Health Officer Berry Sics Sheriff on Critic for Political Cartoon

by Jeff Tozzer | Sep 23, 2026 | General

The article below is reprinted with permission from the Clallam County Watchdog. It is the latest exposé the Watchdog has published about Dr. Allison Berry. Since Berry is Health Officer for both Clallam and Jefferson counties, her behavior and actions in Clallam County are equally relevant to our community.

Our previous reprint from the Watchdog — How Close Clallam (and Jefferson) County Came to Testing Illegal Drugs for Users — describes the impacts of Berry’s Harm Reduction program for substance abuse in Clallam County, and her efforts to obtain a mobile drug testing unit despite liability which could have bankrupted the county. The mobile unit would have been deployed in Jefferson as well as Clallam County.

This article documents Health Officer Berry’s abuse of her position, part of a pattern in which local officials use law enforcement to harass their critics. Author Jeff Tozzer says:

“Watch a Board of Health meeting. Berry giggles through testimony about overdoses, needles, and kids in parks. She rolls her eyes. She talks past people who live with the mess her programs leave on the ground… Berry can be openly contemptuous of the people in the room.”

And according to Tozzer’s reporting, while Berry smirks and is dismissive of those her programs are harming, she “used county resources to target a critic.” Her actions reflect an increasing effort playing out on a global scale to not only censor dissent that challenges those in positions of power, but — in violation of our First Amendment rights — to criminalize it. She gets away with her abusive behavior because her Board of Health enables it instead of disciplining her — just like in Jefferson County.

— The Editors

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When Disrespect Is Policy, a Meme Becomes a Police Matter

Allison Berry called the sheriff over a Facebook post.
The sheriff found no crime.

 
Allison Berry wants deputies to referee her critics. Board of Health Chair Mike French sits beside her and laughs through the same public comments. The people who pay both of them get the smirk—and a police report.

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Clallam County Health Officer Allison Berry called the Sheriff’s Office because she did not like a Facebook post.

That is not a paraphrase. That is Case 2026-00013825.

On August 4, 2026, Berry contacted the Sheriff’s Office about “potential threats” from Jesse Farmer. A friend had sent her a screenshot. The meme had two panels. The top showed Berry smiling in a group during the COVID years—no masks, no distancing—while her office was still pressuring businesses over vaccine passports, distancing, and masking. The bottom showed a child and a dog with their heads in a homemade breathing box labeled “YOUR CHILD.” The caption: “These people are still in your community. It’s time to get rid of them.”

Berry wanted to know if the meme “crossed the line”—meaning, was it a crime.

What the sheriff found

Then Estep called Berry. The CAD log is blunt:“I ADVISED ALLISON OF MY CONVERSATION WITH JESSE AND THAT HE WAS PRACTICING HIS RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH… SHE WILL CONTINUE TO UPDATE THE SO ON ANY THREATS SHE MAY RECIEVE… I SPOKE WO HER ABOUT COURT ORDERS AS WELL.”

And: “JESSE IS PRACTICING HIS 1ST AMENDMENT RIGHTS. THERE IS NO CRIME.”

That is the whole law-enforcement product of Berry’s complaint. A sergeant spent a workday on the phone and typing up reports so a county official could test whether a political cartoon was arrestable.

Berry’s answer: blame the critic

Berry’s answer to Farmer was not an apology for using deputies as a speech referee. It was a lecture:

“I have not spoken publicly about this recent incident. The only reason so many people are aware of your conduct is because you yourself regularly post about it on your platforms. If there has been any damage to your reputation from this incident, it has been by your own doing.”

She called the sheriff. He documented it. Then she blamed Jesse Farmer for the public knowing about it.

On September 2, 2026, CC Watchdog emailed Berry at her county address seeking comment on the harassment complaint, including any threats she reported perceiving and any context she believed relevant. The note gave her a Sunday-noon deadline and said that if she did not respond, the article would state she was contacted and did not provide comment. She did not respond.

