Pierce County voters might decide this fall on appointing sheriff again
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Proposed amendment for appointed sheriffs could go to a vote in November general election.
- Proposal adds more qualification requirements for sheriff, including experience.
- County executive would appoint and council confirm, enabling removal without recall.
A proposal that would have Pierce County voters decide this fall whether to revert to a system appointing the sheriff rather than electing the county’s highest-ranking law enforcement official has cleared its first hurdle.
In its current form, the proposed amendment to the Pierce County Charter — the county’s equivalent of the Constitution — would also create minimum qualifications for the sheriff. This includes 10 years of experience in law enforcement, at least five of which must have been in a supervisory or command-level position. The sheriff would also have to maintain their certification as a peace officer in the state.
Appointing the sheriff would be the responsibility of the Pierce County executive, to be confirmed by a majority vote of the Pierce County Council.
The proposed amendment has a long way to go to be placed on the November general election ballot. More public meetings with input from residents, suggested revisions and two votes by the 21-member Charter Review Commission are ahead.
It’s part of the charter review process, a once-in-a-decade endeavor to mull changes to county government. The commission includes three representatives from each of the County Council’s seven districts who were elected to their posts last fall.
The deadline for any proposed amendments to be transmitted to the county auditor and sent to the ballot is June 29.
Commissioner Jake Hunter sponsored the appointed sheriff proposal. He is a District 4 representative, which includes parts of Tacoma and the cities of Fircrest and University Place. Hunter is a licensed tax practitioner who does IRS representation for taxpayers.
His proposal secured six sponsorships from other commissioners Feb. 18. It needed only four to advance. In a Thursday phone call with The News Tribune, Hunter said division over the proposal is clearly partisan, but he thinks this is the “paramount issue” the commission will decide.
Hunter explained that he disagrees with the way Sheriff Keith Swank has operated since he took office in 2025. He said amending the county charter to appoint sheriffs was the only way he could find to address the problem of a sheriff who is “potentially an existential threat to the county.”
“How much civil litigation is he going to open up for us because he doesn’t feel like he has to answer to the legislative bodies?” Hunter said.
In January, Swank spoke before a state Senate committee and told legislators he would encourage his deputies to flout state law if they passed a bill banning law enforcement from wearing face coverings. He has also expressed intentions to work with federal immigration authorities in violation of state law, though that hasn’t appeared to have happened.
But Hunter says his proposal isn’t just about Swank. He said it’s a long-term fix to a problem Swank exposed.
“This sheriff has just sort of put a spotlight on why it is necessary.”
In a phone call Friday, Swank told The News Tribune he opposed Hunter’s amendment, casting it as a waste of time. He said he didn’t think people would go for it, whether they leaned left or right politically.
“I believe that the voters should have the right to elect their sheriff,” Swank said.
Swank said he thinks the commission should work on holding the County Council and the Executive accountable, as well as making sure that the office of sheriff is “independent” and answers to the people.
“The fact of the matter is if this Hunter guy agreed with what I said, then he would be all for making sure that the position is not appointed,” Swank said. “But since he disagrees with me, he wants to get rid of me, and he wants to try to use this mechanism to usurp the authority of the voters of Pierce County.”
Swank described efforts to require police leaders to have a certain number of years of law enforcement experience as ignorant.
“I was a Seattle cop for 33 years and there are deputies in Ferry County, Washington who didn’t handle as many calls as me in 10 years time as I did in one year’s time. So this qualification about how long you’ve been a cop is a bunch of [expletive]” Swank said.
He also pointed to the former Lakewood Mayor Doug Richardson’s campaign for sheriff in 2020. He retired from the Army after 32 years as a brigadier general, The News Tribune reported. But he didn’t have any law enforcement experience.
“Here was a guy who was a general, led thousands of men and women, and you’re going to say he couldn’t lead a sheriff’s office?” Swank said.
As it stands, the Pierce County sheriff only needs to meet the state-mandated qualification to file for candidacy, which is to obtain certification as a peace officer within 12 months of assuming office.
The qualifications Hunter’s proposal would require of the sheriff is a bit different from what is outlined in a state Senate bill that would create stricter eligibility requirements for sheriffs, police chiefs and marshals, SB 5974.
