SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — KREM obtained several recordings and hundreds of pages of documents from the internal affairs investigation that led to the firing of Spokane County Sheriff's Deputy Craig Chamberlin in February.
Chamberlin claimed he was fired for political reasons, as he is running for sheriff against a candidate endorsed by current Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich. However, the investigative documents state he was found to have violated five agency policies, four of which would have resulted in Chamberlin's firing.
One of the reasons Chamberlin was fired was for allegedly lying during an internal investigation in a character reference letter he wrote for his daughter's volleyball coach as part of a federal child porn case.
"My fault, and bad wording on my letter that I wrote to them," Chamberlin is heard saying on a recording of the meeting where Knezovich informed him he would be terminated from the department. "I'll be the first one to fully admit that. I wrote it based on, like we spoke about before, the rumors and the speculations from the parents and I should not have done that."
However, Chamberlin initially told investigators he didn't know of the allegations against the coach when he wrote the letter, according to documents. The documents also state that Chamberlin told investigators he also didn't know that his letter was being submitted to a judge, and that he only knew that the coach was facing "legal issues," not a federal child porn case.
One piece of evidence in the investigative documents is a copy of the letter Chamberlin wrote. In the letter, he said, "In all honesty, I was beyond surprised to hear the accusations against [Coach} and made it a point not to investigate the accusations or get involved whatsoever." The investigative documents said this was proof that Chamberlin knew about how serious the charges were in the coach's case, or that he at least suspected they were serious.
Another inconsistency came in the form of an administrative report filed by a detective with the sheriff's office. In that report, the detective said that Chamberlin told him and sheriff's office Inspector Kevin Richey that he was asked to "write a reference letter for an upcoming sentencing" for his daughter's volleyball coach, again going against Chamberlin's statements to investigators. The detective also reported that Chamberlin said he didn't know what the coach was charged with.
"It really didn't help your case that much because we found more inconsistencies, a lot of inconsistencies," Knezovich can be heard saying on a recording of the meeting where he fired Chamberlin. "Even more disturbingly, we actually had witnesses changing their stories on us."
Chamberlin had also told Knezovich that he didn't remember that conversation taking place, according to the documents.
In the letter, Chamberlin also made reference to his employment as a law enforcement officer.
The detective who submitted the administrative report also said he thought Inspector Richey may use the investigation of the letter for political gain, as the inspector was considering running against Chamberlin for sheriff. He ultimately decided not to run, according to the sheriff's office.
Other violations Chamberlin was fired for include allegedly scheduling a medical procedure while he was on administrative leave, which violated agency policy requiring employees on administrative leave to be available during work hours to carry out other responsibilities.