What Makes a Good Sheriff?
Lewis County is choosing its next sheriff at the exact moment Washington is redefining the job.
On Wednesday, Governor Ferguson signed SB 5974 into law. It was the last bill he signed this session, and one of the most contentious.
The new law requires sheriffs to meet the same professional certification standards as the deputies who work under them. If a sheriff gets decertified by the Criminal Justice Training Commission for misconduct, the position is declared vacant.
For the first time in Washington state history, there is a formal mechanism to remove an elected sheriff who isn’t fit to serve.
The law enforcement community is split, with the most vocal being on the critical side. This is despite the bill’s main sponsor, Senator John Lovick, being a former Snohomish County sheriff himself.
In January, Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank testified before the Senate Law & Justice Committee and told legislators he didn’t recognize their authority.
He promised that if they tried to remove him, thousands of supporters would surround the county building in Tacoma. He dared them to try.
Several other sheriffs also testified against the bill, but managed to do so without threatening insurrection.
Swank’s rhetoric comes straight from the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which promotes the idea that county sheriffs are the supreme legal authority in their jurisdictions and can override state and federal law at their own discretion.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League both classify CSPOA as an anti-government extremist group. Its founder, former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, previously sat on the board of the Oath Keepers, a violent far-right anti-government militia.
Luckily, the movement is still small. When polled, only about 10% of the country’s 3,000 sheriffs express support. The vast majority want nothing to do with it.
But, that doesn’t mean the movement doesn’t exist, and I think it’s reasonable for states to take measures to protect citizens from this kind of ideology.
Opponents of SB 5974 have framed it as an unprecedented attack on elected officials, but the argument is a bit thin, because the mechanism it creates isn’t actually new.
Washington already has a Commission on Judicial Conduct that can investigate, censure, and recommend the removal of elected judges for violations.
Judges across the country are subject to disbarment and removal through professional standards boards, even when they hold their positions by election.
What SB 5974 does for sheriffs is bring them into the same framework that already applies to other elected officials who wield enormous public power. It’s common sense that if the deputies who work under a sheriff must meet professional standards, the sheriff should too.
Here in Lewis County, we know what it looks like when the sheriff’s office becomes more about politics than policing. We’ve been through that era. With Rob Snaza retiring at the end of this year, we’ll get our first chance in a decade to choose a different path.
There are at least five candidates in the race: Centralia Police Sergeant Tracy Murphy, Chehalis Deputy Police Chief Matt McKnight, retired Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Kenneth Cheeseman, Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Danny Riordan, and Deputy Justin Kangas.
Tonight, several of them will appear at a candidate forum in Chehalis.
I would encourage you to attend, because the sheriff’s office touches more of daily life in rural areas than almost any other elected position.
If you live in unincorporated Lewis County, the sheriff’s office is your police department. There is no other agency coming when you call 911. The sheriff is responsible for patrol, investigations, corrections, search and rescue, civil process, and coordination with every other law enforcement and emergency services agency in the region.
That’s a management job. A big one. And it requires a very different skill set than the one most sheriff candidates campaign on.
So what should voters actually be listening for tonight? Here are five areas we should be thinking about the most, along with a question you might consider asking.
Professional standards and accreditation
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office is not currently accredited by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. Both the Chehalis and Centralia police departments are.
The sheriff’s office was accredited back in 2011 under Sheriff Steve Mansfield, but the accreditation lapsed in 2015 when staff didn’t have the required documentation to reapply.
Snaza acknowledged the lapse when he took over and made efforts to restart the process, but the office never regained its accreditation. The process requires a comprehensive audit of virtually every facet of the agency, from use of force policies to records management to training standards, and keeping up with it takes dedicated staff time and resources that smaller agencies often struggle to maintain.
That’s a real challenge, but it’s also exactly the kind of challenge that separates a professional operation from one that’s winging it. At least one candidate, Matt McKnight, has already made accreditation a centerpiece of his campaign. The others should be asked about it too.
