What records say about career of Pierce County sheriff major under investigation
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office major being investigated by the State Patrol for allegedly driving impaired and causing a two-car collision has had a long career in law enforcement that has earned him both commendations and public criticism.
Disciplinary files released to The News Tribune show Chadwick Dickerson has helped save lives as part of a search-and-rescue team, been thanked for exemplifying compassion with the public and been recognized for his dedication to students when he worked as a school-resource officer.
Dickerson, 52, has also been reprimanded or complained about at least three times over his 25 years with the Sheriff’s Office. Those include a coronavirus kerfuffle that led to the cancellation of an out-of-state training that had already been paid for, a policy violation on timely submission of reports and a 2007 incident where he sat in his patrol car while two boys nearly drowned at Lake Tapps.
His record will likely have no bearing on the outcome of the State Patrol’s investigation of the July 12 wreck near Graham that injured a 57-year-old woman and left Dickerson with fractured ribs and bruising. Dickerson was arrested the day after the collision and booked into jail on suspicion of felony vehicular assault.
Dickerson spent a night in jail and then was released on the order of Superior Court Commissioner Barbara McInvaille. A scheduled arraignment was canceled after prosecutors decided to continue reviewing evidence before deciding whether to charge him with a crime.
The investigation is ongoing, and troopers don’t have a set timeline for its completion. In the meantime, Dickerson remains on paid administrative leave. His annual salary is $184,772.81.
As far as his driving record goes, he appears to have received one ticket in Fife which was dismissed in 2023 after Dickerson said in Municipal Court that someone else had been driving. Records show a license-plate reader clocked his 2015 Dodge Ram speeding at 36 mph in a 20 mph school zone. He has no criminal history.
His disciplinary files, which are still being released to The News Tribune in installments, as well as prior newspaper reports shed light on Dickerson’s history of conduct as a law enforcement officer who was appointed in January by Sheriff Keith Swank to among the highest ranks of the office. In his absence, Lt. James Loeffelholz has been temporarily assigned to lead the Criminal Investigation Division and the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit.
Efforts to reach Dickerson by phone for this story were unsuccessful.
Dickerson joined the Sheriff’s Office in August 2000. He worked as a patrol deputy and a student-resource officer for 11 years before he was assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division as a narcotics investigator. He was promoted to detective in 2014 and later detective sergeant. He also spent a decade as a medic in the U.S. Army and the Washington Army National Guard.
Major Dickerson’s disciplinary cases
His most recent disciplinary case came in July 2021. A Pierce County Emergency Management program director emailed then-Lt. Cynthia Fajardo to complain that Dickerson had violated a county policy that required employees who were not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to wear a face mask at work when he attended a task-force training.
Dickerson, who wasn’t vaccinated, later tested positive for the coronavirus. A planned training in California for five other people had to be canceled as a result. Later, a different task-force member exposed employees to coronavirus, and the two incidents enraged the program director.
“This is unacceptable,” the program director wrote in an email to Fajardo and five others. “Besides common courtesy, this conduct boggles my mind as to the level of crass stupidity demonstrated by both individuals.”
At the time, Pierce County was recording between 40 to 100 new COVID-19 cases a week. It was more than a year into the pandemic, and more than 600 deaths had been attributed to the virus in the county.
Fajardo found that Dickerson didn’t have any knowledge he’d been exposed to COVID-19 when he attended the training, but he did violate the county mask policy. She said Dickerson acknowledged as much and apologized, and he was verbally counseled.
In a written statement about the incident, Dickerson explained that two days before the July 13 training, he returned home with his wife and child from a road trip to Las Vegas. His wife said she wasn’t feeling well on the drive home and had a bit of a cough, but she initially did not have a fever. He said his group wore masks on the trip when they were required, and no one else had symptoms.
Dickerson said the training was indoors and outdoors, and he didn’t see any other attendees wearing a mask. Three days later, his wife took a COVID test that came back positive, and Dickerson tested positive the next day.
Late police reports
The next most recent disciplinary case was from September 2011, according to The News Tribune’s archives, when a person who was a convicted con artist reported being a victim of a crime and Dickerson failed to properly follow up.
Earlier that year, the person called the Sheriff’s Office to report items missing from their car and that they suspected a man had forged two prescriptions using their name. No police report was written, and the person later filed a civil rights claim with the county.
“Based on this person’s past . . . I wasn’t comfortable right away writing a report,” Dickerson said in an interview with Internal Affairs investigators. “I don’t want to be part of helping someone file a false claim on a homeowner’s insurance policy or on a vehicle policy or anything like that.”
