PORT TOWNSEND – Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office posted six deputies at the courthouse Monday after two separate threats were reported, a sheriff’s official said.
“That left us with two deputies on the streets,” said Undersheriff Tim Perry.
Two deputies were posted in upstairs courtrooms after it was reported that a woman involved in a child-custody battle had threatened her ex-husband.
“If he got custody of the children, she was going to kill him,” Perry said.
Deputies searched her purse at the courtroom entrance and found a collapsible pocket knife and an ice pick, both of which were confiscated, Perry said.
The woman was neither arrested nor charged, he said.
“We were concerned about somebody waving an automatic weapon around the courthouse,” Perry said, adding that sensitivities to gun violence have been heightened in recent days after deadly shootings at Virginia Tech and the Space Center in Houston, Texas.
To secure the courthouse, two deputies were posted at the courthouse’s front entrance, Perry said.
Two more deputies were posted at the entrance to the county commissioners chambers on the ground floor of the courthouse Monday morning after a threat from an angry Chimacum farmer.
According to a transcript released by county officials on Monday, longtime Chimacum farmer Roger Short made threatening comments during a Planning Commission meeting hearing on the county’s critical areas ordinance last week.
“The way it has been tonight with the Planning Commission – it just ain’t going to happen and all I can see is May 17 of last year coming back up, and you know if that happens, it would be real easy for us to round up the troops in the county and bring the rifles to the courthouse,” Short said in the statement.
He was referring to when an increased wetlands and waterway buffer was proposed after negotiations between the county commissioners and the Washington Environmental Council.
WEC officials later said the increased buffer did not apply to farms.
Contacted Monday, Short said he was only trying to get county leaders’ attention.
“I have no intent of bodily harming anyone, absolutely none,” he said.