A county habit, not a one-off

It happened on Towne Road. When landowners who wanted a public road turned into something closer to a private driveway emailed Commissioner Mark Ozias that they “need help” with a critic of Towne Road, Ozias did not tell them to file a routine report and wait in line. He pulled in the Sheriff’s Office and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The investigation of Towne Road supporters ran nearly a month on allegations of harassment, intimidation, bullying, and stalking that never produced the case the landowners wanted. The critic was Jeff Tozzer and Clallam County Watchdog. The story is still up: “We need help,” family begs county.

It happened with Charter Review Commissioner Jim Stoffer. A resident called him a name during public comment. Stoffer wanted armed security. His friend, Commissioner Ozias, arranged an armed guard for Stoffer. Taxpayers paid Security Services NW $57.50 an hour to protect Stoffer while the county talked about layoffs and deficits.

It happened in the courthouse hallway. After resident John Worthington used public comment to challenge Commissioner Mark Ozias, Ozias’s wife, Lisa Boulware, followed him out of the meeting and confronted him. Worthington described it as an “attack from behind.” An eyewitness said she was the aggressor. County leadership did not treat that as harassment, even though it was caught on camera.

That was not her first turn at the microphone. On January 30, 2024, Boulware used public-comment time to address the audience instead of the Board, identified herself as Ozias’s wife, and tore into residents for their “perceived grievances.” She cursed. Commissioner Mike French thanked her. He did not stop her, did not remind her of the three-minute rule applied to critics, and did not send a sergeant to ask if her words “crossed the line.”

The rule in county government is simple. If you are aligned with power, you may scold the public in the chamber or in the hall. If you criticize power, you may get a case number.

Being insulted at a public meeting was enough to put a guard in the room. Wanting a public road left public was enough to loop in the prosecutor’s office. Following a commenter into the hallway was not enough to draw a warning. Seeing a meme was enough to generate a case number for Allison Berry.

When county officials want protection, law enforcement is on speed dial. When residents want officials to listen, they get the smirk.

The smirk is the policy

That is the man who chairs the body that is supposed to supervise the health officer.

Residents pay these salaries. Public records showed Clallam paying Berry $137,007 in 2020 (under her prior name, Unthank) and $161,735 in 2021. Jefferson County separately contracted her in 2021 at $63,291 a year. She still works part time at Jamestown’s clinics. None of that buys the public the right to be treated like a nuisance when they object to policy. It also does not buy Berry a personal deputy.

The double standard is the point. Berry can be openly contemptuous of the people in the room. French can model that contempt from the chair and call it leadership. A resident posts a harsh political collage, and suddenly there is a deputy, a body-worn camera recording, a case number, and a conversation about court orders.

When asked for comment on the record, Berry had nothing to say.

The statute Berry did not use on herself

She alleges failure to perform statutory duties, failure to control infectious disease, gross negligence, malfeasance, and incompetence. She also flags Berry’s “diversionary tactics” toward people giving testimony.

That filing does what Berry’s police call did not: it uses the statute written for this office. RCW 70.05.050 lets the Board remove a health officer for cause after notice and hearing. RCW 70.05.060 says the Board has to enforce public health laws and act on conditions that require intervention. RCW 70.05.070 says the health officer must control infectious disease, keep sanitary conditions, and abate nuisances.

A Facebook caption is not a nuisance. Needles in a playground are.

Human Resources and the Board of Health should treat Baker’s request as what it is: a demand that the county apply the same seriousness to Berry’s fitness that Berry tried to apply to Farmer’s speech. If smirking through bereaved families, reframing accountability as a wish that people “get AIDS and die,” suggesting that organizations cleaning up our public spaces are committing theft, calling deputies over protected political speech, and declining to answer for it is compatible with the job, the Board should say so on the record after a hearing. If it is not, the statute already tells them what to do.

Who used what

The habit remains: officials who cannot stand being mocked still expect the public to sit still while they mock the public.

Depolarizing Our Community One Conversation at a Time:
Finding Our Braver Angels

by Sol Riou | Sep 13, 2026 | General

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”
— Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858, as candidate for US Senate

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Again, America finds itself plagued by political polarization, destroying relationships and impeding our elected government officials from enacting legislation on critical civic issues. In 2008 Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing brought this serious problem to our attention in their book, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” They illuminate the story of how America came to be a country of swelling cultural division, economic separation, and political polarization.

