I’ve been working on a detailed story regarding SPD’s Patrol
Anti-Crime Team (PACT) after receiving considerable information and documents
that appear to show the PACT has been violating some folks Civil Rights.
It is another one of those cases where SPD is doing everything
they can to keep info from becoming public. Most of the City Council Members
including those running for elected office and all of whom are aware of the
situation sure don’t have much interest in the truth being exposed about how
SPD handles “Brady Cops”.
The most recent development is this 2 Million Dollar Claim
filed by Detective Lonnie Tofsrud against the City and SPD for attempting to
bring forward possible “Brady Issues” with another Cop.
Although I have a heck of a big load of documents and information obtained from various sources SPD is responding to my PRR requests at a snail’s pace for obvious reasons.
Once I have everything I need for the upcoming story it looks
like the same old case of a complete lack of any accountability, and it just
keeps getting worse.
There is no question the local MSM took
a big bite out of the arse of Shawn Audie, and School District 81 so people can
draw their own conclusions about their coverage. The truth is had Audie not
been the Campus Security Office involved in the fracas at Ferris High School
(for which he was cleared of wrong doing and no criminal charges have been
filed against him) Audie would in all likelihood still be employed by School
District 81. The reason that is true is quite simple, Shawn Audie met all the
criterion for being a School District 81 Security Officer at the time he was
hired including being Peace Officer in good standing with the State of Washington.
The reason Audie was in good standing with the State is because the Spokane
County Sheriff’s either royally screwed up Audie’s separation from the SCSO or some
type of agreement was reached with Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich and Audie that he
would retire and fade away into the sunset, something that happens more often
than people realize. There is no disputing of the fact that Shawn Audie’s
status with the State of Washington was changed only after I brought the issue
forward to the Public on February 2, 2019.
Many of you may not be aware that the
importance of State Peace Officer Certification was the result of the rather
infamous Washington State Supreme Court Decision in Kitsap County Deputy
Sheriff’s Guild v. Kitsap County, 167 Wn. 2d 428 (2009). That case involved a lying Kitsap County Sheriff’s
Deputy named Brian LaFrance and a lawsuit brought by his union against Kitsap
County over an Arbitration decision. The Supreme Court ruled that because there
was no explicit, well defined, and dominant public policy preventing the employment
of dishonest police officers LaFrance could not be fired.
In order to establish explicit, well
defined, and dominant public policy the Washington State Legislature came up
with this which places the onus on State Law Enforcement Agencies and the
Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission to deal with lying Cops.
The WSCJTC deals with lying Cops often
but can only deal with them if the Law Enforcement Agency properly reports
under the penalty of perjury disqualifying misconduct to them, which obviously
was NOT the case with Audie.
One has to wonder why the local MSM
refuses to do their job in reporting the real facts surrounding the Shawn Audie
debacle.
Since I bought up the Brian LaFrance case, I might as well bring up the Ozzie’s second firing of Deputy Travis Smith which I have reported but local MSM has not even though they reported Smith’s first firing by Ozzie ad nausea.
It never fails I go out of town for a while stop mail
delivery while I’m gone and when I get home and mail delivery starts again I
end up with a big box full of PRR Responses, anonymous letters containing
documents and all kinds of good stuff. I thought I’d start with this story
about Ozzie’s Command Staff directing Deputy Steven M. Stipe to commit perjury,
and then directing him to write a letter to the Washington State Training
Commission regarding Shawn Audie explaining how he was directed to commit
perjury.
In case you didn’t notice right after the Inlander and Spokesman Review stories came out regarding Shawn Audie’s situation at Ferris High School, I immediately smelled a rat because I know Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich hates former Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk the former District 81 Director of Security, and District 81 Campus Resource Officer Earl Howerton also a former Spokane County Deputy so I knew good ole Oz would somehow try to grandstand the whole incident to make himself look like some kind of a hero and try and put others in a bad light. If you haven’t noticed that’s the way Ozzie works. As a matter of fact, I’m not so sure it wasn’t Ozzie himself who leaked the Audie IA Case to the press.