That bill includes an age requirement — 25 years old — only five years of law enforcement employment rather than 10, and it would disqualify anyone convicted of a felony or gross misdemeanor. It would shorten the time sheriffs, police chiefs and marshals have to get certified to nine months, and they must have no history of conduct that would require denial or revocation of certification.
The bill would also place limits on these law enforcement leaders’ use of volunteers and create new background investigation processes for the candidates for these positions. Perhaps most controversially, it would remove them from office if the Criminal Justice Training Commission revokes their certification as a peace officer.
Support for the bill is split along party lines. Only Senate Democrats voted to pass the bill to the House on Feb. 12. That might be a preview of what’s to come in discussions over whether to send Hunter’s proposal to the ballot.
Pierce County’s history of elected, appointed sheriffs
Pierce County has swung between elected and appointed sheriffs twice in the last half-century. Most recently, in 2006, voters resoundingly approved a charter amendment that made the sheriff an elected position with a 66 percent “yes” vote, according to county election data.
That overturned a system in place since 1980, when appointing the sheriff was baked into the charter, which was adopted by the electorate that year.
The drafting of that document was born out of a movement against government corruption spurred by a corruption scandal involving the elected Sheriff George Janovich. He and six others were convicted of racketeering in a 1979 trial over a scheme to protect a group of nightclub-owning mobsters and bail bondsmen against competition. Six others pleaded guilty.
If the latest attempt to change how the county selects its sheriff goes to the ballot and voters approve it, Pierce County would join King County as the only two of Washington’s 39 counties that appoint rather than elect the sheriff. King County voters approved that change in 2020.
Hunter acknowledged that even if voters decide to move back to appointing sheriffs, the change won’t immediately affect Swank. His victory in the 2024 general election gave him a four-year term, and this amendment can’t end his time in office early.
‘Somebody who’s not a politician’
The heart of Hunter’s proposal is a system that would allow the county to fire the sheriff if things go awry.
With elected sheriffs, Hunter said residents have no recourse except for a recall election.
That is a difficult undertaking. According to the University of Washington School of Law and state law, it requires a court ruling on wrongful conduct and signatures from registered voters amounting to 25 percent of the votes cast in that official’s election (a little more than 97,700 signatures in Swank’s case), before the auditor can schedule a special election.
“I don’t know that the voters of Pierce County knew that they were voting for a sheriff who is going to cost the county a lot of money, or could potentially cost the county a lot of money,” Hunter said.
Hunter said with an appointed sheriff, the county executive could relieve them from their position, and a nationwide search could be done for a professional law person.
“Somebody who’s not a politician, somebody who’s not focused on winning elections, somebody who is focused on the safety and security of this county,” Hunter said.
Swank said he thought this was naive.
“Everything I do is political,” Swank said. “I have to go to the County Council, ask them for money, work cooperatively with them to work on the budget. We just worked together cooperatively for this one-tenth of one percent sales tax they did. Of course it’s political.”
Swank said many people voted for him because they wanted an advocate for their First or Second Amendment rights, and to stand up for them from government overreach. Appointing the sheriff, Swank said, would be even more political.
“Then it’s just the executive. The sheriff will do whatever the executive says like they do in King County,” Swank said.
As The News Tribune’s former opinion editor, Matt Driscoll, pointed out in 2021, the county has had flawed men serve as sheriffs in both systems. Four years after appointed Sheriff Mark French retired in 2000, he pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.
When Driscoll was writing about the issue, the County Council had just opted against asking voters to decide if they wanted to switch to an appointed sheriff. That decision came three months after the state Attorney General launched a criminal investigation of former elected Sheriff Ed Troyer’s confrontation with a Black newspaper carrier in his neighborhood.
Police chiefs are generally appointed, but firing them sometimes isn’t simple or cheap, and it can leave residents with more questions than answers.
When former Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore resigned in January 2025, the terms of his separation included a payout of nearly $478,000. Although his resignation came in the wake of investigations related to his use of leave and a city cell phone, officials were mum about why he needed to be paid to leave.
