  Anyone who would raise a question about the need for a paddy wagon probably would have to worry about getting yelled at.

My direct experience with sedition came around the time of my re-election. Before votes were cast, I sent out a flier to voters acknowledging that they had likely already made up their minds, and that the task before us was to decide where we go “from here.”  I talked about encouragement, trust and outreach. Here is some of what I said in that flier:

If I am re-elected, I would like to serve next year as president of the council. There’s a very practical reason for this. I’m the one who wants to develop the essential human resources for good government. As council president I would not dominate discussions, and I would encourage all council members to be heard – and listened to.

I would also make it a point of entering into the minutes deadlines for projects and assigning responsibilities so that programs don’t “fall through the cracks.” (For example, earlier this year we voted to put a gambling issue on the ballot, and by the time we got around to acting on it, we had forgotten what we decided.)

Regardless of whether I am elected, this city has to make the effort to become inclusive – to encourage and nurture participation by others in the community and to grow the body politic so that we are well governed. This is my personal ambition, but it’s the duty of all elected officials.

I also talked about the need  for trust in resolving the budget challenges facing us:

We have a major problem facing us. Tom Enlow, our finance director, has provided a preliminary budget for 2004 that is $700,000 in the red. More than $600,000 of that is being requested by Public Safety Director John Calkins, who is a relative of the mayor.

 The fire budget is 70 percent higher than last year; the police budget, 27 percent higher. The police budget is twice what it was 10 years ago; the fire budget, four times as large.

Councilman Van Hee has suggested to me, and I concur, that the mayor should have submitted a balanced budget. If the council were to accept this budget as is, we would be painted as either being in favor of raising taxes or cutting public safety. The mayor would be able to duck the responsibility for his administration’s spending. When a member of the council raises questions about where the money is coming from, the mayor trots out the bogeyman of not having 24-hour police protection – as if this is the only possible outcome.

This financial problem isn’t going to be resolved well, unless we can trust each other.

On Nov. 10, 2003, I found out what happens to people who are forthright and too trusting in Pacific politics. On the agenda was a presentation by the Public Safety Director, John Calkins. But as Mayor Howard Erickson worked through the agenda, he seemed distracted and seemed to mumble, and then skipped over Mr. Calkin’s place on the agenda. I raised a point of order and noted that the public safety director had asked to speak to the council. Mr. Calkins approached the podium, and I offered him my own microphone so that he could be heard more clearly.  

Do you remember how the victims of Ted Bundy were murdered by the man with his arm in a sling whom they were trying to help? I was "Ted Bundied" that evening.  I facilitated Mr. Calkin’s ability to address the council, and he turned my good will against me. Speaking low and somewhat subdued, he began a rambling discourse on how some of his officers has disappointed him. One had been untruthful and had to be removed from the department because his dishonesty had made him no longer credible as a witness, and therefore of no real use to the city, he continued. As I heard these statements unfold and realized that it might become obvious whom he was discussing, I turned to Councilman Jack Dodge and asked whether this shouldn’t be a discussion in executive session. 

Councilman Dodge didn’t engage. Mr. Calkins’ voice – the one he has claimed he couldn’t raise because of a stoma in his throat, grew louder, and he began ranting about how people who are dishonest shouldn’t be in office. And then he roared, “like that lying Robert Smith,” who claimed he was related to the mayor. I was stunned. He denied the relationship and challenged me to establish how he was related. My reaction was to wonder whether I had somehow misunderstood what my sources had told me, or whether they had been mistaken. Having worked up a head of steam, Mr. Calkins accused me of being anti police, and then, acknowledging that he probably shouldn’t say this, he boldly told the council that I should not be its president. 

Before us was the head of the quasi-military department of a small American democracy telling the legislative branch how to appoint its leaders, as if Pacific were some sort of banana republic. Viewing this along with myself and Jack Dodge were four other council members who silently let this affront unfold. 

• The female among them was a self-described “change agent” who had distinguished herself when the finance committee chair resigned by assuming the chairmanship without any clear authority, and then later announcing there was no money in the general fund (there was nearly $300,000 in the fund). 

•  To her right was the councilman primarily responsible for the flooding of Tacoma Boulevard, by performing the grading of property that became the subject of a virtual letter of reprimand from the city’s planning director. The letter was sent to the councilman’s  business associate, the realtor involved in the development. This particular individual’s campaign for office was complemented by anonymous, illegal character assassination mailings targeting his opponent.

