Prosecutors issue decision on former Pierce sheriff candidate suspected of misdemeanors
A former candidate for Pierce County sheriff will not be prosecuted after detectives investigated him for allegedly impersonating a sheriff’s sergeant to file an internal complaint against another candidate.
Thurston County prosecutors said Sept. 19 there wasn’t sufficient evidence.
Craig Gocha is a former Sheriff’s Department deputy who was running for sheriff before being knocked out of the race in the August primary. Gocha was investigated by detectives in the three months before the election.
A complaint against chief of patrol and sheriff candidate Patti Jackson was made under Sgt. Mike Csapo’s name, another candidate in the primary, according to an incident report.
Csapo told detectives he never filed it, and investigators subsequently tied the IP address associated with the complaint to Gocha’s Comcast account.
Investigators suspected that Gocha, 37, had assumed Csapo’s identity to make the complaint, writing in their report that doing so went beyond “political gameplay” and could damage the careers and election campaigns of Csapo and Jackson.
Detectives wrote that they found probable cause for impersonating a law enforcement officer and cyber harassment of Jackson, both misdemeanors.
A charging decision in the case went to the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office after the Aug. 6 primary, which Gocha, Csapo and two other candidates lost to Jackson and Keith Swank, a former Seattle Police Department officer. Pierce County prosecutors asked Thurston County to handle the decision because it involved candidates for county office.
Tara Tsehlana, spokesperson for the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said the afternoon of Sept. 19 that the office wouldn’t pursue charges against Gocha.
“With the evidence presented to our office, the State does not believe there is sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed,” Tsehlana said, quoting the attorney assigned to review the case. “As such, we are declining to file charges at this time.”
In a phone call Friday morning, Gocha declined to comment on the investigation or the charging decision.
Gocha previously denied the allegations when detectives informed him he was a suspect. Records state he told detectives Aug. 8 that he didn’t send the email complaining about Jackson in Csapo’s name and called it “petty.”
“I ran a clean campaign and it’s not something I would do at all,” Gocha reportedly said.
Sheriff Ed Troyer said in a phone call Friday that the investigation needed to be done. He said he hadn’t spoken to Gocha in the week since The News Tribune published the allegations.
“I’m happy that he’s no longer involved in the election,” Troyer said of Gocha. “It makes it less messy.”
Gocha has worked in law enforcement for 11 years, including as a police officer in Puyallup and Yakima and for the Sheriff’s Department. According to his campaign for sheriff, he left the department in 2021 to spend more time with his family. He has since worked for Amazon and now works for Expedia, according to his LinkedIn page, where he said he chairs the global development committee for veterans.
The complaint in question was found to be baseless by a detective sergeant in internal affairs and Undersheriff Brent Bomkamp. It alleged that Jackson had violated policy because her LinkedIn profile photo showed her in her department uniform and linked to her campaign website.
“I looked at her posts from the last four months and found no posts where she was announcing that she was running for sheriff,” the incident report states. “Her profile picture is a headshot with no distinguishable department uniform or equipment.”
This story was originally published September 20, 2024 at 12:35 PM.
