Cop capers

By CHERY SABOL

Highlights from a long-running law-enforcement comedy routine

The Daily Inter Lake

Maybe it's the gritty nature of their work that makes some law-enforcement officers such practical jokers.

Two of the biggest pranksters in Flathead Valley law enforcement also went on to become leaders - Sheriff Jim Dupont and Kalispell Police Chief Frank Garner.

Both have handled their jobs with dignity and sober regard for what they do.

Both also have a reputation for some cop capers, within their departments and between them.

Dupont and Garner have publicly sparred, in good nature, for years.

When he was in high school, Garner worked at the old El Rancho restaurant in Evergreen. It was a popular coffee stop for law officers and Garner's interest in law enforcement was rooted in his conversations with them.

"He'd see us - manly men," Dupont said at a retirement dinner recently at the Elks. "I always kept my shoes shined because he was always there with that rag," Dupont jabbed.

Garner came back with a left hook.

"The spit on your shoes wasn't the only spit you were getting," he said.

The two leaders have a relationship that defies easy description. It's part collegial, part sibling rivalry, part father/son, and entirely good-humored.

At the dinner, both men received the United Way's Community Hero award.

When he accepted his, Dupont asked, "Can I talk about Frank now?"

Garner got the last word, though.

"This is one of my favorite things in the world - talking after Jim."

GARNER and Dupont have competed at raising money for local civic organizations and have competed at making each other uncomfortable.

As chief, Garner must attend City Council meetings. As his tormentor, Dupont has had pizzas delivered to Garner in the middle of the meetings.

Both men have participated in the fundraising Penguin Plunge at the Whitefish Winter Carnival. One fateful year, Dupont had outpaced Garner on gathering pledges. Garner had a secret weapon, though - a photo of Dupont in a poodle skirt and wig, which he auctioned off for $300.

The photo, now captioned "Your sheriff, Hollywood" wound up in the hands of former Missoula County Sheriff Doug Chase - another affectionate nemesis of Dupont's.

Chase's feigned disdain for Dupont's constant presence in the media led to the "Hollywood" nickname.

"When I was sheriff of Missoula County, there was rarely any night … that he wasn't on television," Chase groused.

"As handsome as he was - and you put down 'was' - he was obviously attempting to get himself out of Flathead Valley and down to cinema city, but nobody bit."

The last straw for Chase was when Dupont upstaged Chase's retirement party in Missoula. The KPAX television news crew barged into the party while Chase was making a speech.

"I was speaking at the moment," Chase said. "They veer off to Jim Dupont and start asking how he's doing and how Flathead Valley is."

"I just can't figure out how to get the better of him. But then, I'm not as scoundrelous as he is," Chase said of his friend.

The old days of law enforcement, even just 20 years ago, were fertile ground for someone like Dupont to play tricks.

He once startled a fellow officer by zipping himself into a body bag and then sitting up as the deputy approached what he expected to be a lifeless form. Dupont still snorts with laughter when he describes the deputy drawing his gun.

"What was he going to do? Shoot me?"

He remembers one restless night when deputies conspired to test the moxie of a dispatcher whose skills they questioned. They contrived a high-speed pursuit and called in breathless descriptions of their chase while they actually sat and cackled in the Kmart parking lot.

The dispatcher handled the calls deftly. The problem was that the department's chief deputy had awakened at 3 a.m. and heard the radioed messages. Dupont and his friends heard their boss radio in that he was in his patrol car on the way to help them. "Oh, crap."

Dupont unleashed way too much mace in the cramped restroom in the old sheriff's office, teased too many people, played too many pranks to expect they wouldn't come back to him.

They did.

Paybacks seemed to involve his car most of the time.

There was the dead skunk that someone put on his engine block. Dupont thought he had hit a skunk and the smell would dissipate. He finally figured out what had happened "after I washed the car 37 times."

It wasn't long ago that someone put a bowling ball in the back of Dupont's truck.

"I thought I took the entire transmission out when I stopped" and the ball crashed inside the truck, he said. And there was the time recently when someone jacked up his truck in the parking lot so his wheels spun uselessly a few inches off the ground. And the time someone put pounds of confetti-like paper in his defroster.

It was a former chief of detention who surprised him the most, though. He teased her about the size of her nose for too long. When he taped a crevice tool from a vacuum to his face to replicate her nose, she took revenge. She and an animal warden found a long-dead cat.

"Those two safety-wired four suction cups to the legs of that old rotting cat," Dupont said. They watched from the jail when he went out to discover the atrocity that was stuck to the inside of the back window of his patrol car.

A lot of the antics from those days wouldn't be possible now.

"Society's changed so much," he said. "We had fun. We're all too serious today."

Garner began his work in the same spirit of shenanigans.

He earned a variety of nicknames, including Bottle Rocket Man, for his trick of ambushing officers in the men's room by tossing lighted fireworks in through a vent, according to Alan Bardwell.

Bardwell also remembers a former officer calling in to report multiple gunshots at his house. The man was crawling on his floor in fear from what turned out to be another Garner fireworks incident.

Garner took as well as he gave, though.

At a conference in Los Angeles, his coworkers had a chance to see undercover officers pretend to mistake Garner for a vagrant and shake him down on the street while his friends hooted from a nearby window.

Former officer Jim Brown remembers how Garner earned the nickname "Skippy." Garner had a grip on the neck of a man inside a vehicle when the driver took off, dragging Garner.

"His feet were hitting the ground every 10 feet," Brown said. "Skippy."

Garner also picked up the name "Tom Cruise" at an education conference where a school counselor swooned over his boyish good looks.

Through the years, Dupont has teased Garner mercilessly about being the Boy Chief.

Even on the cusp of retirement, at age 44, Garner is still teased about his youthfulness.

At the retirement dinner for the outgoing leaders, Dupont acknowledged former Kalispell Police Chief Ad Clark - Garner's predecessor.

"It was nice dealing with an adult," Dupont said.

Clark said he remembers Garner's swearing-in ceremony.

"He stood on a little box and looked like he was 15," Clark said.

He cracked open a file labeled "Boy Chief: The Frank Files." It was to be "sealed until Chief Garner appears to be over 21 years of age."

For all their teasing, Dupont and Garner have worked well together over the years.

"We have a genuine friendship" and respect, Garner said. "Not that we haven't had disagreements … It's always been easy for me. You know. Being the best one."

"What a great guy to work with," Dupont said of Garner. "I enjoyed every minute around him. Well, not every minute, but you don't have to say that."

"I've valued our relationship," said Garner, who called Dupont his mentor, his colleague and his friend.

"And he looks good in a poodle skirt."

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com