Thoughtprints

As we all know, good ol' boys are alive and well in America. Small towns are no exception. Sometimes, though, I think small towns are even worse. In fact, I know they are. If you've never lived in a small town, then you don't know what I'm talking about and I can't really describe it to you. There's just a certain "mentality" that exists in small towns that you don't find anywhere else. My town certainly fits the bill. The heated and contentious race for Sheriff is a perfect example. There have been the unfortunate and seemingly typical mud-slinging going on from both sides. Plus there's been a lot of clouded innuendo and insinuation, always from unnamed sources as they are afraid to go completely public. Most of them are employees of the Sheriff's Office and are fearful of recrimination. Well, the clouds have lifted, thanks to a report by Denver's 9News. They came to town the other day to find out exactly what was going on here. Their report will air on tonight's 10:00 news, and is reported on their web site as well. I was completely disgusted when I read it. I always knew Bollish was a self-impressed womanizer, but never knew how sexually intimidating he and his officers had made the workplace for the women employees. It makes me sick! I am SO GLAD it's all out in the open now!

Read for yourself:

KUSA - Since 1979, a Bollish has been sheriff of Logan County. Donald Bollish served until 1995, when his son, Bob Bollish, was elected.

Yet in August, Bob Bollish lost the primary to Brett Powell, then a patrol sergeant. Bollish said his disappointment was mirrored by voters who approached him and asked how he could keep his administration going. His solution, Bollish said: A write-in candidate.

"They asked what we could do and I told them that I would select the best person," Bollish told 9NEWS, "which was Walt Page."

Page, a lieutenant, agreed to run, and named Bollish as his undersheriff.

Yet things were not that simple.

On October 15, a female detention deputy filed a complaint against Page and two other deputies for sexual harassment. Now Bollish, the sheriff, has found himself in the middle of a hornet's nest of accusations--aimed at his running mate, and at how he, Bollish, has handled the situation.

In her complaint, the female deputy said Page has repeatedly harassed her. He made remarks about her breasts; she said, asked her to sit on his lap and, in front of a witness, used crude slang to offer her oral sex. The woman asked 9NEWS not to show her face or use her name for fear of future retaliation.

"I think women deserve to be respected, women and men," the woman told 9NEWS through tears. "I mean, we're here to do a job and that's it. And, just being treated like this, it's uncalled for."

When asked about the allegations, at first Page said he didn't know. Later, he told 9NEWS, "Well, there may have been some remarks made with this young lady, but they were in a joking manner, and many of those remarks were initiated by her initiating the conversation."

A witness to one incident named in the complaint said that was not true.

"All she said to him was, 'Hi,'" said the woman, who asked not to be named because she was afraid. "She said hi, and he made his comment. And I'll tell you right now I don't think he was joking."

9NEWS has learned that this is not the first time Page has been the subject of scrutiny on the job. In 1989, he was fired from the Fort Morgan Police Department after his supervisors determined that Page, who had an affair with a dispatcher, did not meet department standards.

"At the end of his probation, there was an evaluation done, and it was not a favorable evaluation," said Harold Davisson, who served as chief of the Fort Morgan police department from 1981 until he retired in 2000.

"We decided this person does not meet our standard for being a police officer," Davisson said, adding that such a decision was not made lightly. "I called all of his supervisors, and they said, 'Don't keep him.'.We do everything we can to salvage an employee. But if they don't meet our standards, we don't keep them, either."

When told that Page was now running for sheriff, Davisson said, "I don't know how he's changed. I know people can change. If he's changed, that's great."

When asked about what happened at Fort Morgan, Page at first declined to answer whether he had an affair on the job, saying, "My private life is my private life." Later, Page said, "I made a lot of mistakes."

"I was a 21-year-old kid," Page said. "I thought I knew everything. I was married, I destroyed my marriage, absolutely my own fault, but the important thing is what did I do with my life after that."

Page said he is qualified to run for sheriff since he has been in law enforcement for 17 years, and that by age 27 was the chief investigator at the Logan County Sheriff's office. He wanted to continue the work of Bollish's administration, he said, which has put a lot of drug dealers in jail, especially in northeast Colorado.

He told 9NEWS that he felt the sexual harassment complaint was politically motivated.

"The thing you probably ought to know is the people that are involved in this campaign are desperate people," he said, "who will stop at nothing to take over the sheriff's office."

Bollish echoed that thought. The woman making the complaint, he said, said she has been repeatedly harassed for a year.

