OLYMPIA, Wash. — A bill intended to increase the standards for police chiefs, sheriffs and marshals received sharp pushback from the law enforcement leaders themselves as the legislation also paves a path for the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC) to remove them from office.
The bill, SB 5974, would increase the minimum age to hold office from 18 to 25, require a background check for candidates of an office, increase the minimum time a sheriff candidate has been in law enforcement from two years to five years, and reduce the timeframe a non-certified sheriff has to get law enforcement certification from 12 months to 9 months after an election is certified.
It also mandates training and sets limits for volunteers to a sheriff’s office and youth cadets.
In Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders’ perspective, those part of the bill are fine.
“If it didn’t have the removal factor, I would 100% support it,” Sanders said.
The removal piece of the bill would lay out in state law that if a sheriff, police chief, or marshal did not enforce state, local, or federal laws as interpreted by the relevant Supreme Court, they would be decertified by the CJTC, thus removed from office.
Bill sponsor and former Washington State Trooper and Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick says the bill levels the playing field.
“If a sheriff is decertified, he should not be allowed to continue to serve in that office. If an officer is de-certified, he’s out, so why not go through the same process?” Lovick said.
As it stands now, an election, whether standard or recall, is the only way to oust a sitting sheriff.
“If there’s really truly a sheriff that you don’t like, the process isn’t to circumvent our democracy. The process is to get a better sheriff candidate to run against them,” Sanders said.
“Yielding the position to an unelected board of individuals that is almost entirely comprised of unelected people, to me, it is undermining the democratic process,” Sanders said.
During testimony, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs noted that no sitting sheriff had ever been decertified, pointing out one sheriff had been decertified after a recall election successfully replaced them.
Lovick says he has heard from people fearful of waging a recall campaign.
“I’ve had people share with me that it’s very, very intimidating to do that, to go through that process.” Lovick said, “Bad apples, and I’m not saying there are any, they know how difficult that process will be to recall a sheriff.”
Sanders believes the difficult nature is the point of recalls, but says if lawmakers are willing to change the removal process for Sheriffs and law enforcement officers, they should be willing to do it for their own office.
“I’ve seen elected officials who escaped what should be a recall, a legitimate recall effort because the bar is so high. Let’s to it. Let’s amend the constitution and make it easier to remove a public official from office who isn’t meeting their standard,” Sanders said.
Testimony from the Faith Action Network, in support of the bill, says six states-- Georgia, Kansas, Colorado, California, Oregon and Massachusetts-- allow for their state’s respective commission to remove sheriffs and law enforcement leaders.
Lovick points to the investigative process, the appeal process, and the opportunity for cross-examination if an officer, sheriff, or other certified personnel is brought up for decertificaiton.
“[CJTC] makes a lot of these decisions all the time when we, as sheriffs and police chiefs, send them names of people who have violated their oath of office,” Lovick said.
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