•  Also at the table witnessing this spectacle was the mayor pro tem who, in collusion with Mayor Erickson, had within the previous two years, tricked the two council members just mentioned  into confirming an unqualified candidate for the treasurer’s position. The position wasn’t advertised as required by ordinance. 

•   A fourth council member witnessing this outburst was the individual who had promised his support for me to serve as council president, and afterward took the position for himself, later admitting that he didn’t know if it was proper for him to chair the council workshops by sitting in the chairman’s chair. I had to be the one to give him the confidence to take his rightful place as council president.  

The only council member missing, strangely, was soon-to-be mayor Rich Hildreth, who staged his own power grab a few months later when he appointed a realtor to the planning commission and interfered with any serious attempt to vet the candidate. The realtor under consideration was the one involved in the Tacoma Boulevard project just mentioned.

When the tantrum was over, Mayor Howard Erickson should have asked Mr. Calkins for his side arm. Instead, he smiled slyly and disclosed, “he’s not a blood relative.” Had I not been in shock, I would have recognized that the mayor was indirectly confirming what Calkins had just denied – that they were related (but not by blood). 

This was an excellent demonstration of how boldness can carry the day, and how precedent can be everything. For the next several years, no-one challenged John Calkins, while he racially profiled; tampered with a witness in a criminal investigation involving his son; presided , along with the mayor,  over a raid on a church to arrest a skateboarder; grew his empire; was arrested for drunk driving while wearing a T-shirt celebrating police violence; proposed a policy to write more traffic tickets as a revenue tool, and tried to silence critics of the department’s racial profiling policy by threatening to arrest them if they staged a protest march. According to a deposition,  Mr. Calkins called a subordinate into his office to view porn. This is the man whose department botched an investigation requested by the city council into misuse of a city credit card by the man who supervised and facilitated him. This is the individual who failed a polygraph examination on whether he had menaced another man with a handgun, and told the council in an executive session that the examiners just didn’t like him.

The journey of 1,000 miles is begun with a single step. What happened the night of Nov. 10, 2003, was a palace coup and the beginning of a long tortuous path that became a road map for  Cy Sun’s election. It happened because of sedition by the public safety director that was accommodated by the mayor and a council of milquetoasts who had lost their moral compass and their backbones.

I want to personally thank Sgt. Jim Picket for sitting in the back of the room Nov. 10, 2003, to witness Mr. Calkins' making his move, and stating his feelings about sedition in his April 21 letter. Not only has Calkins impeached himself by stating that liars shouldn’t hold public office; his own sergeant’s recent comments on sedition have impeached him as well.

I’d like to close with this simple homily: 

The mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine.

Shadow of a police state

A little over 12 years ago, when I was a little more naive, I had a rude awakening during a telephone conversation with a political operative in Pacific. She told me the individuals who were fighting a proposed detention center in Pacific for undocumented immigrants had a private detective doing background checks on people who were “behind” that center. I had initiated the telephone conversation, hoping that I could persuade the opposing camps in the forthcoming election to agree to be civil with one another regardless of the outcome of the election. Within about 30 seconds of the start of the conversation, I realized I was talking to a disturbed individual, and when the conversation turned to the use of a private investigator, I decided it was well past time to get off the phone. Based on what has transpired over the past 12 years, I frequently wonder whether people are still using private eyes to get the goods on political opponents in Pacific.

With the announcement that, many years ago, one of Pacific’s council members had killed his wife (possibly as a result of post traumatic stress syndrome) I openly raised the question on this blog site as to who dug up this information. I noted that for about $15 I could get the background history on anyone, if I had the individual’s social security number. And I also noted that a police official in neighboring Algona once told me, while I was a news reporter, that he performed background checks on everyone who moved into that town.

Hmmm.

After Cy Sun was elected mayor, there was an effort to discredit him, first by claiming his war medals weren’t legitimate. That didn’t work. Now we have these resurrected claims of sexual abuse from  44 years ago. They came to nothing then, but are now conveniently introduced again at a time when a significant segment of the Pacific community wants to lynch the mayor. This occurs at a time when the head of the city’s police division, who was found by an outside police agency to have abused his authority, is challenging his termination.

