Grant County's rogue sheriff (OR)

By The Oregonian Editorial Board
on August 06, 2016 at 2:00 PM, updated August 06, 2016 at 2:02 PM

Grant County .. invokes plainspoken, stand-up values of the Old West ... John Day, Prairie City and Canyon City .. have .. individual topographies and histories, but a fair-play, no-nonsense ethic permeates the rhythms of town and ranch life ... The place is rural Oregon at its best.

That .. stops at the sheriff's door. Glenn Palmer, elected to the sheriff's post in 2000 and seeking reelection, abdicated his responsibility of exemplifying the spirit of the law by sympathizing with the armed outlaws who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year and, more recently, for fighting requests for public records that .. might .. bare his communications with them.

The Oregonian/OregonLive .. requested from Palmer work emails .. and then sued .. when he failed to furnish them. Last Wednesday, a state judge ruled that Palmer must not delete his government-related emails — .. following a July report .. in which Palmer's attorneys said a state document .. allowed for Palmer's deletion of emails ...

Palmer .. has said he retained printouts of emails. No matter. Emails — electronic or paper records of the sheriff's engagement with citizens who responded to his email address as listed on the sheriff's official website — are not yet fully in the public's hands ... Separately, Palmer remains under investigation by the Criminal Justice Division of the Oregon Department of Justice over allegations he tampered with electronic police files in 2012 by deleting a police report ...

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/08/glenn_palmer_grant_countys_rog.html