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Nov. 11, 2000 By Tom Vaughan A long-simmering feud between the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office and the town of Mancos boiled over Thursday when Sheriff Joey Chavez announced that he was terminating a law-enforcement contract with the town. Chavez personally delivered a letter to town Administrator Tom Glover, notifying the town that, "effective February 9, 2001, we will no longer provide law enforcement services under this Law Enforcement Agreement unless the town of Mancos chooses to terminate December 31, 2000."
"It is also my decision not to enter into or negotiate any other law enforcement contracts between the town of Mancos or my office," Chavez wrote. He added, "After the termination of the Law Enforcement Agreement/ Contract, the Sheriff’s Office will provide law enforcement services to the town of Mancos like any other part of unincorporated Montezuma County." Chavez also wrote, "I feel it would be in the best interest of the town of Mancos to provide its own law enforcement department." The town and Montezuma County have had a contract for the sheriff’s office to provide law-enforcement services to the town since 1990. The current version of the contract was due to terminate Dec. 31, unless it was renewed by both parties. Under the current contract, the sheriff’s department is to provide the town with 120 hours per week of police coverage such as regular patrols and enforcement of municipal laws. The town paid $116,407 for the coverage in the 1999-2000 fiscal year. The town’s Law Enforcement Committee had already been reviewing the existing contract, which provides for the services of three deputies, including one who is assigned to Mancos on a daily basis, for several months. Facing a budget crunch, the committee had recommended reducing the contract to two deputies at a cost of $88,417, which included a 5 percent raise in salaries, and the town board had approveed the proposal. That was apparently agreeable with the sheriff’s office, but the town hit a brick wall on its demands for greater accountability. Specifically, the town-board members had requested a detailed accounting of the hours and miles worked and driven by sheriff’s employees in the town itself. Chavez, either in person or through his officers, has refused to honor that request, stating that he was trying to free his deputies from paperwork, not add more. Recent events have brought the conflict to a head. On Oct. 20, a domestic-violence suspect, believed to be armed, barricaded himself in a building in the town. The sheriff’s department sent out an emergency-response team, and the incident stretched on for hours before the man was arrested. The sheriff’s office counted all of the time racked up by all the deputies involved in the incident — reportedly 80 hours — against the monthly hours provided for in the contract, leaving the town of Mancos without scheduled patrol for the remainder of the month of October. The town maintains that such an incident was beyond the scope of regular patrol provided under the contract. ". . . (It) is apparently the Sheriff’s Department’s contention that that incident which involved at least eight officers took all the remaining officer time that the Sheriff felt was remaining to Mancos for patrol time," Mancos Mayor Greg Rath stated in a letter sent to the county commissioners Oct. 31. "It is our understanding that this incident . . . was in the nature of a domestic violence incident. . . . As such, we believe that it was certainly outside the scope of the type of service that the Town contracted for with the Sheriff’s Department. This is precisely the type of incident that the Sheriff’s Department would have to respond to whether or not we had an intergovernmental agreement with them to provide patrol services for the Town of Mancos." The sheriff’s department would have to respond to felonies committed in Mancos regardless of whether the two entities had a contract, the letter said. According to County Commissioner Kent Lindsay, the commissioners received the letter but did not discuss it with the sheriff at their meeting on Monday, Nov. 6. Town-board members were further upset because they were not notified by the sheriff’s department directly about the charges for the incident; they learned of it informally, board members said and sheriff’s Lt. Terry Steele confirmed to Glover on Friday. No one was available at the sheriff’s office Friday to comment on the situation. On Tuesday, the deputy assigned to Mancos, Brandon Brown, was relieved of duty, Brown said Friday. He said no reason was given. During a town-board meeting Wednesday, the board directed town attorney Jim Hatter to include in the next draft of the contract provisions for:
At that same meeting, the board also directed that the town should pay the county only for the percentage of October during which the scheduled patrol was provided (through Oct. 20), with a letter explaining the reason. Over the past decade, the town and the sheriff’s department have traditionally had a rocky relationship, with the town on several occasions threatening to cancel its contract and hire its own marshal. The Mancos town board is holding a special meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 15, at the town hall to consider its options. |
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