This brings to mind two stories from the world’s great literature. The first is Les Miserables, the saga of a man hounded by a fanatical official throughout his life for once having stolen a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. The second story is Cancer Ward, a novel about the Soviet Union, written by a victim of Stalin’s prison system. This writer proved useful to Premier Nikita Khrushchev, because his writings were used to denounce Stalin and throw off  part of Stalin’s poisonous legacy.

Under the current circumstances, I think it would be useful to take a moment to read the following passage from Cancer Ward, because it is chilling, indeed. Please note that what the writer says can be applied to every one of us.

The nature of Rusanov's work had been for many years, by now almost twenty, that of personnel records administration. It was a job that went by different names in different institutions, but the substance of it was always the same. Only ignoramuses and uninformed outsiders were unaware what subtle, meticulous work it was, what talent it required. It was a form of poetry not yet mastered by the poets themselves.

As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions. A man's answer to one question on one form becomes a little thread, permanently connecting him to the local center of personnel records administration. There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider's web, and if they materialized as rubber bands, buses, trams and even people would all lose the ability to move, and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city.

They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence. The point is that a so-called completely clean record was almost unattainable, an ideal, like absolute truth. Something negative or suspicious can always be noted down against any man alive. Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find out what it is.

—Alexander  Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward (Chapter 14, Justice)

Molestation lawsuit, revisited

This comment is going to be brief. I don't like discussing the lawsuit against Cy Sun for a host of reasons, but I would like to note the following: The Tacoma News Tribune's online report on the case filed against Mr. Sun states the following:

“The majority of the sexual abuse and molestation took place inside Cy Sun’s house and on his property,” the complaint states...

ead more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/08/01/2237786/embattled-pacific-mayor-abused.html#storylink=cpy

"Old and incomplete records from Pierce County Superior Court suggest that Sun was accused of sexually assaulting the girl and her mother in 1970. The records, accessible only on microfiche, include a complaint for libel filed by Sun against the girl’s parents – it sought $1 million in damages."

Wait a minute: Mr. Sun molested a 14-year-old girl AND her mother?

With all due respect to rape victims and to adults who were molested as children —and I mean this sincerely — that little tidbit has made me more than a little skeptical.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/08/01/2237786/embattled-pacific-mayor-abused.html#storylink=cpy

The Seattle Times Story

It's 1 a.m. and I've just received word that there is an online news story in the Seattle Times unfavorable to Pacific Mayor Cy Sun. A lawsuit has been filed against him charging child sexual abuse 44 years ago, and already some armchair pundits are behaving in knee-jerk fashion, taking sides depending on their particular inclination, with many discrediting the adult plaintiff without knowing much about her.

Here's something to keep in mind: We don't know whether the claim is frivolous or has merit. All we know is that it has been filed in Pierce County Superior Court. The fact that the story is carried in the Seattle Times doesn't give the claim credibility, because by all appearances the Times has not looked beyond the filing.  Just by itself, the lawsuit is news, and in this particular instance, the newspaper is compelled to report the lawsuit, regardless of its merit.

There's another thing to keep in mind: This lawsuit may take a long time to resolve, so it would be a mistake to allow it to distract the city's elected officials from their duty to meet the criteria of their insurance provider to hire competent staff, so that the city can continue to exist. While I personally don't care one way or the other, the elected officials are obligated to care, because that is their duty to the community. They face a Dec. 31 insurance cancellation, and it  could come sooner. Given the time line of a lawsuit like this, unless it forces the mayor's resignation, I think it is irrelevant to the task facing the City of Pacific. Mr. Sun was not a Pacific elected official 44 years ago, when this behavior allegedly took place.

As for the recall proponents, this case may whip up sentiment to sign petitions and vote for recall, but it will not advance the election date, and it's very unclear that even a successful recall will save the city. If Mr. Sun is removed from office, but he hasn't filled the many vacancies in city government, there likely won't be a city to save. Using this to aggravate and distract him is in nobody's interest.

As for Pacific's residents, they still can benefit from rediscovering their neighbors, and creating links that grow a more vibrant community to survive this battle. At this moment, there are four Internet blogs and a Facebook page linking up a community that only recently was a backwater for most print and broadcast media, even including the Auburn Reporter. There is the hint of a possibility that a community can emerge that will be able  to negotiate with a new government; and if the city of Pacific survives, that community conceivably could provide better leaders.

Stay cool. Stay focused.