Wash. Supreme Court published opinion — 989681.pdf

Citation: Wash. Supreme Court published opinion — 989681.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
Source: Official source
Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/989681.pdf ↗

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The unprofessional and dehumanizing method in which you treat
personnel at our Sheriff’s Office has continued and become increasingly
worse to the point that several tenured members of our Guild and other
staff have recently retired or sought other employment earlier than they
wanted. We no longer have police officers wanting to lateral to our
agency like in the past. Several deputies are currently looking into the
possibility of leaving Benton County. Our agency has some of the best
and highly experienced law enforcement officers in the area, and we are
in real jeopardy of losing them.

Id. at 287-88. The letter goes on to detail Sheriff Hatcher’s selfishness where he has

placed personal benefit above the job and describes the allegations that have been

leveraged against him.

On July 20, 2020, Sergeant Erickson served a “Request for Adjudication to

Petition for Recall” on the Benton County auditor. He filed an amended request two

days later, to fix typographical and date errors. The petition consists of 26 distinct

allegations. The amended petition was served on Sheriff Hatcher on July 27, 2020. It

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For the current opinion, go to https://www.lexisnexis.com/clients/wareports/.
In re Recall Charges Against Benton County Sheriff Gerald D. Hatcher,
No. 98968-1

was transmitted to the Benton County prosecuting attorney the same day. The BCPO

prepared a memorandum of law and ballot synopsis and submitted the recall petition

and petition for approval of the ballot synopsis on July 31, 2020.

The ballot synopsis breaks down the 26 allegations into 8 distinct charges,

alleging that Sheriff Hatcher: