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.