"And it's just been brought to my attention at this particular time in the political campaign she has taken offense," Bollish said, "and reported it a week before the election. That really bothers me."

Asked about the timing of her complaint, the female deputy said it was because on October 11, Page harassed her one final time. Upset by the incident, she said, she went to a victim's advocate, who told her she would be supported if she came forward. After agonizing over her decision, the deputy said, she filed the complaint four days later.

"It's hard to turn in people who are higher up than you," the woman said. "Because those are the people you are supposed to look up to, they're supposed to give you direction and supposed to show you leadership. They're not supposed to do that to you."

Now, despite great pressure by some to drop her complaint, the woman said, she is standing firm.

"I feel like I have a duty to the citizens of this community to let them know what Walt's really like," she told 9NEWS. "If he's not afraid to act like this around women right now, what's he going to be like if he does get elected sheriff? That's pretty scary."

Sheriff Bollish said of the three complaints filed by the female deputy, only one has been formally investigated. As for the other two-including the complaint against Page-the sheriff says he's conducting an investigation on whether or not to open an investigation-against the man he's running with in the upcoming election.

"We take severe measures around here," Bollish said. "We are very serious about sexual harassment."

The woman's husband, Logan County sheriff's Sgt. John Japp, disagrees.

"I believe with Lt. Page's status in the office, and him running for write-in sheriff, I believe it should have been handled by an outside agency," Japp said.

Japp said that when the sheriff asked to meet with him, he secretly recorded the hour-long conversation, conducted at the Village Inn on October 23.

In the tape, obtained by 9NEWS, Sheriff Bollish can be heard telling Japp that Page, who remarried, had promised to "clean up his act."

"He told me, when he married.he'd clean up his act," Bollish can be heard saying. "He was gonna be straightened out. But he still has the-if you want to call it-a potty mouth."

Bollish then went on to tell Japp that he believes in the female deputy who filed the complaint.

"I tell you, I think the world of your wife," Bollish said. "Your wife is dedicated and she's honest."

He then told Japp that Page did not mean his remarks, and that he, Bollish, would handle the situation.

"Let me guarantee you something-anything that Walt says is in fun, because he is not serious about it. I'm watching that guy like a hawk. He's got a mouth on him. And if he did something what I heard he did, I'll smack him up against the wall, if he learns from it."

The entire situation angers Japp.

"The sheriff has known this has been a problem with Lt. Page for a long time--and he said it on tape," said Japp, who added that he doesn't understand how Bollish can continue to support Page. "If this is becoming a problem, why do you want him as write-in sheriff?"

Bollish declined to answer questions about the conversation with Japp, other than to say he did describe Page as having "a potty mouth." Bollish said he continues to support his running mate, and defended Page's language.

"Well, I guess I could call half of Logan County, or I guess I could call several people a potty mouth, because people sometimes say things they shouldn't say," he told 9NEWS.

"I guess one off-color comment has turned into a mess."

Meanwhile, the man who won the primary, Powell, resigned from the sheriff's office in order to campaign.

"The reason I'm running for sheriff is to try to bring back the morals and integrity of the Logan County Sheriff's office," he said.

Yet Powell admitted that he had an incident of improper language in his own record, when he called some jail employees a sexual slang term.

"I said that, I didn't say it directly to a person, I said it to somebody else," he told 9NEWS. "It got back to the sheriff."

Powell said he was reprimanded, and that it was the only such incident in his time as a deputy.

He is qualified to be sheriff, he said, because he has been in law enforcement for nine years and spent four years in the military, including serving in Operation Desert Storm.

"There were a lot of people in the community that were looking for a change," Powell said, "so I stepped up to the plate and decided to run."

Page is as disgusting as Bollish! All he's doing is trying to win the election so he can hand the Sheriff's Office right back to Bollish. Do they think we're stupid??? That rumor, now fact, has been circulating for a long time now. They're both sexist pigs! Bobby Boy (Bollish) says that whatever Page says is all in fun?? How repulsive!! Maybe he should ask the women to whom his remarks were directed just how fun it was!! What an ass!

I have to say I'm disappointed to find out that Powell was reprimanded once for remarks he made, too, but it sounds like he learned his lesson and has since watched his mouth and "flown right". Walt Page, on the other hand, obviously can't control the crap that comes out of his mouth. Without a doubt, he has no respect for females at all. I need to stop now or I'm gonna throw up! *gag*

(If you're at all interested in seeing what others in my town have to say about this, go here [our local newspaper online] and read the comments.)