Conner promises to boost morale in sheriff's office
Wallace says deputies solving more cases
By David Grant Long
Bill Conner, a 20-year veteran of the
Montezuma County Sheriff's Office, is
taking his case to the county’s voters
next month after being passed over by
the county commission in March 2005
to replace former Sheriff Joey Chavez.
Conner is running against incumbent
Gerald Wallace in the Republican primary,
and the winner is expected to
have a huge advantage over independent
candidate Sam Sparks in the
November general election.
Chavez, a second-term Democrat who resigned to take a job in private security, had recommended Conner as his successor, but the commission voted 2-1 for Gerald Wallace, then a San Miguel County deputy, with commissioners Gerald Koppenhafer and Larrie Rule supporting him and chairman Dewayne Findley preferring Conner.
“What they [Rule and Koppenhafer] told me was that it was nothing personal, but they had numerous phone calls from people not wanting me to get the job,” Conner said recently, “and there were several people who told me they were going to call the commissioners to tell them I was the man for the job.
“They had letters of support from law enforcement, from everyone in the sheriff's office,” he said. “They never told me the reasons [for going against those endorsements].”
Conner, who had been serving as undersheriff but was returned to the rank of lieutenant when Wallace took the reins, resigned from the office and announced his candidacy in January. After also being passed over by the delegates to the GOP county assembly in April — he was unable to garner the 30-percent support required to get on the primary ballot — Conner refused to give up, petitioning his way onto the ballot and campaigning hard ever since. He has charged Wallace with damaging morale among the deputies during his 18 months at the helm, and has pledged to restore funding for some programs and provide pay hikes by recruiting a full-time grant-writer.
In a column last month in the Cortez Journal, Conner urged voters to recognize him as “the only clear choice” for sheriff, citing his loyalty to the department in the face of better offers as well as his greater experience, both in the field and in training recruits.
“I could have accepted job offers in other counties for more money,” he wrote, “but I stayed because of my commitment to this community. “I will always tell you like it is,” he promised. “I will not mislead the citizens of this county in any way.”
However, this led 59th District Rep. Mark Larson, a Wallace supporter, to condemn Conner in a Journal piece for having “outright lied” to Wallace about his intention to run for the office while still serving on the force. Larson said Conner confided in him that he intended to challenge his boss for the job several months before he left the office, at the same time he’d told Wallace the opposite.
Conner remembers it differently, calling Larson “factually challenged.”
“I don't know what Mr. Wallace told him about my intentions of running or not,” he said. “I never told Mr. Wallace I was not going to run — I told him I did not think I could afford to run.
“And then when a bunch of people from the sheriff's office came to me urging me to run, I decided I couldn't afford not to,” he said, declining to be more specific in identifying these supporters.
“I don't want [them] to lose their jobs because of supporting me,” he said. Conner also responded to Larson’s broadside with one of his own in a second Journal column, advising the legislator to examine his own integrity and accusing him of abusing the powers of his office in supporting Wallace.
“This appears to be another example of how my opponent gets influential and wealthy people to assist him,” he wrote.
Conner maintains Wallace’s policies have caused morale to drop and officers to leave.
“Three people have left the sheriff's office after I did in the patrol division alone,” he said. “I do talk to people there and the morale is low.”
And it's a morale problem brought about by “poor management,” he charged. “Mr. Wallace does not have the experience in supervising lawenforcement personnel,” he said, which has led to “inept” and “inadequate” decisions. An example of this was a pay raise earlier this year, he said, in which certified deputies got a $1.25 hourly increase, while others got only a 3-percent hike.
“Everybody needed a raise, but to give a [substantial] raise only to the certified officers was a very, very bad morale hit to the uncertified.” Conner said the uncertified deputies, who work at the jail and comprise about half the force, already made considerably less money than those with certification.
“[If elected] my first priority is going to be to keep the quality staff we have there and to try to reduce the turnover, which I can do with my great working relationship with the people in the sheriff's office through a positive team environment,” he said, adding that he would delegate more power to his staff.
“I'd like to let the division commanders run their divisions.”
One of his priorities will be supporting enforcement of drug laws, he said. “We have the drug task force for which funding is being cut annually, but I intend to keep that,” he said, “and to reinstate a school-resource officer and a DARE officer, which ended this school year.
“DARE is a very valuable program and I don't want to see it go away.” Creating a position of animal-control officer would also be a good step, Conner said, but is a low priority for him. “It would be a good program," he said, "but first I want to get in there and have 24-hour coverage for the county before I try to expand.”
Even so, Conner doesn't believe any further enforcement powers from the county — such as a dog-at-large ordinance — are needed. “We have state law that takes care of all the dog problems — vicious dogs, anything like that — so we already have enough state statutes to cover it.”
Conner said he is still checking into what he might do about the Community Corrections program that was closed by Wallace two years ago for what Wallace said were budgetary problems.
“I think it was a very viable program that wasn't given a chance,” Conner said, “because there was a state audit done in January of last year and there were no financial problems in that audit.
“The program was shut down [by Wallace] without even discussing it with the board of directors,” he said. “That's according to a board member.”
He also differs with Wallace on the wisdom of holding the Rally in the Rockies motorcycle conclave this year at Echo Basin Ranch near Mancos.
Wallace and Cortez Police Chief Roy Lane have maintained during public hearings that there isn't enough time to organize and find additional law enforcement for Labor Day, but Conner thinks it's doable.
“It would be tight to get prepared for it now, but I think it could be done,” he said. “What you do is contact the law-enforcement agencies that have done it in the past and see if they can spare people to come over and help. I would contact the County Sheriffs of Colorado — I believe they would help get officers down here to cover it.
“Rally in the Rockies pays quite a bit of money for that service, too,” he said. “It's not something that would have to cost the county.”
Conner rose through the ranks after starting as a detention deputy in 1986, being tapped as a patrol deputy two years later and promoted to corporal in 1992.
“Basically between 1993 and 1998 I pretty much trained all of the patrol deputies that came on board,” he recalled. He was promoted to sergeant in 1996. He was enlisted as a member of the first SWAT team when it was formed in 1998 and trained at a sniper school, a skill that would be called upon later that same year during a stand-off with an intoxicated, armed man who had been firing shots from his trailer at Vista Verde Village.
The man managed to superficially wound Conner with buckshot while the team was trying to arrange a surrender, but Conner remained on the scene and later fatally shot the former Vietnam veteran in the head after negotiations proved fruitless.
Conner said he has no regrets nor has he ever second-guessed that decision.
“I don't think it's had any impact on me personally,” he said. “It was investigated by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and determined to be totally justified.
“When I got into this job 20 years ago, I thought about that [having to kill someone],” he said, “and I decided at the time someday I might have to — not something I wanted to — but sometimes in this line of work you got to do what you got to do.”
Conner speculated that local sheriff's races may be more heated than other political races because of the importance of the office.
“I think a lot of it is because basically the sheriff is the chief law-enforcement agency in the county, and that's a pretty big deal,” too big a deal to have it decided by elected officials, he said.
“I think the people need a voice in who should be their chief law-enforcement officer,” he said, “as opposed to three county commissioners.”
Conner also said he opposes term limits, which currently allow for two four-year terms for the sheriff's position. Sheriff Chavez led an unsuccessful effort to remove term limits from the office in 2004, but the ballot question was soundly rejected.
“Again, I think that should be up to the people,” Conner said. “If the sheriff is doing a bad job the people can vote him out.
“I think term limits hinder what could be done in the sheriff's office.
“Basically, I think this race should be about training and experience and what I can do for the sheriff's office by retaining the quality employees that we have,” he said.
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