Outgoing sheriff looks back on storied career

Decades ago the Lincoln County sheriff

would answer nighttime emergency calls from home – a one-bedroom

apartment in the courthouse basement next door to the jail.

Daryl Anderson recalls those days

because in 1966, a few months shy of his 21st birthday, he became a

deputy. He was able to survive off a meager monthly salary of $285,

he said, because the state paid gas mileage at a rate of 11 cents

per mile. The sheriff and his two or three deputies supplied their

own car, gun, ammunition and equipment.

“They gave you a radio and a red light

and you had to insure your own vehicle,” recalled three-term

sheriff Anderson, who is retiring this month after a nearly 45-year

law-enforcement career in Lincoln County.

With a silver star pinned to his chest,

Anderson takes his job of serving and

protecting the public seriously. He is

of a generation that calls them as they see them – a trait that has

worked for him in law enforcement but not always in the political

arena.

“It’s sad that you’ve got to be a

politician to be sheriff,” he said. “That’s the one thing that I

was not good at, I’ll guarantee that, but you have to do it to be

elected.”

While Anderson relishes in the good –

sending bad guys to jail, helping earn the department much-needed

grant money and participating in Special Olympics – he can’t easily

shake off the bad – unsolved crimes, innocent victims and the

criminals who got away.

The most traumatic event of Anderson’s

career occurred in 1968 when he was still wet behind the ears. A

deputy called Anderson in a panic, relaying that he had accidently

shot his wife while cleaning a gun.

“He said, ‘My God, Daryl, get there as

fast as you can,’” he recalled.

On scene, Anderson realized that his

fellow officer beat the woman to death.

The murder tainted the reputation of

all Lincoln County law-enforcement agencies.

“It took about 2-1/2 years to live that

down in the law-enforcement field,” Anderson said. “They looked at

all of us as wife killers.”

Anderson and the sheriff arrested the

deputy, whose murder one charge was reduced to voluntary

manslaughter. The man who killed his wife in front of their two

small children spent less than 10 years in prison.

The injustice stung most when Anderson

came upon the man after he was released.  

“There he was with his new bride, about

eight to nine years later,” Anderson recalled. 

Another poignant memory for Anderson is

the 1987 murder of 8-year-old Ryan Van Luchene. He had been netting

minnows on Flower Creek close to his home when a paroled sex

offender abducted, raped and brutally beat him to death. Close to

the case, Anderson still sees red when he talks about Van Luchene’s

killer.

“I couldn’t even go down in my own

jail,” recalled Anderson, who was then a lieutenant. “I didn’t want

to look at him.” 

Working together with people over the

years to better the county has offset the negative aspects of the

job. Anderson is proud to have been a founder of David Thompson

Search and Rescue, which has developed into a group capable of

complex, technical rescue missions. Through that agency, Anderson

and others founded Libby and Troy’s first volunteer ambulance

crew.

After a few years as a Lincoln County

deputy, Anderson moved to the Libby Police Department in 1970,

working his way up to assistant chief. In 1982, the city contracted

out its law enforcement to the county, so he became a deputy once

again.

He credits his old chief, Elvon “Cub”

Welch, and a Montana Highway Patrol trooper, James Jensen, for

molding him into the officer he became.

“Cub Welch taught me a lot about law

enforcement and being a public servant. You work for the people.

Treat people like you want to be treated yourself,” Anderson said.

“I got to say, they really steered me around to where I knew that

this is what I wanted to do for a career.”

Anderson has never taken a bullet,

though he has looked down the barrel of a many a gun over his

career. A collected demeanor goes a long way, he said, to diffuse

those stressful situations.

“There’s been a lot of different times

that there were guns involved but not to the point where you

couldn’t get them to put it down,” Anderson said. “There’s been

some harry times.”

In more recent years, as sheriff,

Anderson has had the department work with U.S. Immigration and

Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol to provide intelligence

that has slowed illegal activity up north and landed the sheriff’s

office quite a bit of cash and equipment from seizures.

“It was a big plus for us because we

got to replace a lot of equipment, stuff that we wouldn’t have

before and that doesn’t have to be included in the budget,” he

said.

Anderson has also been involved with

the Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association for the past 10

years, a group that, among other things, lobbies for bills that

support law-enforcement agencies.

“Used to be you’d be down there

sponsoring a few bills for yourself,” he said. “Now you’re down

there all the time defending yourself with all the different bills

they’re bringing up that’s going to tie the hands of law

enforcement.”

One of the biggest differences between

the sheriff’s position now and 12 years ago when he was first

elected, he said, is liability. The county’s insurance carrier

tends to set much of the department’s policy. Training has also

changed over time, along with the definition of “reasonable force,”

to protect the county from lawsuits.

 “It’s a young man generation for

sheriff now,” Anderson said. “There are so many changes coming up.

You just get tired, burnt out from all the different things.”

He’ll enjoy retirement, but he doesn’t

plan to fall off the grid.

“I think the first year I’m going to do

a little fishing, but I’ll get back involved in some things –

Search and Rescue, for one,” he said. “I ain’t going to go

nowhere.”