And since 2016, Presidential election political polarization, also known as “affective polarization,” has increased significantly. Polarization research at Dartmouth College, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania study “affective polarization,” defined as “the idea that Americans have a positive connection with their own party and hatred of the opposing party.”

An Outrage Industrial Complex and conflict entrepreneurs monopolize civic discourse to the detriment of our contemporary culture. Our local community is no exception.

A Community Divided by Polarization

I moved to Port Townsend in late 2018 and was shocked by the homogeny of opinions expressed in our community during the early Covid years.

Living in Spain from the ages of 20 to 23, married to a Spanish man, I had experienced Fascism directly. In America decades later, I was shocked that our government would suggest — and that my family and neighbors would comply without questioning — with the closure of schools and businesses.

Yet, I didn’t dare to bring up the question of why our government was choosing draconian methods to address a health problem with the claim that it was for our own good. Living during these months of the lockdown viscerally took me back to those years of living under the dictatorship of General Franco.

In March of 2020, I asked a neighbor to help me bring home a table that I had purchased and paid for the day before Governor Inslee’s statewide “Stay Home-Stay Healthy” order. The table was outside, exposed to the elements, at the “Waste Not Want Not” store with my name on it. He scolded me saying, “Of course not! Getting your table is not an essential activity and is forbidden during this lockdown.”

The fear and hostility between political views did not end when we were again able to leave our homes. Often friends shared stories of being scorned and/or avoided due to their refusal to mask or get vaccinated.

My best friend noticed that she was no longer invited to social gatherings in her neighborhood after taking a walk on her block. In the summer of 2021, she was unmasked, walking with a masked neighbor, when they approached another masked woman who lived in the neighborhood. Her walking partner greeted the woman by introducing the two of them, then to my friend’s surprise announced that my friend was not only (obviously) unmasked, but that she was unvaccinated.

Another friend shared an experience of being verbally abused by neighbors in the Kala Point sauna. After seating herself in the steam-filled room, she recognized the couple sitting next to her as neighbors and greeted them saying, “Hi! You probably don’t recognize me, but I live just down the street from you in the blue house on the corner.” They recognized her then as the owner of the home with a “Trump for President” sign. The woman, with her hand over her mouth and eyes opened wide, gasped. The man began a tirade of verbal abuse: “Oh you! The racist, bigoted, fascist hate monger.” The woman then joined in adding more stereotyped judgmental labels.

Then in August of 2022 came the local partisan polarization around transgender rights. A new friend reported that she had attended a rally downtown, curious to understand why a woman was banned from our city pool.

Colleagues working with her in various community organizations, whom she had considered friends, were among the crowd yelling accusations at her solely because she stood among the crowd who had gathered to listen to the woman explain her side of why she was banned from the pool. She witnessed verbal aggression that escalated into shoving by transgender activists towards others in her crowd. Port Townsend police officers stood by watching. Due to the hostility that she experienced at this rally, she ended several friendships and resigned volunteer positions in local nonprofit organizations.

This conflict continued to escalate over social media throughout the month, leading to Water Street being closed on Labor Day weekend, compromising local businesses.

I personally experienced hostility and negative stereotyping during my time campaigning in Jefferson County for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President, even before Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump. I was mocked and ridiculed repeatedly at the Farmers Markets of Port Townsend and Chimacum. Often invited into a conversation by a friendly question, I would soon hear: “You are crazy to support a man with a worm in his brain”… “I am an environmental attorney who has testified in front of Congress, and you don’t know what you are talking about”… “You are killing innocent people by supporting an anti-vaxxer”… or “I am an immunologist so I can tell you that you are listening to a bunch of charlatans.”

In mid-November, I experienced a local judge colluding with this political norm in her closing statement. I had requested a protection order against a neighbor who disturbed my entertaining a friend for dinner with screaming, cursing and banging at my door, demanding that I turn off my porch light. In denying my request, this judge stated, “It is perfectly understandable that your neighbor would be upset that her candidate for President did not win the election and that she would behave in this way towards you.”