Sure, as heck my February 2, 2019 story caused an uproar for
my followers Ozzie, Mark Gregory and the crew at the SCSO, and things started
happening really quickly to cover some tracks.
Like any good investigative reporter, I did the obvious thing and checked to see if Audie was in good standing with the State of Washington. Ozzie knows other reporters around Spokane won’t bother following up on facts, but he knows I will, and he hates that. According to sources Ozzie really flipped his lid when I made this email public.
Look at these great quotes attributed to Ozzie in the SR
Story.
“They didn’t ask us any questions,” Knezovich said. “I don’t
know if they even did a background check.”
Knezovich also questioned the decision to hire Audie to work
around youths.
On February 12, 2019 Deputy Steven M. Stipe writes this letter to the WSCJTC, which clearly states “per command staff directive, the reason for separation was ‘retirement’. The poor Deputy signed the NOPOS under the penalty of perjury.
The fact is when District 81 hired Shawn Audie he was in
good standing as a Peace Officer in the State of Washington.
There are a couple of things to notice in Stipe’s letter,
first note that on 2/4/2019 three days after the Audie stories hit the press “Command
Staff” told Stipe to change that sucker, secondly note the last two words under
Stipe’s signature “By direction”, makes it pretty plain doesn’t it?
These are copies of the September 5, 2018 and February 11, 2019 NOPOS:
Here is the IA Report that folks in the MSM had lots to say about, if you are interested. It is a typical Tim Hines IA Case. Looks a bit odd to me and I wonder why former LA Cop and now Deputy Theodore Jacobson did not suffer the same consequences as Audie
Here are some Brian Breen quotes for this story if anyone
wants to use them:
“Let’s just put it this way,” Breen said. “I’d recommend
that the Spokane County Sheriff pay more attention to his own agency rather
than stick his nose in District 81, City of Spokane, City of Spokane Valley,
and whomever else business and do better compliance with State Law.”
And delays can breed suspicion: Brian
Breen, the cantankerous former cop who settled with the city over the Straub
public records delays, still believes favoritism is at play.
“It entirely depends upon how
much embarrassment the document or documents might cause someone,” Breen
says in an email. “Those that don’t, I get quickly. Those that do, come at
a snail’s pace.”
“They got hammered with a series
of unfortunate events,” says Tony Dinaro, who worked as a temporary
employee in the clerk’s office this year before taking a job with Spokane
County. “The clerk’s office really did run into a unique set of
circumstances staffing-wise. It was hard to make people believe things were
really that bad.”
I can’t help but wonder how in the
heck the Inlander received copies of Audie’s IA Case so darn fast when it takes
me months get documents like IA Cases from both the County and the City. This
timeline is unheard-of around here.
As an example, tomorrow I have to go
down to the Spokane County Prosecutors Office and go through pages of documents
from a request I made in November involving a Spokane County internal issue. I
have to go down there to review the documents because my CFO of over 50 years
won’t pony up the $139.49 the County wants to charge for the 377 pages of
documents.
I also wonder how much the documents
the Inlander received cost them. It is one thing for the MSM to get a response
speed break, but if I find out they are also getting a cost break then I am
going to get “cantankerous”.
Something that also causes me some wonderment is whether or not former Deputy Shawn Audie received a “Third Party Notification” that the records were going to be released to the Media, the quick time frame of the Public Records Response would seem to indicate that Audie was never offered the opportunity to object to the release. In some cases, agencies will make a “Third Party Notification” to stave off civil litigation.
“Audie remained a deputy until summer of 2018, when he
retired in lieu of termination as the result of an internal investigation.
According to the investigation documents obtained by the Inlander via public
records request.”
With Shawn Audie currently on paid
leave, after the Ferris fight stories hit the media it seems there may be even
more odd nuances associated with the fight?
Buffalo Brian Breen 