Chaffee mayor resigns after impeachment vote, then changes mind

Chaffee's mayor resigned Thursday morning. By 1 p.m., family and friends changed her mind, she said.

"I'm hoping that the council will see, since I'm refusing to resign, that I'm earnest to be the mayor," Loretta Mohorc said.

She's also earnest about reining in what she's called city police officers' "overexuberance" in making traffic stops. It led to a closed session with the city council and police chief, and her resignation.

After four people, including the former police commissioner, raised the issue at the Chaffee City Council's Monday meeting, the board met in closed session Wednesday. During its meeting, the city council voted 5-3 to impeach Mohorc. Missouri law allows Class 3 cities such as Chaffee to impeach a mayor if two-thirds of the council -- in Chaffee, six council members -- approve.

Mohorc said she's heard as many as 40 complaints about the police in the last month. Some are from nonresidents, she said, and some were registered more than once. Some were guilty parties blowing off steam, she said. Complaints about being repeatedly stopped by police, however, worry her, particularly one from a woman who said she'd been stopped six times in one night.

Police chief Jesse Chisum maintains that many of the city's 3,200 residents are unaccustomed to proactive police enforcement. He said when the city council voted to hire him Aug. 20, residents at that meeting compared the city to a "disorderly house" -- the result of speeding and stop-sign violations and a seeming rising incidence of fights.

On Thursday afternoon, many in Chaffee, including the mayor, said Chisum and his five-person force of mostly new hires have quelled a rash of car break-ins and burglaries, as well as issued tickets for impaired driving and other motor violations without regard to a person's status in town.

Mohorc praised Chisum for finding new equipment, some of it donated, and instituting staff training. In the beginning, she said, she was his fan.

Chisum said he hasn't been getting the same feedback as the mayor. Since assuming command, he said he's gotten eight complaint calls.

In October, Chisum tendered a resignation and was talked out of it after tangling with the city's police personnel board over procedures. The four members resigned and have since been replaced.

Mohorc said if she and Chisum can resolve hurt feelings that bubbled up since October, they would work well together.

"That is a totally different person than the one I am familiar with," Chisum said, but refused to elaborate.

City attorney David Summers told police, city council members and the mayor not to discuss what happened in the closed session. Summers did not respond to a message left at his office Thursday afternoon or at his home Thursday night. Half the city council's eight members refused interview requests Thursday. Voice mails were left for two.

Councilman Bill Dysinger said, on learning of the resignation, that he was surprised. "I thought this was all worked out Wednesday night," he said in a brief phone interview, but would not elaborate.

Leon Sticklin, a city councilman for four years, was tight-lipped, saying he did not know what would happen next.

There is, he said, "not a city you'll ever live in, in your life, that everyone is going to agree with everything going on. We have this thing in Chaffee that hopefully will be resolved in the near future."

Chisum said the only way it will is "for everybody to act like adults."

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127