The costs of investigating, convicting and sentencing Bellevue teen Sarah M. Johnson for murdering her parents in September 2003 have been far more than the $1 million bill the county has footed.
In his testimony at Johnson's sentencing hearing last week, Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling said the investigation has cost Blaine County a certain degree of security, as well as cost his department hundreds of hours of vacation and comp time.
Johnson was sentenced to two life terms in prison, to run concurrently without the possibility of parole, for shooting and killing her parents, Alan and Diane Johnson, on Sept. 2, 2003.
Following a nearly two month investigation, Johnson was arrested on two counts of murder in the first degree. The investigation continued, however, and the entire proceedings that resulted in her conviction and life sentence lasted 22 months.
"You can't just measure the impacts in dollars and cents," Femling said. "All the way down the line, it just had a total chain reaction effect with the service we provide. When you lose efficiencies, you lose effectiveness."
As an example, Femling indicated that, for a 20-month period, the county's drug task force was shut down and the amount of heroine being funneled into Blaine County rose. The amount of drugs being smuggled into Blaine County is still higher than it would have been if the task force had remained operational.
"That's a real problem," the sheriff said. "We took a real hit. We still are taking a real hit from not being able to stay on that. In that business, you have to stay on top of it so dealers don't get entrenched in your community."
After pulling people away from the drug task force to divert resources to the Johnson murders investigation, Femling said his agency began fielding telephone calls about increasing heroine use among some local groups of kids.
"Last year, we took everybody off the Johnson case and said, 'You've got to identify these (dealers).' It was a big heroine operation that had entrenched themselves here. They were dealing a lot."
The task force busted the big heroine ring, but now the sheriff's office is trying to make up for lost time. It's an uphill battle.
"You have to make these people paranoid, and when law enforcement isn't there, it's just free and easy for them," Femling said. "So we're trying to get all that back, and it's a struggle."
More than the added security risk to the community, Femling said his employees have amassed an impressive amount of comp and vacation time. Many of his employees were on subpoena for months, preventing them from taking vacations. He said the sheriff's office could not let five people off work for an entire year.
"We've put the county in a liability position. People are owed all this vacation time. If somebody quits, they're going to get a huge check."
Femling said he would ask the Blaine County Commission in the coming weeks to buy down the amount of vacation and comp time owed to his employees.
The problem is not lost on the Blaine County Commission.
The sheriff's office vacation and comp time conundrum will be addressed in budget hearings in the coming weeks, said Blaine County Commission Chair Sarah Michael. She acknowledged, however, that it may not be easy. Preliminary number crunching indicated that a sizeable amount of money is needed to pay for the number of hours owed.
Blaine County Clerk Marsha Reimann said she did not have precise numbers. Nonetheless, she said the sheriff's office, jail and Blaine County Road and Bridge Department are collectively owed about $117,000 in vacation and comp time.
But Femling reiterated that the problem is bigger than employee time management. He said everything from traffic control to neighborhood patrols have been affected.
"For our system to work, you have to have the patrol staff out there, the investigators out there and the prosecution team to see it through," he said. "During this investigation, trial and sentencing, everybody's been doing different jobs. That really impacts the whole system when you have it going on as long as it did.
"The impacts of this case were just horrendous," he said, "and we're still feeling it."