A question worth asking: “The sheriff’s office lost its WASPC accreditation over a decade ago. What specific steps would you take to regain it, and how would you ensure the office has the resources to maintain it going forward?”
Interagency cooperation
Lewis County’s law enforcement landscape is fragmented. You’ve got the sheriff’s office, the Centralia and Chehalis police departments, smaller municipal departments in places like Morton and Napavine, the state patrol, tribal law enforcement, and fire districts that often respond to the same incidents.
How a sheriff coordinates with these agencies matters enormously for response times, resource sharing, and public safety outcomes. In a county this large and this spread out, no single agency can do it alone.
Candidates who talk about building regional cooperation are talking about something that will directly affect how quickly help arrives when you need it.
A question worth asking: “Can you give a specific example of a time you built a working partnership across agencies, and how would you apply that experience as sheriff?”
The budget reality
Lewis County is facing structural budget challenges. The commissioners have been exploring new revenue options like cannabis sales and a public safety sales tax precisely because the existing budget can’t keep up with rising costs.
The next sheriff will inherit a department operating under real fiscal constraints, and the accreditation question is directly connected to this. Maintaining professional standards costs money, and so does failing to maintain them when liability and insurance costs rise as a result.
Washington already ranks last in the nation for officers per capita, and that problem is worse in rural counties. Candidates should be able to articulate how they plan to recruit and retain deputies, manage the jail, and maintain services without pretending the money will magically appear.
A question worth asking: “The county is facing budget shortfalls and the sheriff’s office is competing for limited resources. Where would you prioritize spending, and what would you do differently to recruit and retain deputies?”
The SB 5974 question
This is the one that will tell us the most about a candidate’s philosophy of the office. The new law, signed just two days ago, requires sheriffs to maintain professional certification and subjects them to the same accountability standards as their deputies.
Where does each candidate stand? A candidate who can engage with the law thoughtfully, acknowledging both the legitimate concerns about process and the genuine need for standards, is showing you how they’ll handle complex issues when they arise.
A question worth asking: “Governor Ferguson just signed SB 5974 into law, requiring sheriffs to meet certification standards and creating a process for removal if those standards aren’t met. Do you support this law, and why or why not?”
Community trust
The sheriff’s office should serve everyone in the county equally. That includes people who vote differently, worship differently, or look different from the majority.
When a sheriff uses the office as a platform for partisan politics, the people who don’t share those politics stop trusting law enforcement. That erosion of trust has real consequences for public safety, because people who don’t trust the sheriff’s office don’t call for help, don’t cooperate with investigations, and don’t report crimes.
In a county as politically diverse as Lewis County actually is, the sheriff has to be someone that everyone can trust to show up and do the job fairly.
A question worth asking: “How would you ensure that every resident of Lewis County, regardless of their politics or background, feels comfortable calling the sheriff’s office for help?”
There’s a version of this race that becomes a competition over who can talk the toughest, who can promise to stand up to Olympia the loudest, and who can wave the Constitution around the most convincingly.
That version of the race would be a waste of everyone’s time.
The version worth having is about who can actually run a professional law enforcement agency in a rural county with limited resources, maintain public trust across the community, and do the unglamorous daily work of keeping people safe.
Lewis County deserves a sheriff who sees the job as public service, because that’s what it is. The office isn’t a pulpit or a political platform. It’s a position of enormous responsibility in a community that depends on it more than most people realize until they need it.
SB 5974 just made it possible for the state to hold sheriffs accountable when they forget that. But the best outcome is that we elect someone who doesn’t need to be reminded.
Tonight’s forum is a chance to start figuring out who that person is. If you can make it, go. Listen carefully. Ask hard questions if given the opportunity. And pay more attention to what the candidates say about running a department than what they say about the Constitution.
The Constitution will be fine. The question is whether the sheriff’s office will be too.
I didn’t hear about this in time to make the meeting. Do you know if there’s a recording of it?
If not, which candidate in your opinion provided the most responsible answers to the questions you pose above (assuming someone asked them)?