We cannot let this curious sign of the times pass in silence. It says way too much about our current state. It happened on July 25, 2024, at the first court appearance of Interisland Ferry Captain Albert Brant during his son's trial for the ghastly charge of possessing child pornography.Â
The purpose of the post-arrest hearing was to determine "the conditions of release." Prosecutors wanted to set the defendant's bail at $500,000 because he, Richard Alexander Brant, obtained and exchanged nine images of "children between 18 months and 9 years old... being raped." The defendant wanted the bail reduced to $2,500 because he wasn't "a flight risk," doesn't have a prior criminal record, and would stay with his father, an upstanding citizen who counts members of local law enforcement among his good friends. He would work on his father's Friday Harbor farm, they said. Apparently, there's lots to be done there. Lots to keep the defendant very busy. As Christians love to say, an idle mind is the devil's workshop.Â
After arguments for a very high and very low bail were presented to Judge Carolyn Jewett, Captain Albert Brant, addressed, in his uniform, the court.
Headed into the last summer holiday of 2024 when thousands plan to take a ferry, cancellations and delays alter many routes operated by Washington State Ferries.https://t.co/TBSgyKNUmX
â KOMO News (@komonews) August 27, 2024
The ferry captain first pointed out that his son was only accused of possessing two criminal photos, not nine (Judge Jewett reminded the defendant's father that the current session was not concerned with that matter), and then proceeded to warn the court of the consequences of imposing a bail that was far beyond his means. His son remaining behind bars on the mainland, he said, would result in him missing days of work (to visit his son) and disrupt the area's ferry service. "If I'm not working," said the captain frankly, "the ferry's not running here, okay?"
The captainâs statements so upset Eric Peter, the San Juan County Sheriff, that he posted an open letter to Washington Department of Transportation in The Orcasonian titled "Ferry Captain makes inappropriate comment/threat in SJC District Court."
Let's go straight to the core of the complaint:
I [Sheriff Eric Peter], along with multiple other colleagues, were appalled at the arrogant attitude and threatening comments made by Captain Brant that somehow his sonâs possible incarceration would somehow negatively affect our transit system in San Juan County, especially in this unstable time we are currently in with seemingly weekly cancellations of our Inter-Island Ferry.
Here we can step back and imagine someone new to town, or this part of the Pacific Northwest. What would they think upon reading, by chance, the Sheriff's public letter, which has caught the attention of WDSOT ("Washington State Ferries is conducting a formal investigation into the matter," the department told The Stranger.) The visitor would find it a touch baffling. What does the sheriff mean by "unstable time"? And what are these "weekly cancellations" about? And why does the ferry captain sound "threatening"? It's hard to put meaning into the Sheriff's distress without some background information.
At this point, we could imagine encountering this baffled visitor maybe at the bar in the Athenian Seafood Restaurant, which has an excellent view of ferries going to and coming from Bainbridge. For mood, let it be a rainy day. But this rain is unlike the kind we find in the detective series The Killing, which, despite being set in Seattle, gets the city's rain all wrongâit is so heavy and constant that it requires the shelter of an umbrella.
In this noirish settingâthe on-and-off drizzling outside; beers in frosted glasses at the barâwe would imagine explaining to the visitor that the Washington State Ferry system is currently trapped in a crisis that, for the most part, has its origin in an initiative sponsored by the local villain Tim Eyman, Initiative 695.  Â
What basically happened is this: Voters, by a significant margin, decided in 1999 to eliminate a major source of the ferry system's funding, the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET). Now we won't get into the fact that cars already have the lion's share of the state's transportation budget or the fact that the ferry system would be swifter and more efficient if it didn't have to carry cars all over the place. We will put that aside for now and just point out that I-695 set off a chain reaction that worsened other structural problems, such as aging ferries and crew members. True, BC Ferries is also facing staffing shortages, but this difficulty isn't exacerbated by underfunding. With Washington State Ferry, it's just one thing after another, and the department's fiscal turmoil has, at present, no end in sight. In fact, it could actually get worse if voters decide in November to eliminate the "Carbon Cap-and-Invest Program."Â
With this explanation, the visitor would understand why Sheriff Eric Peter interpreted Captain Albert Brant's comments about disrupting the Interisland ferry service as a real and tangible threat. The situation is already bad as it is, and Brant was heard saying: If my son is prevented from staying on my farm on Friday Harbor while waiting for judgment (guilty or not guilty of keeping and sharing images of babies and children being raped), then San Juan was going to get what it deserved. More lines, more waiting, and more of that regional rain, which Billy Campbell, the actor who, in The Killing, plays a Seattle city councilmember, suspects "might be a metaphor for tears."