‘We have got to work together,’ commissioner Lang tells prosecutor, sheriff
by Angie Asam–Staff Writer
The Presque Isle County Board of Commissioners’ personnel committee, consisting of commissioners Stephen Lang and Bob Schell, called prosecuting attorney Rick Steiger and sheriff Bob Paschke to come to a meeting Tuesday afternoon in an effort to figure out how to get the departments working together in spite of some issues.
“We had to try to bring these guys together today to see how we’re going to work together. I was in receipt of a letter last Friday that you (Steiger) had turned over to (Presque Isle County Advance publisher) Richard Lamb,” said Lang to open the meeting.
The letter to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), was received as a result of the Freedom of Information Act request.
“I was a little disappointed that I didn’t know about this as a commissioner, to tell you the truth. It would have been nice to know,” said Lang. “There is a lot of things wrong Rick, a lot. Between what’s going on with the sheriff’s department and prosecutor’s office and none of it’s good,” he continued.
“I would agree with that. I would agree with the fact that there are some issues,” said Steiger.
“There are some real issues and we need to, I’m not saying you guys have to have coffee and doughnuts every morning but something has to give so that everyone’s working together. I don’t care if you don’t like each other or not, it doesn’t matter to me at all,” said Lang.
“I’ve always had a cordial relationship with (Paschke). Things came to my attention that when you have an undersheriff telling me that you have a corrections officer acting very unprofessionally I am obligated to respond,” said Steiger.
“If you’re going to say something about (undersheriff) Joe Brewbaker saying it let Joe be here so that it’s not you saying that somebody said something,” said Paschke.
Lang then refocused the discussion back to the DOJ letter. Lang discussed how several months ago the personnel committee along with Paschke and Steiger agreed that they were just going to step back from the investigations going on and let it work its course. “I’m a little disappointed Rick, frankly,” said Lang.
“WE’VE GOT to figure this out, there’s some misinformation going around and each side has said some things. We are sitting here a little more than confused about everything. We don’t know all the facts anymore because we purposely pulled ourselves away from it as we were told to do by several attorneys. How are we going to get over this back biting?” asked Lang.
“You know where we are going to go. Did you read Mr. Steiger’s last sentence of his letter to the Department of Justice? Let me mention it to you,” said Paschke before reading from the letter. “He doesn’t trust us, how are we supposed to work with him? I don’t know where we go from here gentlemen.”
Steiger responded by saying there are some wonderful deputies at the sheriff’s department.
“I don’t know where we go next. It seems like
The discussion carried on for more than 30 minutes with Lang attempting to focus on getting the parties to work together. “He (Steiger) doesn’t trust several people in my department. I don’t know who you trust,” said Paschke.
“This is like mission impossible. One of these days stuff’s going to be done. Someone’s going to be a winner and someone is going to be a loser,” said Lang. “We have got to work together. Let this be the end of the comments, end of the letter writing until these investigations are over with,” said Lang.
(Complete story appears in the Oct. 2, 2014 edition of the Advance)