The Blue Mountain eagle., November 13, 2019, Page 16, Image 16

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NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Dissent
Continued from Page A1
the refuge occupation.
“The Bundys and this
entire group need to go
home,” he said. “Maybe
some of us feel like we’ve
been mistreated by the For-
est Service, but by God, we
can stand up and do it as
neighbors. We don’t need
your help.”
That highway confronta-
tion resulted in Oregon State
Police officers fatally shoot-
ing a member of the Bun-
dys’ group. Robert “Lavoy”
Finicum became a martyr
within the Patriot Move-
ment. Finicum attempted to
break through a police road-
block, shouting “I’m going
to go meet the sheriff,” and
“You back down, or you kill
me now,” before police shot
him.
Special deputies appoint-
ed by Grant County Sheriff
Glenn Palmer later accused
Larson of having a role in
intercepting the occupation
leaders. The retired OSP
commander with connec-
tions to the FBI was sus-
picious in the eyes of the
Patriot Movement. Even
years later, Larson’s name
appeared on a list of peo-
ple accused “for the cold
blooded murder of Lavoy.”
“You will all be judged in
time and will pay the fiddler,”
reads the public Facebook
post by Jim Sproul, directed
at Larson, among others.
Sproul has a close connection
to Palmer: He’s spoken on
the sheriff’s behalf in news
stories, and was appointed
by Palmer in 2014 as “pub-
lic lands patrol,” according to
county records.
Sproul protested Larson’s
use of irrigation water in June
2018, on the same day as
David Traylor, another spe-
cial deputy once appointed
by Palmer.
In Oregon, affidavits
like this can trigger a rarely
invoked state regulation to
cancel water rights. Basi-
cally: use it or lose it. If two
people swear you aren’t
using the water, you can lose
your claim to it, unless you
OPB Photo/Emily Cureton
A view of Grant County Sher-
iff Glenn Palmer’s office win-
dow.
The White House Photo, File
Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer, shown on the right with arms raised above his head, ap-
pears in a White House Facebook photo, Sept. 27, 2019.
prove them wrong.
“It’s just shy of $1,000 to
have a judge hear our case,”
Larson said.
He cut a check to the Ore-
gon Water Resources Depart-
ment, which will make a
decision based on the recom-
mendation of an administra-
tive law judge.
“These processes are
designed to provide due
process and an impartial
review,” according to an
email from OWRD spokes-
woman Stephanie Prybyl.
The agency declined to com-
ment on the specifics of this
case.
Larson pointed to sup-
portive testimony from his
neighbors and dated photos
of lush green fields, taken
during the summers he was
allegedly not using the irriga-
tion water. In 2018, OWRD’s
own staff review of irrigation
on the property states non-
use wasn’t an issue.
Larson’s hearing has been
delayed several times, and in
an unusual move, OWRD has
closed it to the public “based
on security concerns.”
‘You do not go after
someone’s water’
Rancher Sharon Living-
ston believes the tactics used
against Larson crossed a
sacred line for local politics.
“You do not, in Grant
County, go after someone’s
water,” said Livingston, who
used to head the Oregon
Cattlemen’s
Association
and serves on the board
of directors for the state’s
Department of Agriculture.
She voted for Larson
for county commission in
2018 because to her mind,
he’s “extremely well qual-
ified to take our voice to
Salem, and that’s what we
must do.”
At 80, she’s spent
decades advocating on var-
ious boards and commit-
tees, and at times her views
sound a lot like right-wing
talking points: “This state
is taxing us to death again.
Read the Declaration of
Independence.”
She distributes copies of
it at local schools. Her own
pocket version falls open
to a highlighted passage,
one of her favorites, about
a king sending “swarms
of officers to harass our
people and eat out their
substance.”
Livingston sees the
present in grievances white
westerners had 250 years
ago before they revolted.
“I believe that our federal
lands have not been man-
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aged the way they should
be. They’re overgrown,
they’re full of fuel and we
are ripe for a fire,” she said.
Like many in Grant
County, she’s frustrated
with outside authority, and
she’s also voted for Sheriff
Palmer.
‘It’s their loss’
For years, Palmer has
opposed the U.S. Forest
Service, arguing the federal
agency’s land management
policies create poverty and
wildfire. He ended a con-
tract so his deputies would
no longer patrol its camp-
grounds and roads. But in
2018, the sheriff reached out
to the agency to accuse Lar-
son, his brother’s political
opponent, of stealing logs.
Palmer said he didn’t initiate
the report.
“It was given to me and
I forwarded it to the Forest
Service. It’s a timber issue
out of our jurisdiction,”
Palmer said.
It’s unclear who made
the initial report, but the
U.S. Forest Service put out
a press release at the time
saying it acted on informa-
tion from the Grant County
Sheriff’s Office and found
no evidence of stolen tim-
ber. Still, the accusation con-
tinued to reverberate. A spe-
cial deputy appointed by the
sheriff in 2015 repeated the
allegation to an environmen-
tal group, and it spread on
social media.
Palmer accused his own
political opponent in 2012.
In the weeks before an elec-
tion, the sheriff made a com-
plaint to OSP about Rich-
ard Gray, a John Day police
officer running against him.
