Brief by Central Staff
Local Politics – November 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
Chaffee County Sheriff Ron Bergmann has pleaded guilty to one charge of second-degree official misconduct. Since that’s only a petty offense, not a felony, he can stay in office, but he was sentenced to 50 hours of community service and to donate $3,000 to charity.
The case began in 1999, when Dean Schumacher of Buena Vista was sentenced to six months in the county jail for driving while ability impaired, and three months for driving with a suspended license.
The two sentences were to be served concurrently, not consecutively, so Schumacher was supposed to spend only six months in jail. But he thought, and apparently so did the sheriff, that he was supposed to be in jail for nine months.
He didn’t find out otherwise until after he contacted the court to see about getting his sentence reduced after eight months in jail.
The court notified the jailer that Schumacher should be out, and he was released from jail that afternoon, although he wasn’t told about the mix-up on his sentence then.
Schumacher had been on work release, and was paying the sheriff’s office $155 a week for that privilege (Bergmann charges all prisoners to stay in jail, starting at $5 a day for hardship cases). That money should have been repaid immediately, but it wasn’t.
Bergmann said he couldn’t get to it right away — it was around the Thanksgiving holiday — and the matter slipped from his attention afterwards.
In the summer of 2000, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation talked to some jail employees who indicated that Bergmann had been trying to cover up the failure to repay the money.
David Thorson of Park County, who prosecuted Bergmann, said Bergmann erred in not correcting the problem as soon as he was aware of it. “His entire concern seemed to be political embarrassment and civil liability. The sheriff was not lining his own pockets.”
Judge William Fox noted that Bergmann had no liability for the extra time that Schumacher was deprived of his freedom, but the sheriff was responsible for mishandling the money.
The county repaid Schumacher before the trial; Bergmann was ordered to donate $3,000 to charity as the equivalent of a fine to punish him personally for the misconduct.
A civil suit against Bergmann is still a possibility, according to Schumacher’s attorney, Anthony Martinez of Salida.