Shawn Vestal: It’s the judgment, not the grudge, at issue in sheriff candidate’s firing

The hullabaloo surrounding the firing of Deputy Craig Chamberlin – the candidate for sheriff who for years represented the department on TV as “Deputy Craig” – has now entered the Ozzie Knezovich spin cycle.

Which is unfortunate, because the facts of the case are relevant to Chamberlin’s bid to become sheriff.

In large part, the dispute has played out in the media as a tit-for-tat between Chamberlin and Knezovich. The sheriff has been involved in so many of these spats that it may seem like just another tiresome, petty grudge.

Lately, after all, he has continually bickered with political foes, insulted and attacked critics, helped drive a stake into the heart of criminal justice reform efforts, and produced a stream of YouTube videos (in which he has blamed crime on African American leaders and City Council members, launched a silly offensive against the field of population-based demographics, and painted an image of Spokane as Gotham City with no Batman).

One wonders how much time he has left for sheriffing.

And yet, in the case of Chamberlin, it’s worth delving beneath that surface and considering the substance.

To put it simply, Chamberlin wrote a character reference for a man he’s known since high school, Rick Wright, who was facing federal child pornography charges. He claims that he wrote this letter, based only on Wright’s time as his daughter’s coach, without knowing the specific charges.

It also seems clear, though, that he was aware of rumors, at least, that the issue may have been related to a sex crime involving children. The reasons one might be concerned or cautious at that point would be obvious to just about anyone, let alone a sheriff’s deputy.

But Chamberlin says he made a point of not learning more before he threw his good name and, by association, the good name of his department behind the guy.

At the very least, this seems very dumb. That’s the word that a sheriff’s detective used. In a statement to internal affairs investigators, Detective Dean Meyer related a conversation he had with Chamberlin in which Chamberlin told him about the reference letter.

“Deputy Chamberlin stated that he didn’t know” the specific charges against Wright, Meyer’s statment says, “and I expressed that I thought it would be dumb to write a letter for someone if you didn’t know what that person was convicted of.”

Inspector Kevin Richey filed a report saying he overheard that conversation, and that Chamberlin had said he didn’t know what the charges were “but said he had a concern that it had something to do with ‘child pornography.’ ”

This was Nov. 5, around two months after he wrote the letter. (And Wright was awaiting trial, not yet convicted. He pleaded guilty last month.) Chamberlin would later say he didn’t know anything about the specifics of Wright’s charges until Nov. 23, when he learned there would be an internal investigation.

In an interview Tuesday, Chamberlin insisted he had no idea of the charges against Wright, nor did any other team parents. He said that even the speculation from other parents tended to be about the possibility that Wright said or done something inappropriate – nothing like child pornography.

“I had no clue,” he said. “That’s the last thing in the world I expected that he’d be charged with, was anything related to that.”

During the course of the investigation, he acknowledged repeatedly that he had made a mistake.

“If I had this to do over and I received that letter from Rick, I would’ve asked Rick what, what are your charges … what are you being accused of?” he said. “I failed to do that because I thought it was going to put me in a very awkward position.”

At a later point, he said that had he learned the truth, “I would not have even considered writing him a letter.”

So the letter was an error in judgment of no small significance. More troubling, though, is the fact that it’s very hard to read the hundreds of pages in Chamberlin’s personnel file and conclude that he was being straight about what happened.

To begin with, Chamberlin says he was asked by Wright, in August , to write him a letter of reference. Chamberlin said Wright’s request was “very vague” and did not detail the nature of problems, though he also indicated it might have included a reference to “allegations.”

Through the course of the interviews, what Chamberlin says about the contents of the letter is very fuzzy, but it’s clear there was something in it that bothered him. Chamberlin said he ripped it up and threw it away because he didn’t want his daughter to read it. He says he didn’t respond to the request at that point.

A month later, Chamberlin said, he noticed the ripped-up letter in his trash, and reached out to Wright to ask if he still needed a reference. He said yes, and Chamberlin provided it.

It included this line: “In all honesty, I was beyond surprised to hear the accusations against Rick and made it a point not to investigate the accusations or get involved whatsoever.”

He told investigators that by “the accusations against Rick” he was referring to the rumors among team parents that there was some kind of child sex crime involved, according to the investigative files.

What he knew, precisely, is impossible to pin down. What’s obvious from the IA investigation, though, is that he knew enough to be wary.

In his final disciplinary determination, Knezovich referred to many contradictions and inconsistencies in Chamberlin’s account, including when and how often he talked to other team parents – as well as the fact that some of the other witnesses in the case changed their stories.

Chamberlin has complained that Knezovich is going after him because the sheriff has endorsed a different candidate in this fall’s election. The sheriff, who chases the last word in an argument like a farm dog chases a pickup, has gone public repeatedly to insist that it is actually Chamberlin who is playing politics and to spread some of the most sordid elements of Chamberlin’s personnel file far and wide.

The meat of the matter, though, lies in the questions of judgment raised by Chamberlin’s firing. It is very difficult to imagine him doing what he did while knowing only what he says he knew.

But if he was indeed telling the truth – some kind of shifting, confusing, contradictory truth – and if he did indeed write that letter with absolutely no idea whatsoever about the possible nature of the charges against Wright, then it’s his discernment and decision-making that’s at issue.

At the very least, as his colleague so succinctly noted, it was dumb. Whether that justifies the sheriff’s scorched-earth campaign against him is another matter.