As Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich prepares to leave office after 16 years, three people are running to fill his abnormally large shoes. Each candidate has at least 20 years of experience in the sheriff's office. One of them — Undersheriff John Nowels — has the endorsement of Knezovich himself.
It wasn't a random choice. Knezovich tells the Inlander that he has been mentoring Nowels to take his place for about six years. Knezovich has also mentored Spokane Valley Police Chief and Undersheriff Dave Ellis and Spokane Valley Assistant Police Chief Kevin Richey as potential replacements, but they ultimately decided not to run, leaving Nowels as the only choice for Knezovich's endorsement.
"John is really the only one that has the training, education and experience to do this job," Knezovich says.
Nowels is up against Wade Nelson and Michael Zollars; the top two in the Aug. 2 primary election will advance to the general in November. Both Nelson and Zollars are frustrated with current leadership and say they'll bring the change the current sheriff's preferred candidate can't — and won't — make.
Knezovich has won previous elections with broad margins, but he can also be a polarizing figure. Nowels' opponents in the race argue that voters are ready for a fresh face and that the departing sheriff's endorsement may ultimately be less of an advantage — and more of a liability.
"Changes need to happen," Nelson says.
"OZZIE'S ELECTION"
Nelson spent 20 years in the sheriff's office and has served as a deputy in a variety of departments including patrol, emergency management and marine enforcement. He most recently worked as a detective in the sexual assault unit before leaving last year. He says his biggest concerns are morale and manpower. Both have suffered in recent years, he says, and it's resulting in slow response times and an increase in crime. Nelson is the only candidate who lives in Spokane — in Browne's Addition — and says he is also interested in improving relationships between the sheriff's office and the city. City Council President Breean Beggs, who leans progressive, has expressed support for Nelson.
Zollars also has concerns about staffing and morale. He also lists fiscal responsibility as a major priority and says he'll work to eliminate excess spending. He spent 32 years as a Spokane County sheriff's deputy and has spent a similar amount of time as a volunteer firefighter. Zollars left the sheriff's office in September and took a sergeant position with the Kalispel tribal police.
Both Nelson and Zollars criticize Nowels as an Ozzie 2.0 who won't bring meaningful change to the department. As someone in a senior leadership position, Nowels had the opportunity to turn the department around but didn't, Nelson argues.
Zollars accuses Knezovich of "meddling" in the election and inserting himself into a race that ultimately isn't about him.
"I feel like this has become Ozzie's election of John Nowels," Zollars says, "because he's been grooming him for years."
Zollars claims that Knezovich has called retired sheriff's office employees who support Zollars to ask them when they became "Ozzie haters." Knezovich denies this. He says he only called one person, a close friend of his, to clarify what turned out to be untrue rumors about that person bad-mouthing the sheriff's office. (Zollars declined to provide the Inlander with the names of the people he says were contacted by Knezovich because he doesn't want to put them in a compromising position.)
Knezovich pushes back on the idea that Nowels' endorsement is the result of favoritism. Knezovich notes that he actually passed Nowels up for a promotion to sergeant several years ago. It was a "punch in the gut," Nowels says, adding that the sheriff has never treated him with favoritism and probably would have laughed at the idea of endorsing Nowels to replace him 10 years ago.
"This has nothing to do with favoritism or friendships or anything — I'm looking for the best candidate there is to fill the position of sheriff," Knezovich says.
Nowels, who has 24 years experience in the sheriff's office and was promoted to undersheriff in 2019, acknowledges that he and Knezovich are similar in many ways. He says he plans to follow in Knezovich's footsteps when it comes to being publicly accessible, holding officers and deputies to the highest professional standards, and maintaining the most professionally trained staff in the state.
At the same time, Nowels insists he isn't a Knezovich clone. He says he thinks the department can train its leaders a bit better and articulate more meaningful performance measures and standards. Those changes might not be visible right away, but he says they will help with recruiting and internal morale issues.
Before becoming undersheriff, Nowels worked in a variety of roles including patrolman, traffic property crimes detective, undercover narcotics detective and supervisor and chief criminal deputy. He currently oversees the sheriff's office investigative and intelligence division. He has endorsements from sheriffs in more than a dozen Washington counties. Nowels is a member of the sheriff's office command staff, which consists of Knezovich and three undersheriff positions. One of the undersheriffs, Michael Kittilstved, has endorsed Nowels and described him as someone committed to safety while also being "transparent, accountable and open to dialogue."
