PORT ANGELES – As his first action in office, Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict oversaw the evacuation of the courthouse after a bomb threat Friday.
“You might call it that,” Benedict said of his first crisis of his administration.
A search of the building and premises yielded no explosives, and deputies began a criminal investigation.
Benedict, who won election in a landslide over former Sheriff Joe Martin in the Nov. 8 election, was sworn into office Thursday.
Martin stepped down before the Dec. 31 expiration date on his term to be with his ailing wife in Seattle.
“Essentially he turned it over to me,” Benedict said.
During the ceremony Thursday morning Benedict administered the oath to most of the department.
When the rest return from vacation he’ll give them the oath.
And on Saturday he was in his new office, beginning to map out his second, third, fourth and fifth actions as sheriff, a plan he said “very closely follows my campaign promises.”
Many of them are administrative efforts.
He inherits a brewing scandal, with a four-year evidence custodian arrested and booked into the Clallam County jail for investigation of first-degree theft.
Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deborah Kelly said she will consider criminal charges against Staci L. Allison when the State Patrol forwards to her its finished investigation.
Benedict declined to specify the amount Allison is suspected of stealing, but he said the amount is “in the thousands.”
