The two men vying to be Spokane County's next sheriff have some things in common. They're both Republicans with more than two decades of experience in the sheriff's office, and each has been disciplined for misconduct.
The following accounts come from documents obtained by an Inlander records request.
WADE NELSON
THREATENED TO FIGHT ANOTHER DEPUTY
On Feb. 24, 2018, around 7:30 am, Nelson was teaching a women's self-defense course at the Sheriff's Office Training Center near the Idaho border. As he was preparing for the class, Nelson realized that deputy Shawn Audie was in the building. This concerned him because Nelson's wife, a medical examiner named Elizabeth who had recently filed a conduct complaint against Audie, was planning to attend the training that morning.
The previous January, Audie and Elizabeth had both responded to a dead body call. In a complaint filed afterward, Elizabeth described Audie as rude, hostile and unwilling to cooperate on the investigation. She said Audie stood in the way of a death scene photo she was trying to take, referred to her by the wrong job title, and was snarky and dismissive when she tried to ask him about the dead person's medication. Her complaint was sustained, and Audie received a written reprimand for "discourteous or disrespectful treatment of the public."
Fast forward to the women's self-defense class: Audie's in the building. Nelson's wife isn't yet, but she's going to be. Nelson's worried.
"You gotta remember, this guy is not a defensive tactics instructor," Nelson says now, recounting the incident for the Inlander. "He has no reason to come to this training center."
Deputy Tom Walker, who was co-teaching the self-defense course with Nelson that morning, saw Nelson come out of the training room to talk with Audie in the hallway, according to an administrative report. Nelson asked Audie to leave. Audie refused.
Walker left for the cafeteria to make coffee. Nelson and Audie followed.
Nelson asked Walker to tell Audie to leave. Walker, in the report, said he didn't feel like he had the authority to tell Audie to leave. He also didn't want to get involved in their beef. As the argument escalated, Walker told the men to knock it off and "act their ages."
The feuding deputies ignored him and continued to argue.
Nelson asked Audie to leave several more times, and Audie refused. In the report, Walker recalled Audie saying something to the effect of "remember what happened in the academy" and "something about choking [Nelson] out."
Audie's comment is notable because, in 2013, a man lost consciousness and died after Audie placed him in a chokehold during an arrest. A wrongful death trial found that Audie and the other officers involved did not use excessive force, but the jury sent a letter to the judge saying they had "reservations" about Audie's actions.
Audie, who could not be reached for comment, left the force in 2018 — four days before an internal investigation found that he'd used excessive force when he choked and kicked a man during a traffic stop in 2017.
After leaving the sheriff's office, Audie took a job as a resource officer at Spokane Public Schools. He resigned in 2019 after a video showed him pinning a Black student to the floor, his knee to the student's neck, causing the Ferris High School student to reportedly say, "I can't breathe." The district settled the case brought by the student's parents for $275,000.
In an interview, Nelson says the entire department was well aware of Audie's history, and that the sheriff's office should have done more to help him address "whatever his issue was." As sheriff, Nelson says he would push for more mentoring and peer support in the department.
"The flags were there," Nelson says. "He should have gotten the help he needed to get himself straight again."
Despite Audie's history of questionable neck restraints — and the fact that Audie made a comment about choking Nelson himself — Nelson says he supports neck restraints as a tool of law enforcement. In fact, when asked during a KSPS-TV debate earlier this month to name one police accountability measure he doesn't support, Nelson said he was against Washington's statewide ban on vascular neck restraints, otherwise known as chokeholds.
Back at the training center, Nelson asked Audie if he wanted to "get rid of his belt and stuff and go into the mat room and see how it turns out."
In the end, the tension between Nelson and Audie fizzled, and the men didn't fight.
"It wasn't like we went to fisticuffs," Nelson says. "We were just arguing."
Audie left the building and passed Nelson's wife on the way out the door. Neither said anything to each other.
An internal affairs investigation followed and found that Nelson violated the department policy on "discourteous or disrespectful treatment of any member of this department." He was required to do what's referred to as "sheriff level counseling" in the documents. Nelson says he received a written reprimand and got chewed out by Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.
As for Audie, he was disciplined for "conduct unbecoming" because of the incident, and removed from his position as a field training instructor.
Nelson says he regrets what he said, but ultimately thinks the discipline was excessive. He thinks a minor incident like that should have been handled by a sergeant and not gone all the way to the sheriff.
"It was very unprofessional and poorly handled in my opinion," Nelson says.
JOHN NOWELS
JOKED ABOUT HOW EX-WIVES SHOULD BE KILLED
In July 2019, Nowels called Spokane Valley Police Chief Mark Werner's office to discuss the status of a deputy who was unable to work because of a domestic violence protection order filed by his ex-wife.
Werner wasn't available, so Nowels ended up speaking to Werner's assistant, Kelly Matthews.
When discussing the deputy's ex-wife, Nowels made a comment about how "somebody should just kill her," according to Matthews' notes from the conversation. Nowels also said something about how all ex-wives do is cause trouble.
In a report he submitted as part of the investigation, Nowels said he didn't feel like Matthews was offended by the comment, and that he made sure Matthews understood that he wasn't serious.
The incident wasn't reported to internal affairs for four months, until November 2019, when Nowels was asked about the comments during a deposition in the lawsuit filed by deputy Jeff Thurman, who was fired for making racist remarks.
Nowels says he realized the severity of his remarks during the deposition. He subsequently told Knezovich, who told Nowels to self-report the comments to internal affairs. Nowels did the next day.
"Your on-duty conduct is reprehensible," Knezovich wrote in a letter informing Nowels of potential disciplinary action.
An investigation confirmed the details of the incident. Knezovich disciplined Nowels with a 160-hour suspension without pay. The incident was later reported in the Spokesman-Review, and Nowels has publicly apologized for it on several occasions.
"I am more than willing to stand up and say what I've done wrong," Nowels says.
Nowels says the discipline was tough to swallow at the time, but in retrospect he thinks it was appropriate. Nowels, who has been endorsed by Knezovich, says the sheriff is "spot on" when it comes to most disciplinary decisions and that he would continue to uphold that style of accountability if elected.
The department doesn't need an ombudsman's office, Nowels says, because citizens "trust the sheriff to hold these people accountable." ♦
