Exclusive: Kennewick police chief responds to county request to investigate sheriff’s ammo

Kennewick Police Chief Ken Hohenberg says it would be “bad business all the way around” if his agency were to start a criminal investigation into the Benton County sheriff’s stockpile of county-owned ammunition.

The department was asked earlier this month by Benton County commissioners to conduct the investigation after a similar request was denied by the Washington State Patrol.

But Hohenberg, who’d previously said he thought it would be inappropriate for his agency to conduct the investigation, reminded the commissioners that his officers have been involved with Sheriff Jerry Hatcher’s legal matters since last fall when a judge order them to seize all Hatcher’s guns and ammunition.

“Benton County Superior Court has directed KPD in this matter for over a year,” Hohenberg wrote in his reply this week to the commissioners. The department provided a copy of the public document to the Tri-City Herald.

“Your request is outside of our jurisdiction and any expanded involvement on behalf of the Benton County Board of Commissioners would be perceived as a conflict of interest. As such, I am respectfully declining the request,” he wrote.

Hatcher is in the middle of a recall effort filed by one of his sergeants, and backed by nearly the entire membership of the Benton County Deputy Sheriff’s Guild. The case is currently set for discussion by the state Supreme Court.

Additionally, Hatcher’s had to comply with a protection order, in place since October 2019, after his estranged wife accused him of domestic violence and intimidation tactics in their divorce case.

The judge in the case ordered Kennewick police to serve Hatcher with the papers and to work with him on seizing his weapons.

Court order

Hohenberg, in his response letter, told the commissioners that Hatcher surrendered a total 10 firearms in October 2019, including five that he brought back from a home in Montana.

In January, the department collected 15 cases of ammunition and two guns that belong to the sheriff’s office. And then last July, they collected additional ammo, though Hohenberg’s letter does not say where that came from or why it took so long to be turned in.

It’s 14,200 rounds of ammo and two firearms that are at issue with the county commissioner’s request for a criminal investigation.

The ammo cases appeared to be 4 to 5 years old, based on shipping labels, and were stored in the garage of Hatcher’s home before his wife filed for divorce.

Hatcher has said the ammunition, consisting of six different calibers, was for convenience so he could go practice shooting whenever he wanted.

He asked the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office to do an independent review earlier this year, which he says cleared him of violating any law or department policy.

Hatcher also has specifically accused Commissioner Jerome Delvin of doggedly leading the board’s effort to have the sheriff investigated criminally.

Delvin could not be reached by the Herald on Wednesday about Hatcher’s statement or Kennewick’s decision.

Jurisdiction issues

In his letter, Hohenberg pointed out that while the state patrol said a criminal investigation would fall under the jurisdiction of Kennewick police, Hatcher’s former home may have a Kennewick address but is in the unincorporated county.

He also touched on the independent review done by two Franklin County captains, which found the “amount of ammunition possessed by Sheriff Hatcher ... alarming.”

Hohenberg said if an administrative investigation has been conducted “there is a high probability it has tainted any criminal investigation depending on how the investigation was conducted by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department.”

Hohenberg earlier told the Herald that he has only heard about that investigation through the media, and has not seen the reports.

“It is truly a conflict,” Hohenberg told the Herald this week. “If (Benton County commissioners) want to find a law enforcement agency to investigate it, it certainly shouldn’t be the Kennewick Police Department and it shouldn’t be anybody within our local jurisdiction.”

Hohenberg said he is not suggesting what the county should do, but added that the commissioners could consider bringing former Richland police Capt. Al Wehner out of retirement as a special investigator. Wehner has worked on several cold cases for Kennewick police.

Wehner is no longer a commissioned officer and does not have the authority to go out and arrest people, but the longtime detective has the training and experience to do a detailed investigation, and he has presented cases to the county prosecutor for review.

Finding a retired law enforcement officer with a comparable background in criminal investigations would be much different than just going out and hiring a private investigator, said Hohenberg.

“I just know under the circumstances it would be inappropriate for the Kennewick Police Department to try to re-investigate something that it looks like Franklin County got involved in, and then we’ve been involved in since early on through being directed by Superior Court,” he said. “It just has the appearance of conflict written all over it.”

The chief also said that if his agency handled it, and Hatcher ended up criminally charged and took the case to trial, the defense attorneys likely would try to impeach Kennewick’s investigators, particularly based on how much the department has been engaged in the sheriff’s legal matters for over a year.

This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 12:30 PM.