Accountability the unofficial theme of sheriff forum in Adna

Lewis County Sheriff candidate Tracy Murphy told the audience on hand for a forum at the Adna Grange on Thursday evening that his recent termination from the Centralia Police Department was politically motivated.

The response came as an audience member leveled a loaded question at Murphy concerning public trust.

"How is anybody in this county, as a citizen myself, including anybody else, or our law enforcement officers, men and women alike in uniform, supposed to trust you to run this county?" asked Pat Sauter, a longtime Lewis County resident and former member of the Lewis County Civil Service Commission.

"There's a bigger picture here," Murphy responded. "There's somebody, or some people out there, that do not want me elected. There's a fear that I'm going to hold them accountable."

Claims of political motivation in Murphy's firing are so far unfounded.

Murphy did not offer evidence to back his claim beyond referring to a hidden or unknown group of "nefarious" individuals seeking to avoid accountability.

Murphy said that he was challenging his firing as wrongful termination.

According to previous reporting by The Chronicle, Murphy was terminated on the grounds that he "omitted material information and created a misleading impression" during a recent Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC) investigation as said by Centralia Police Chief Andy Caldwell. Murphy maintains that he was unable to disclose information as a deputized member of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Trust, accountability, truth and transparency took center stage during what was billed as a sheriff candidate meet-and-greet event at the grange. Altogether, those words were mentioned 35 times throughout the two-hour session.

Starting at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Adna Grange, the two-hour event hosted the four candidates registered for the race - Matt McKnight, Gabriel Frase, Daniel "Danny" Riordan and Murphy.

Adna Grocery Owner Jim Smith hosted the event and partnered with The Chronicle, which ran the question-and-answer session.

With the event taking place just a month and a half since Murphy's termination from the Centralia Police Department after a 30-year career, questions about Murphy's firing and about a Brady letter filed against him afterward were perhaps expected.

"Brady letter" is a term used for potential impeachment disclosures filed by prosecutors to highlight potential instances of dishonesty by law enforcement officers and others.

But accountability stretched beyond the recent controversy as other candidates confessed their own sins to the audience and discussed what a Brady letter truly is.

Riordan recited the circumstances around his own Brady letter, which was issued in 2018. According to Riordan, he received the letter after he was discovered to be having an affair with a subordinate.

"I stepped up, I owned it, and from that, the investigation, I was put back down from ... my sergeant position down to deputy," Riordan said, stressing that he was never untruthful during the process.

Frase and McKnight proudly confessed their own clean records and lack of Brady letters, though Frase did fess up to wrecking a brand new patrol car in the snow in the early 2000s.

McKnight briefly defined a Brady letter for the audience and what it means for a law enforcement officer. A Brady letter is attached to an officer's permanent file to disclose previous conduct that may impact legal testimony from an officer. That conduct can be used against an officer in court if the conduct is relevant. It's most commonly used to question an officer's credibility after they have lied.

"It means that in the prosecutor's opinion something happened that he needs to tell every single defense attorney for every case you've ever worked and ever will work," McKnight said. "Every defense attorney will read that letter, and they can choose to bring it up in court, and it could affect your cases."

Riordan also gave a lesson on Brady letters, specifying that in his understanding there are two forms of PID: one to disclose that an officer lied and another to disclose a policy violation.

The first kind, Riordan explained, is concerned with the truth and at times will require inclusion on a "do not call list," meaning that cases involving the law enforcement officer will not be charged out of concern for the officer's credibility. Riordan clarified that his was of the second variety - a notification of a policy violation, but not a comment on his credibility.

"All my court trials, everything that goes to court, I don't have any issues with it, so the Brady letter itself is not the end all ... to somebody's career," Riordan said.

In the spirit of truth, the candidates also responded to a question concerning transparency with the public and the media stemming from past concerns with the current sheriff's office administration.

The four candidates gave similar responses and embraced a need for more proactive communication with the public and the media. McKnight was the first to promote the idea of better using Facebook and other social media platforms to release information. He argued that field officers should be trained in how to publish news releases with essential information as quickly as possible, even from a crime scene.

Frase floated the idea of building specific relationships with trusted members of the community and the media who the department could provide with information as it becomes available. Frase saw the approach as a way to recruit the community to dismiss unfounded rumors about active investigations.

Riordan referred to neighboring law enforcement leader Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders as an example of proactive communication with the community.

"You may like him, may not like him, because he does some things, he's putting information out there for the citizens, so the citizens understand what is happening with their sheriff's office and with their community," Riordan said. "That's a huge thing."

Murphy similarly referred to the sheriff as the public face of the agency. He advocated for media training for officers in the department and promoted regular communication with the public through social media or news releases.

Other questions asked of the candidates resembled many that had been asked before and often elicited similar responses to the past. All four candidates openly condemned a recently blocked state law that would have allowed the state government to remove decertified sheriffs from office without a recall vote. All four candidates came out openly in support of the Second Amendment and against any hypothetical effort to confiscate weapons.

All four candidates linked the most prevalent crimes in the county to drug use. Riordan was the only to say that drug use and trafficking was not the No. 1 crime, instead labeling domestic violence as the most common crime. Even so, he admitted that drug use is often connected to all types of crimes, including domestic violence.

While discussing drugs, some candidates emphasized the need to enforce those drug violations locally within Lewis County, seeming to hint at claims that the local Joint Narcotics Enforcement Team (JNET) formerly led by Murphy was involved in drug enforcement outside the county.

Murphy briefly attempted to put those concerns to rest, emphasizing that local drug enforcement never left Lewis County but instead handed off cases and concerns to other agencies when those cases left the local jurisdiction.

The four candidates will next appear at a similar event hosted by the Lewis County Republican Party on Saturday, June 13, at 10 a.m. at the Olympic Gym in Chehalis.

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