100 years ago in Hillyard: A tale of two police chiefs, both still patrolling, rocked the neighborhood that was then its own city

A controversy was rocking Hillyard City Hall, to the point where nobody could answer this question: Who is the Hillyard police chief?

Two people thought they were – and both were patrolling the streets.

This mess all began after the last election, when Pat Brown was elected the new mayor. He was unhappy at the way police chief Clyde Engle had handled the railroad shopmen’s strike, and he vowed to replace Engle and several other city officers.

Brown appointed Virgil Howarth as the new police chief and William Luders as the new night marshal. But the Hillyard City Council refused to confirm the appointments.

Brown told Howarth and Luders to begin their duties the next morning anyway, but the council told Engle and other office holders to stay on the job. The Hillyard city attorney asked the state attorney general to make a ruling on the whole mess, but the attorney general said he had no jurisdiction on the matter.

Brown was undaunted. He vowed to reappoint his officers every seven days, as allowed by law, which meant he was planning to schedule a city council meeting every Tuesday for months, if he had to.

Meanwhile, the two police chiefs had their own particular concern: They did not know which of them would actually get paid.

One Hillyard resident, John Aldrich, took the most sensible course. Brown had appointed Aldrich as the new police judge, but he categorically refused to accept the job and vowed not to “enter into the squabble at all.”

From the court-martial beat: Julius L. Gerth, who cut a swath through Spokane high society by posing as “Major Forbes Robertson,” was found guilty of impersonating an officer during a naval court martial in Bremerton. Gerth was actually a Marine sergeant, absent from his Bremerton posting.

His sentence was pending, but probably would include jail time.