Knezovich says there are many areas where he and Nowels disagree. Asked for specifics, he says they've had different views on some aspects of the department's intelligence work. Their disagreements are about nuances and aren't over things that are totally black and white, Knezovich says.
"But all in all, we want to hit the same mark," Knezovich says. "It's just that we have different routes that we might get there."
DISCIPLINE, LEADERSHIP AND MORALE
Knezovich's leadership style is part of what is motivating Zollars to run. He says Knezovich has become increasingly ego-driven and difficult to work with.
"No one in his current command staff will tell you this publicly, but I will because I don't work for him anymore: No one wants to disagree with him because he takes it personally," Zollars says.
Nelson agrees that Knezovich is a hard person to work with. Both Zollars and Nelson claim his leadership style has impacted the discipline process.
Nelson adds that he's seen numerous cases where disciplinary decisions felt arbitrary or influenced by the officers' personal standing in the department instead of the actual severity of the incident. He declined to name specific examples on the record.
Nowels and Knezovich strongly deny this.
As a member of the command staff, Nowels had a front-row seat to many of the disciplinary discussions during various parts of his career. He says he doesn't know of any instances where someone got off with lighter discipline because they were favored by the sheriff. Knezovich takes disciplinary action very, very seriously, Nowels says. He intends to do the same.
"[Nelson and Zollars] don't know all the details of our disciplinary actions," Nowels says. "They don't know all the inputs that go into making a decision on what level of discipline somebody receives."
Nowels does acknowledge that the office needs to improve its approach to lower-level disciplinary action. He says the office started increasing the amount of lower-level disciplinary action a few years ago, and it's something he would hope to do more frequently as sheriff. That means more written and verbal reprimands for minor infractions, like driving recklessly and clipping the curb with a patrol car. It's minor, but can add up to hundreds of dollars in damage. As sheriff, Nowels says he'll use lower-level discipline to make sure stuff like that doesn't happen in the first place.
Zollars says favoritism still affects the disciplinary process. As an example, he points to Nowels himself. In 2019, Nowels joked to a member of the Spokane Valley Precinct staff that "ex-wives should be killed." Nowels received a four-week unpaid suspension that cost him $12,000 in lost wages. Nowels has apologized for the incident, and says he was frustrated and speaking hyperbolically.
Nowels thinks the discipline he received was sufficient and fair, but Zollars points to it as an example of favoritism. He compares it to Jeff Thurman, a sheriff's sergeant who was fired in 2019 after an internal investigation found he made comments about killing Black people, used the N-word and harassed a female deputy. Zollars wonders why Nowels was given much lighter disciplinary action for what Zollars sees as a very similar transgression. He doesn't know if Nowels should have been fired, too, but he does think he should have been demoted to lieutenant or even sergeant. He thinks Nowels got off lighter than Thurman because "he was the heir apparent at that point in time."
STAFFING AND RECRUITMENT
The back-and-forth over Knezovich's role in the election can overshadow the fact that the candidates actually agree on a lot. They're all Republicans who think statewide legislation has made it difficult for law enforcement to do its job; that the county needs a new jail; that gangs and drugs are contributing to rising crime; and that the department should recruit more people from minority communities.
In recent years, police departments across the country have struggled with staffing and recruitment. It's been an issue in Spokane County as well, but Nowels and Knezovich say the department has already taken numerous steps to address it. Nowels says there's a backlog due to training, but that within the next 18 months he expects the sheriff's office to be fully staffed. Nelson is skeptical. He thinks asking people to wait for 18 months feels like classic political obfuscation. Nelson proposes an employee incentive program where people in the sheriff's office can get bonuses for recruiting friends. To help long-term recruitment, he proposes more programs in schools.
While Nowels says he wants to look at a variety of different approaches to recruiting on a local and national level, Nelson and Zollars both think the sheriff's office should focus on local recruitment.
At a final public address hosted by Republicans of Spokane County, Knezovich said his biggest piece of advice for the new sheriff was to "speak their mind and tell the truth." Nowels, Nelson and Zollars all say they have what it takes to embody that.
During the speech, Knezovich also decried what he described as the "myth of systemic police racism." All three candidates shy away from the word "systemic" and say that, while there may have been a few bad incidents in other parts of the country, from their experiences on the inside, they don't see a bias issue locally. ♦
