Candidate for sheriff has checkered history

It is these tenures in management and administrative positions, and incidents that occurred during them, that have prompted an investigation into Songer’s 40-year work history, which includes 20 years with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) and 13 years as a commissioned timber/range dep-uty in Klickitat County (a position in which Songer contracted with Klickitat County to provide patrol services; his compensation came from county taxpayer dollars and private timber and ranching interests).

Songer aimed to keep moving up in CCSO’s hierarchy and hoped to succeed his boss, Frank Kanekoa, when he made his first foray into politics in 1990. Songer ran as a Democrat for sheriff of Clark County. He subsequently lost the election by a wide margin, and found himself in job limbo with a new administration taking over on Jan. 1, 1991.

“[Mr. Songer] ran a campaign against [current Clark County sheriff] Garry Lucas for sheriff, so he was aware this [election outcome] could result in his removal from the appointed undersheriff position,” said Lois Hickey, a Clark County Human Resources representative.

Had he stayed with CCSO, Songer would have been demoted to sergeant in January 1991 “because Lucas didn’t name him to an administrative position,” Steph-anie Rice of Vancouver’s The Colum-bian, reported on March 25 of this year.

A year after leaving CCSO, Songer found employment again, this time as the police chief in Elko, a northeastern Nevada city that had a population of about 18,000 in 1991. Songer served at the pleasure of the city council and mayor; he did not have an employment contract with Elko — something he regrets not having secured, he told The Enterprise recently.

“I was an at-will employee,” Songer said. “If you have a contract, the city has to pay you the remaining portion on the contract, if not for cause. I had no guarantees without a contract.”

After a four-year run in Elko, the city council elected not to reappoint Songer at the end of 1995; it did not give a formal reason for the decision. According to a story in the Elko Daily Free Press, Songer was not accused of any wrongdoing. Rather, according to then-mayor Mike Franzoia, the council had “professional differences” with Songer.

Songer said “I could see it coming,” that he would not be reappointed as chief, because of turnover on the city council and a new mayor taking over in 1995.

“They just wanted a different management style, to go in a new direction,” Songer said.

He also noted that, after he was not reappointed, the city “turned around and hired me as a consultant to hire the new chief.”(He also served as a bailiff in Elko County courts.)

He insisted, though, that despite not being reappointed, “I left there on good terms, in my opinion.”

A tipping point for Songer and his employers came in September 1995 when he publicly supported a petition signed by 22 police officers calling on the city council to hire another officer, according to a report in the Daily Free Press.

The same report also noted that Songer also proposed to move three administrative officers back to street patrol, “a move that threatened the existence of the city’s popular Police Athletic League, which sponsors hundreds of children in sports.”

In addition to rubbing public officials the wrong way on occasion, Songer’s work history with CCSO and Elko includes incidents of excessive use of force, abridging employees’ First Amendment rights of free speech, and sexual harassment.

On the evening of March 14, 1975, then CCSO Deputy Bob Songer, in the company of Officer Robert Chalmers of the Vancouver Police Department, executed a warrant to search the residence and person of James Delbert Williams for heroin, according to a state Court of Appeals document in the case of State v. Williams dated Feb. 1, 1977.

The document noted, “After gaining entry, the police took the defendant Williams into a bedroom and searched him, finding no contraband. They escorted him into the living room, which they began to search while he sat on the couch. Williams reached for a glass of water on a coffee table. Deputy Songer, experienced in narcotics work, suspected defendant was about to try to swallow drugs and ordered him not to drink the water and to open his mouth.

“Testimony conflicts as to whether defendant complied, enabling Songer to see red and yellow balloons he assumed to contain heroin, but the Superior Court entered a finding according to defendant’s version that he refused to open his mouth. It is undisputed that Songer used his flashlight to hit Williams’ hand away from the water and grabbed defendant’s nose and chin to hold his mouth open. Officer Chalmers grabbed Williams around the throat to prevent swallowing. The police pinned defendant to the couch and called for a spoon, which was used to extract three balloons of heroin from Williams’ mouth. The court found that 30 to 60 seconds elapsed from the officers’ seizure of Williams until the heroin was retrieved. Defendant testified he could not breathe while the officers had him in their grip, although he did not lose consciousness or require medical treatment.”