I was outraged, but this motivated me to bring Braver Angels to my hometown.

Promoting Courageous Citizenship

This online community became my refuge. In Braver Angels, I found an online source of programming that platformed healthy, intelligent individuals engaged in respectful dialogues across political differences. The panels on current issues featured informed people across the nation covering a wide political spectrum. The debates on the current hot topics informed me of nuances and complexities that I was unaware of.

Most importantly, I could speak freely and fully without fear. I learned that there were others across the nation curious and eager to learn, like myself. This proved essential for my mental health during these years of social isolation.

“Differences between religion, region, and philosophy nearly crippled the project of the American Founding in the cradle. But our Founding Fathers came to trust one another in the face of adversity, enough to ‘pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor’ in a mutual risking of life and limb to secure the promise of liberty for their descendants. That, indeed, is a triumph of love across difference etched into the edifice of our American heritage.”
— John Wood Jr., Braver Angels National Ambassador

Braver Angels seeks to change hearts, not minds. Since 2016, Braver Angels volunteers have been depolarizing America one conversation at a time. Understanding that depolarizing America begins with depolarizing ourselves, they offer in-person and online workshops that teach and practice depolarizing skills.

Our research shows, and I have found it true for me, that these workshops help participants: to feel better understood, to better understand others who have differing views, and to be more comfortable talking and listening to people expressing different opinions. As much as we would like solutions to be simple, they aren’t. Life is complex and complicated. Understanding the nuances of a situation, being open to understanding the ramifications of our choices takes time and willingness to be wrong.

Isn’t this what a healthy civic culture looks like?  Regardless of the level of political polarization in candidates’ discourse or social media, if we did not repeat the hostility and disrespect with our neighbors, our nation would not be polarized. This is what I aspire to personally and what I bring to the North Olympic Peninsula.

If you are curious and would like to be a little less furious, Braver Angels of North Olympic Peninsula (BANOP) has two upcoming events where you can do just that:

On September 19th, 2-4 pm, BANOP will be holding its third monthly Discussion Gathering at the Jefferson County Library at 620 Cedar Avenue, Port Hadlock. The topic is “Will Impeaching Trump Restore Democracy?”  We hope that it will bring together neighbors of many different opinions and that we will have fun exploring together our many views regarding the present political situation.

On October 1st, 1-4 pm, BANOP will offer one of our skill-building workshops, “Families and Politics” at Community United Methodist Church, 130 Church Lane, Port Hadlock. This is an opportunity to actually learn and practice skills to cultivate an attitude of curiosity. Most of us find that it is particularly difficult to accept that family members do not think or vote the same as us.

The Braver Angels organization offers a plethora of online opportunities at BraverAngels.org. You can listen to podcasts, watch YouTube recordings of previous events, engage in conversations with people around the nation and even discuss your differences in “1:1 Conversations” across political, racial and other differences.

Our democracy is in crisis not only because our government is failing us but also because we are contributing to the problem. Listening to conflict entrepreneurs, podcasters and politicians alike is not conducive to solving our social problems so long as both they and we are polarizing this nation. We bring this destructive attitude into our homes and our neighborhoods in how we discuss current issues with friends and family. We amplify polarization between political leanings and even within our own political party when we stereotype and ridicule those with whom we disagree.

In Braver Angels events, we practice The Braver Angels Way:

• We state our views freely and fully, without fear.
• We treat people who disagree with us with honesty, dignity and respect.
• We welcome opportunities to engage those with whom we disagree.
• We believe all of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.
• We seek to disagree accurately, avoiding exaggeration and stereotypes.
• We look for common ground where it exists and, if possible, find ways to work together.
• We believe that, in disagreements, both sides share and learn.
• In Braver Angels, neither side is teaching the other or giving feedback on how to think or say things differently.

I invite you to join the courageous citizenship movement of Braver Angels.

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“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
— Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861, First Inaugural Address.