Write-in Short steps into sheriff's race

Challenger Darren Short is running for Lincoln County sheriff.

Short, 48, has a diverse background in law enforcement including stints as a Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office reserve deputy, Libby Police Department patrolman and an international police advisor in Afghanistan.

Short is married to his wife, Debbie, and has two daughters and two grandchildren.

What is a sheriff?

The biggest job as sheriff is to enforce the laws of the state within Lincoln County and to serve the needs and the problems of the people of Lincoln County. I want to be here full time to answer any questions to alleviate any of the concerns that any of the citizens of the county have as far as law enforcement goes.

What is the difference between you and the rest of the candidates for this job?

I vow to be a full-time sheriff. I want to try to be available to the people of Lincoln County as much as possible. I have a long history of volunteerism in the county. I started out with the Libby Volunteer Ambulance, David Thomas Search and Rescue and then I joined the reserve deputy program at the sheriff’s office in about 1997. I enjoyed law enforcement then so when an opening came up for the Libby Police Department, I applied for it. I have been in this county pretty much my entire life. I’d like to see this county prosper and get back to what it was when I was a kid.

Do you have any criticisms with the way things are currently operated or any particular reasons for running?

I had thought about running in the primary, but a friend of mine, Duane Rhodes, came to me early in the spring with a desire to run for sheriff. I didn’t want to jump into it and split the vote four ways. (Sheriff) Roby (Bowe) and (Bill) Clark had already filed and then Duane filed. After the results of the primary I didn’t feel that the county would be best served with either one of the candidates that made it through the primary.

Particularly, what reasons made you feel that way?

I have been very community involved. I have worked in Eureka, Troy and Libby. I know the county fairly well. I have been involved with a lot of volunteer organizations: Search and Rescue, the ambulance, the Igniters Car Club. I have put on several benefits for cancer victims in the county. I feel that a sheriff needs to be available full time to answer any questions and concerns that the people of the county have. No matter where it is at in the county. Whether it be in the Yaak, Happy’s Inn, Eureka, Trego, Fortine.

You feel that currently that is not happening?

Correct.

As a write-in candidate, you have to know that is a huge obstacle. Are you in this to win it? How are you going to make that happen?

Yes. It is definitely a tough uphill battle. I think one of the things that I have going for me is my community involvement. I know a lot of people in Libby, Eureka and Troy. I have worked in all three communities at some point in my life. I was going to wait until 2018 to go through the primary and go through the entire election but I just kept getting bombarded by people that were asking me, why aren’t you running? So I looked at that. I had a lot of concerns about the misspelling of the names and those kind of things. So when I filed I filed with every possible way to spell my name. One of the things that I kind of pushed was just my first initial and my last name.

So, D. Short will work?

Yes. I understand that it is a long shot and a tough uphill battle, but after the primary I thought that the people of Lincoln County needed another option.

Where do you think that you are going to pull more support from?

I’m hoping to pull support from both candidates. I really am. I had a meet and greet at the Kicking Horse on Sunday, and spoke with people that voted for both candidates in the primary.

It certainly seems like Roby is the establishment candidate, and Bill Clark certainly seems to be interested in presenting himself as an anti-establishment candidate. You seem to have an establishment background. Do you have any concerns that you may split votes from Roby ultimately leading to Bill Clark’s election?

Those were definitely some concerns. It is one of the biggest concerns that I have had since I started talking about filing. That is one of the reasons it took me awhile because I wanted to talk to a lot of different people before I did file.

I guess I don’t have that much of a concern anymore. Just from talking to the people that I talked to and getting input from outside sources that I have gotten.

What do you think is the biggest public safety concern in the area?

One of the biggest problems, of course, is always going to be drugs. Drugs are a huge issue. They not only affect the people using drugs, but they tie into thefts, burglaries and all kinds of property crimes that affect everybody in the end.

How would you address that?

One of the things that I would like to see is a closer working relationship between the sheriff’s office and the prosecution and the county attorneys’ office. I worked as a drug detective for four years for the sheriff’s office and I was up talking with the prosecutors at least on a weekly basis about the cases that we were working. I think that is a very important step. If there is a problem with the way cases are being worked in the field that the prosecutors don’t like, then we need to fix it. If we can improve our report writing, if we can improve our investigation of cases then that needs to be improved. But if it is something on their end maybe that communication will help to open the doors for better prosecution.