Palmer’s report claims Gray
accessed files at the sher-
iff’s office without permis-
sion. State police declined
to investigate, “as there was
no indication of criminal
activity,” an OSP spokes-
man said. Palmer sent a
memo to his staff banning
Gray from the county jail
and sheriff’s office. Gray
went on to become the John
Day chief of police, and
years later, he filed an eth-
ics complaint mentioning
the incident.
“I ran for Office of Sher-
iff and during [the] election
campaign, Glenn Palmer
lied on several occasions
accusing me of doing many
dishonest things,” Gray said
in the complaint.
Ironically, it was Lar-
son, then a state police com-
mander, who Palmer called
first to report Gray, accord-
ing to a report the sheriff
later deleted from his own
electronic records system.
Inside Palmer’s office,
the walls are cluttered with
novelty signs. One facing
out the window reads: “Guns
Are Welcome On Premises
… Judicious Marksmanship
Is Appreciated.” Above it,
a sticker portrays President
Obama as a crying baby.
Palmer downplays any
official connection between
himself and former special
deputies like Sproul and
Traylor. The sheriff opened
a file cabinet and retrieved
a handwritten letter of res-
ignation signed by special
deputy Jim Sproul, dated
July 2016. That’s two years
before Sproul challenged
Larson’s water rights, and
about three weeks before
The Oregonian published an
investigation about Palm-
er’s practice of credentialing
supporters.
Palmer said except for
search and rescue, the dep-
uties have resigned or their
credentials lapsed.
In 2016, the local man-
ager of 911 services was
among those to contact the
Oregon Department of Pub-
lic Safety Standards and
Training, with concerns
about the special deputies’
access to law enforcement
information.
After her complaint, dis-
patchers who coordinate
first responders across a
4,500-square-mile area lost
access to arrest histories and
other records kept by the
sheriff’s office.
“There have been many
times where officers will
ask us about something,
and we’ll say, ‘We don’t
have access. We can’t look
at that,” according to Val-
erie Maynard, dispatch man-
ager for Grant County Emer-
gency
Communications
Agency. “Denying us infor-
mation is not a benefit to the
public. It boggles my mind,
honestly,” she added.
Palmer defended the
move in an email: “We
have cases that are sensitive
and confidential. … They
are a dispatch center and
under our contract should
be answering our phones
and radios. They are not an
investigative agency.”
During the in-person
interview, he was dismissive
of the complaints DPSST
has gotten about him — at
least 14 since 2016.
“I know I’ve got some
people out there that don’t
like me and that’s their pre-
rogative. It’s their loss,”
Palmer said.
Ammon Bundy came to
his defense in a 2016 Face-
book video, to say the state
has no authority over the
Grant County sheriff, and
to “encourage all people
who love to be free to stand
with Sheriff Palmer and help
defend the people’s power
as a republic.”
Palmer has his own his-
tory of activism. This year,
a lobbying group paid his
way to Washington, D.C.,
to attend events focused on
“illegal alien crime.” Back in
2012, he accepted a nod for
“constitutional sheriff of the
year,” by a national group
that considers sheriffs the
“ultimate law enforcement
authority in their respec-
tive jurisdictions.” In 2015,
Palmer took it upon himself
to draft a natural resources
plan for Grant County, dep-
utizing supporters to help
write it, and sparking criti-
cism that he overstepped his
duties.
“I want a seat at the
table,” Palmer reportedly
told a skeptical county com-
mission in 2015.
With Larson’s defeat
last year, Sheriff Palm-
er’s brother Sam replaced
the commissioner who
most often clashed with the
sheriff.
Sheriff Palmer plans to
run for a sixth term in 2020,
as he fends off his latest eth-
ics complaint.
‘I have become
an extremist’
Larson, the retired state
police commander, filed a
complaint against Palmer
in August, though the roots
of their conflict date back
years. He first publicly crit-
icized Palmer’s leadership
during the Malheur occupa-
tion. Before that, at the same
time the sheriff was becom-
ing the darling of anti-gov-
ernment groups, the state
police commander gathered
intelligence about them.
“I was part of the Oregon
Department of Justice Titan
group, which monitored
extremism,” Larson said.
Soon after he retired from
law enforcement, the Can-
yon Creek Fire destroyed
more private property than
any Oregon wildfire in
the past 80 years. Resent-
ment rose from the ashes in
Grant County, as residents
demanded an investigation
into the U.S. Forest Ser-
vice’s response.
Larson said he focused on
rebuilding from the losses
on his ranch.
“It’s been slow to heal
following the [2015] Can-
yon Creek Complex Fire,”
he told a local reporter in
2018, while he was running
for county commissioner
against Sam Palmer. “Neigh-
bors no longer wave to neigh-
bors. People view each other
through a political prism
rather than if they are good
neighbors.”
The
divisions
have
taken a toll on Larson. He
describes feeling betrayed
by the state he once worked
for, and he’s taken his own
drastic actions to hold it
accountable, like secretly
taping calls with public offi-
cials, “because I don’t trust
them.”
After the fire, the occu-
pation, the ongoing feud
with Palmer, Larson starts to
sound as edgy and paranoid
as the type of anti-govern-
ment activist he might have
monitored.
“I have become an
extremist against bad cops.
I have become an extrem-
ist against liars, and I’ve
become an extremist against
state agencies that partic-
ipate in trying to destroy
someone’s livelihood and
take their water,” Larson
said.
“At least for the time
being, that’s me.”
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