Clark County Superior Court held the police use of force to be “excessive,” and the Court of Appeals, Division II, agreed. “Here, the defendant was pinned to the couch — one officer’s hands pinching his nose and spreading his mouth open, the other officer’s hands around his throat, effectively preventing his Adam's apple from moving. Williams had extreme difficulty breathing. The balloons were ultimately pried from his mouth with a spoon. The prosecutor has acceded to the court’s finding that the defendant was indeed choked for 30 to 60 seconds. This course of conduct was so unnecessarily harsh as to shock the conscience of this court; “choking” off a suspect’s air supply is violative of due process of law.”

Moreover, “we believe the Constitution permits [police] to place their hands on a suspect’s neck to prevent the swallowing of evidence, or to go further when necessary to overcome active resistance. But Williams did not resist beyond refusing briefly to spit out the drugs. We hold that the police, by choking Williams so he could hardly breathe, exceeded the bounds of reasonableness in these circumstances.”

Trouble continued to follow Songer after he’d left CCSO’s patrol division. In 1990, the CCSO administration, including Kanekoa and Songer, were accused of sexual harassment and discrimination in a lawsuit filed by five women (who were current and former CCSO employees) in Cowlitz County. The plaintiffs alleged they were harassed by co-workers and superiors working under Kanekoa, dating back to November 1987, and that Kanekoa and Songer were aware of tensions in the workplace and “failed to improve what the women termed a hostile work environment,” The Columbian reported on June 2, 1994. In the final issue, a jury voted 10-2 at the end of a three-week trial that the women were not sexually harassed. Songer, for his part, had left Clark County by then to take the job in Elko.

But even there, legal problems dogged Songer. In May 1994, Songer fired four female employees after they disobeyed a directive from him to not discuss a matter that was the subject of an internal investigation — a complaint from a probationary employee, also a woman, that the other four were harassing her — until the investigation was complete. According to a 1994 story in the Elko Daily Free Press, the investigation concerned a cartoon posted by the probationary employee on her locker. After the employee-in-training was dismissed for failing to pass her probation, the cartoon remained in place and other dispatch employees wrote comments on the cartoon that they said were meant as jokes toward one of the four later fired.

Another dispatcher took it upon herself to mail the cartoon to the dismissed employee, who in turn complained to her former supervisor. The complaint led Songer to launch an in-house investigation, which included a gag order on the four women to not talk about the case among themselves.

Songer told the Daily Free Press (and The Enterprise recently) he fired the women because they disobeyed his direct order not to talk about the investigation, an order he gave after interviewing each of them. According to the Daily Free Press story, Songer “maintained the order was violated two days later when the four women met to discuss their options, because Songer threatened them with civil and criminal prosecution and termination from their jobs.” He further “maintained the women got together to try to cover up their involvement and get their stories straight.”

“After I found the four violated my order, I met with my boss, the city manager. The agreement was to terminate the four for violating a management directive,” Songer told The Enterprise.

The four women sued the City of Elko and a number of individuals, including Songer in his capacity as police chief. Three plaintiffs settled their cases for monetary awards with the city’s insurance carrier, which took the case over from the city, according to Songer. Two plaintiffs settled their suits against the city and received awards of $70,000 and $65,000, respectively.

A third employee, Kathy Murphy, went to court to get her job back and an award of damages for lost wages and emotional distress caused by her firing. Songer told The Enterprise the possibility of a settlement was discussed. “A legal analysis followed and the decision was not to settle” because the city felt it had a strong case, Songer said, and added, “I had already left there before the case went to trial.”

On Aug. 7, 1997, a federal jury in the case found Songer’s gag order on employees to not talk about the investigation violated Murphy’s First Amendment right to free speech. The jury awarded Murphy $138,000 in compensatory damages; Songer was indirectly held liable for $63,000 in lost earnings and $25,000 in mental and emotional pain and suffering, and directly liable to Murphy for $10,000 in punitive damages, through a stipulation agreed to by the parties. The stipulation also called for Songer to write a letter of apology to Murphy “for what they did to me and my family. They took away a career that was important to me and that I was good at,” the Daily Free Press reported on Aug. 7, 1997 in a story headlined “Fired city dispatcher awarded $148,000.”

Songer, who was not personally liable for the $88,000 award, maintains he did nothing wrong with regard to the firing of the dispatchers, that he was just doing his job in the best interests of his police department.

“As a manager, you’re certainly subject to [being sued]; It’s like a criminal trial: when it goes to the jury, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Songer said, and added, “The jury found I had acted within the scope of my duties, and the city’s insurance company paid [the $88,000]. To this day I felt I did my job correctly, but the jury felt otherwise.”