There has been quite a bit of attention paid to Bill Clark, the people who support him and the retirement situation that he had in Washington. Do you think he could do the job?

I am sure he probably would. I definitely have some concerns about what I have heard about his disability retirement. And also the amount of time that he has been in this county and this community. How good a grasp can he have on the needs of the people of Lincoln County after only living here a couple of years? I think having a background with the people here and knowing some of their needs and concerns is a huge issue.

Tell us a little bit about your background in law enforcement. Why do you enjoy it?

When I was growing up I really didn’t have a lot of interest in law enforcement. I was with the ambulance for a number of years and dealt with the patrol deputies on accident scenes but I really didn’t get involved with law enforcement. With Search and Rescue it is a lot tighter of a relationship with the sheriff’s office. So I got to work with some of the guys then and became more involved with the law enforcement aspect of it doing some of the searches. I was working construction out of town and came home one weekend and my wife opened up the paper and she said they are hiring for reserve deputies. She said you do everything else, ambulance, search and rescue, maybe you would be interested in that. It took me a little while and I thought about it and applied. Once I became involved it really was a good way to become more community involved and to maybe make a difference to help improve the community here. I took that as a way to get back home full time.

Did you ever work as a full-time detective for the county?

Yes. I spent three years with the police department after I got hired there. An opening came with the sheriff’s office and that is where I wanted to go. An opening came as a resident deputy in Troy, so I applied for and got that opening. Was able to spend more time in the outlying areas of the Yaak, down Bull Lake and the Troy area.

About nine months or so after I started as a resident deputy an opening came up in the detective position. I applied for and became a detective. I was a detective four years and my main focus was drugs. I also worked burglaries, homicides, felony thefts. With a small detective force like the sheriff’s office has, you have to be diverse because everybody is on call at certain times. If you get a call for a homicide in Eureka, you go. I enjoyed that.

You went to Afghanistan to train police?

I went to Afghanistan from October 2006 until April 2011. One of the reasons that I got interested in that was several of the law enforcement officers here had gone to Kosovo and Iraq and done these police missions overseas. It interested me because I had never been overseas and never spent a lot of time working with the military.

I ended up going to Afghanistan. Very interesting place. I was able to work hand-in-hand with the U.S. military doing firearms training and all aspects of police training. For a year and a half I worked in the southern region of Afghanistan as police mentor to a border police metro team. Since I was from an area that was close to the border in the United States, and I had worked in conjunction with the U.S. Border Patrol and the team from Canada working drug interdiction along the Canadian border, they saw that on my resume and figured I would be the guy to work with border police in Afghanistan.  

You have quite a diverse background in law enforcement. How would that experience guide you should you be elected sheriff?

One of the things that I would like to see happen within the county is see all of the emergency management agencies in the county come back together. There has been kind of a division of some of the emergency service agencies within the county. I would like to see everybody working on the same page again for the people of the county. I don’t know how easy it would be to solve but instead of all of this bickering between say fire departments and ambulance services, I think everybody needs to be drawn together.

How do you do that?

Getting everybody together with combined trainings. Combined meetings. Just getting everybody to know each other again.

Are you originally from Libby?

I moved here with my family in 1971. My dad moved here to work up on the roads by the dam. He was a surveyor. I was five. I went grade one through 12 in the Libby school system.

Been here ever since?

Yes. This is home. This is where I want to be.

How would you handle the budget?

I think whoever is the sheriff needs to take a good close look at things that are possibly being mismanaged, funds that are possibly being wasted in the sheriff’s office and needs to focus on what needs to be done to serve the people of LIncoln County. No frills or anything else. We just need to serve the people of Lincoln County to the best of our ability.

Without the budget in front of you, do you have any ideas where you think you could cut?

I feel that there are some people within the sheriff’s office that are being misused. That in itself causes a hit to the budget. People driving back and forth 60, 70 miles a day on the county’s dime. Some of those things need to be looked at.