Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
A police chief who serves long enough will have his detractors. Some will argue he wasn’t tough enough on crime, others that he was too tough or worse. Into the latter category one usually finds people who were arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on the chief’s watch, and who believe they got a raw deal or just want revenge.
Frank Garner, now running for the Republican nomination for House District 7 (Kalispell; map), was Kalispell’s chief of police when Ronald Glick was charged and convicted by a jury of sexual assault. Glick spent five years in prison. His current status, according to the Montana Department of Corrections, is probation, and he lives in Kalispell. He’s registered as a Level 1 sex offender, which MDC says means “The risk of a repeat sexual offense is low.”
Glick believes he was wrongly convicted, blames Garner, and has filed lawsuits to exonerate himself. So far, his legal initiatives have not been successful. There’s no need to litigate Glick’s issues here as Montana Cowgirl has a full report on his accusations, plus an extensive discussion on the merits of his contentions. A second discussion can be found at the Northwest Liberty News. And Glick has a blog where he provides extensive commentary on his situation.
Will Glick’s accusations hurt Garner? No. If Glick somehow proves he was convicted wrongly, and is exonerated through the criminal justice system, then Garner’s role in the wrongful conviction will come under scrutiny. The likelihood that will occur seems vanishingly small. Until then, Glick has all the credibility that society assigns to a registered sex offender who spent five years in the penitentiary after a jury convicted him of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
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