Sheriff Swank said woman called 911 over his views. Call records say otherwise
Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank told his nearly 36,000 followers on X last month that a woman didn’t like what he and others had to say at a public meeting, so she called 911 to have the police come arrest them.
Public records show the woman was certainly upset about Swank’s language during a Charter Review Commission meeting, and she mentioned Swank’s words to a dispatcher, but that’s not why she called 911.
The woman called to report that she felt harassed in the parking lot outside, according to audio of the 911 call and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) logs from June 17. She claimed she had been threatened and said she was afraid she would be run over by someone she exchanged words with.
As the 911 call went on and the dispatcher took her information while she stood inside the Pierce County Annex building in South Tacoma, she became concerned that someone was listening to her conversation.
“I think she’s with the, she’s with Sheriff Swank’s people,” the caller said. “I’m telling you, this is not funny, this is scary. He, he said last, he said last Monday that people who were protesters are terrorists.”
Two officers from the Tacoma Police Department responded to the Pierce County Annex, where the Charter Review Commission was deciding on whether to send proposals to the November election ballot.
Officers arrived at 7:12 p.m., about 20 minutes after the call, and determined that public comment got contentious, and several people got into a verbal altercation, according to the CAD logs. The 911 caller reported being called names by a woman, but officers found that no threats were made. The officers walked the caller to her car so she could leave safely.
At 7:37 p.m., Swank posted on X: “I’m at the Charter Review Commission meeting. A woman (a confused leftist) didn’t like what we normal people said so she called 911 to have Tacoma Police Department come here and arrest us. Of course, the cops didn’t arrest anyone, but this is an example of what the left does when they don’t agree with you. BTW: if you live in Pierce County, why aren’t you here?”
Swank did not respond to a request for comment for this story. A phone call to the 911 caller went unanswered Wednesday.
After Swank posted about the 911 call, an X user replied to his post and said the caller followed her out to her truck. The X user said she mocked the woman and laughed at her in the meeting, and she chose to leave because she wouldn’t be able to stay quiet after her “nonsense.” The X user said she yelled at the other woman in the parking lot, and the woman then called the police.
The June 17 meeting was bound to be controversial. It was the first meeting after Commissioner Justin Leighton introduced a last-minute change to an already hot-button proposal to switch Pierce County to a system of appointed rather than elected sheriffs. He went a step further, suggesting that the proposal end Swank’s four-year term in office on Jan. 1, 2027. That idea drew sharp criticism from some commissioners, but it advanced to the ballot on a 12-9 vote.
Swank attended many of the meetings and spoke during public comment to oppose charter amendments. That included speaking out against a proposal to update Pierce County’s nondiscrimination language to include prohibiting discrimination on the basis of national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy and veteran status among other protected classes.
At the June 8 meeting, Swank said the amendment — which commissioners later sent to the ballot — discriminated against “normal people” and that it reflected George Orwell’s 1984. He went on to suggest using what he called “normal words” to describe people, calling homeless people “transient hobos” and people with substance-use disorders “drug addicts” and “crackheads.”
When the woman who called 911 on June 17 spoke during public comment that night, she said Swank’s “normal words” were incendiary and disrespectful. She said his comments from the June 15 meeting were insulting. At that meeting, Swank said protesters should be called terrorists, called climate change a hoax and said transgender women should be called men.
The woman had her own angry, perhaps rude words for Swank and people who came to support him.
“I feel like I’m on a playground with a bunch of people who are part of the Sheriff Swank and his sniveling sycophants,” the woman said. “And I can tell you that his normal words on Monday were insulting. Not only to me but to the very people that are his minions. Yes you even you, lady, with the fish face.”
Within less than a minute of her testimony, shouting could be heard in the room, and a commissioner had to bring the meeting back into order. The woman went on to speak in support of an amendment to establish independent oversight of the Sheriff’s Office.
After she was done, conversation among the public continued, and a commissioner asked them to take it outside the room.
The woman later told the 911 dispatcher that when she sat down after her testimony, a woman got up, called her stupid and walked out of the room. The dispatcher asked if they exchanged words.
“Oh yeah, she said what do you think you’re doing here?” the woman said. “And I said I’m taking a walk in a public parking lot. She says what do you think you’re doing here? What did you do? Were you following me? And I was like I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The woman said the other person got out of a truck and approached her. She said she began to walk away, and the person hurled expletives at her. At one point, she said, the person revved her truck, and she became scared that she was going to be run over. But the person just drove out of the lot.