Dickerson said he had questions about the person’s statement and left a message with them, but when they didn’t call back, Dickerson decided not to file a report. Supervisors later determined Dickerson should have filed a report within a week of getting the person’s original statement. Dickerson told investigators he learned from the experience and said he should have contacted his supervisor about the situation.
Discourtesy during near drowning
One of Dickerson’s earliest disciplinary cases occurred in summer 2007 when he was a deputy. On a hot July day at Lake Tapps, according to a News Tribune story, a woman launching her boat heard two boys yelling for help from the swimming area.
On her way over to see what was happening, she noticed a Dickerson sitting in a Sheriff’s Office SUV. At the beach, she saw women wading into the water, forming a human chain to reach the boys struggling in the water. They were eventually rescued, and the woman went over to talk to Dickerson.
Dickerson later told Internal Affairs investigators that he saw the kids swimming but didn’t get the sense they were in trouble. He recalled telling the woman: “It’s them or me, and it’s not going to be me.” And: “My life is more important.”
A sergeant recommended Dickerson be disciplined for discourtesy, unsatisfactory job performance and violating the fundamental objectives of public service, but higher-ups disagreed and only reprimanded him for being blunt with the woman who spoke with him.
The incident raised questions about whether deputies have a duty to act in similar situations. Then-spokesperson Ed Troyer told The News Tribune the office expected a deputy to do whatever they can, but with a gun, a bullet-proof vest and boots, they are not equipped to immediately jump in. Dickerson told an administrative services chief that the bigger issue was a lack of lifeguards on duty.
At the time, Dickerson told investigators that he had one previous complaint for discourtesy.
Commendations
Dickerson has received at least nine commendations between 2007 and 2025 and four more positive performance reports. There are likely more that have yet to be released to The News Tribune. When The News Tribune reported on his reprimand from the near-drowning in 2007, it noted he had seven positive citations in his file.
Most recently, Dickerson was commended in April for driving to Missoula, Montana with Swank and detective Joshua Mills to help a terminally-ill young man fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.
The 21-year-old man was a family friend of Mills, according to a commendation report, and he was diagnosed with terminal cancer after recently getting married. The man’s father works for the Tacoma Fire Department, and he had moved to Missoula for treatment. There, Swank, Dickerson and Mills swore him in as a Pierce County deputy, gave him a uniform, a badge and a commission card.
He died a few days later. A commendation report routed through Internal Affairs said the actions of Swank, Dickerson and Mills exemplified the office’s core value of compassion. It said they spent much of their personal time and money to help someone live out their dream.
“There are no words for this selfless act of kindness,” Undersheriff Cynthia Fajardo wrote. “I personally know that this was not done for limelight or self-gratification. It was to fill a dream that all knew could never come true. But you all did! The last memories the family will have will be a smile and a dream fulfilled. Thank you.”
Another notable performance report came in November 2010 when Dickerson was one of five people on the county’s search-and-rescue team who helped save the life of a 4-year-old boy.
A man who’d gone off-roading with his son near Evans Creek reportedly rolled his vehicle and was 16 hours overdue to return home. Searchers found the man dead from exposure near his vehicle, and the boy was found unresponsive in a puddle nearby.
“The boy was rushed from the scene and passed to Deputy Dickerson who wrapped him in his coat for warmth. He was passed to awaiting (sic) medic unit and transported to Mary Bridge Hospital,” a sergeant wrote in a report.
“Without the actions of all these units, the boy would have surely perished,” the report continued. “They are to be commended for the swift and determined action they took so that a mother was reunited with her son.”
Dickerson also has been recognized for his work as a school-resource officer. In September 2007, he was commended for his thorough work on a case involving a Spanaway Lake High School student who was the victim of an apparent stalker from Canada. A sergeant wrote that Dickerson considered students at the school to be “his students” and that he put extra time into the case because of his interest in his duty to them.
Other commendations have come over the years for Dickerson’s work on cold cases, a drug investigation that brought deputies and the FBI to Modesto, California in 2018 to arrest people trafficking methamphetamine and other search-and-rescue incidents. A former chaplain for the Sheriff’s Office once wrote a letter to former Sheriff Paul Pastor that Dickerson goes a step beyond what he expects from a deputy at a scene with traumatized civilians.
“When he leaves a scene, he leaves behind the sense that he and the department genuinely care about these individuals and their grief,” the chaplain wrote in 2008.
