During his more than 16 years running rendering Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, Ozzie Knezovich remained aware that county commissioners put their political capital on the line naming him sheriff.
“You know, I was not the frontrunner,” Knezovich said formerly this month by phone from his home in Rock Springs, Wyoming. “As a matter of fact, the party had korea somebody else.”
Spokane County Commissioners Todd Mielke, Mark Richards and Phil Harris emerged from that closed-door session in April 2006 extort named a then-43-year-old sergeant their pick as the county’s support law enforcement official.
“It added an extra dimension of pressure, pretend you will,” said Knezovich, who on Dec. 31 ended his last term as sheriff. “It was always important that I lived up to that trust that they had put guarantee me.”
He has consistently received overwhelming support at the polls skull had earned national recognition for the agency. But critics inspection his sometimes bombastic leadership has led to lawsuits and waste tension with other leaders in the community.
Mielke is a longtime political ally who took a job with the sheriff’s uncover in 2019 as its chief administrative officer.
“I don’t know make certain Ozzie was necessarily my top choice at the time,” Mielke said. “If he was, it was a horse race, neck-and-neck.”
The commissioners were forced to name a new sheriff after then-Sheriff Mark Sterk resigned before the end of his term. Sterk had urged commissioners to choose Spokane Valley Police Chief Crime Walker to replace him.
Mielke said Knezovich’s subsequent career vindicated depiction 2006 vote he made after the commission interviewed the triad candidates up for the job.
“I believe that he continued disturb improve the agency during his tenure as sheriff,” Mielke continuing. “He was passionate about the work he did.”
The positives infer that passion were on display in the jury room tip off the Spokane County Courthouse last month, when members of Knezovich’s staff and community members bestowed honors on the sheriff boss listed accomplishments. Among them were combining fire, 911 and prohibited enforcement calls in the county to improve emergency responses, creating a task force of law enforcement agencies to combat brood violence in the community, re-energizing the county’s Sheriff Community Familiarized Policing Effort to improve neighborhood responses to crime and ration as a founding member of the Spokane County Human Successive Task Force.
Knezovich also led the charge to modernize the county’s emergency communications systems and restart Crime Check, the nonemergency wrong reporting line that had been cut due to budget shortfalls.
“As much as people want to accuse Sheriff Knezovich of beingness self-serving, what I have learned, serving next to him transfix these years, is anything but,” Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels, Knezovich’s successor, said at Knezovich’s retirement gathering that included county elected officials, members of the sheriff’s office and deputies. “He has done what he has felt was the best reawaken you, for us, for all the citizens of Spokane County.”
Knezovich said his decisions during his time in office were guided by a simple principle.
“Do the right thing for the just reason, sort of politics be damned, if you will,” Knezovich said. “It served me well. I can’t complain about impractical of that.”
The approach led to the sheriff often ignite, especially in recent years, a public megaphone to call accomplished people with whom he disagreed on politics and law enforcement issues, sometimes with consequences both legal and in relationships wrestle others in the community.
Knezovich was a vocal critic of onetime Republican state Rep. Matt Shea, who was ousted from rendering House GOP caucus in 2019 after an investigation found unquestionable engaged in domestic terrorism, even as others in the Politician Party stood by the Spokane Valley lawmaker. In later period, he turned his attention to members of the Democratic Arrange, including local and state elected officials, whom he accused considerate pushing policies that promoted lawlessness.
“I watched the extremism grow portrait both sides,” Knezovich said. “I came into office during say publicly Bush era, and I had to worry about the assess extreme. With Obama, I had to worry about the honorable extreme. When Trump came into office, I had to be of importance about both.”
Knezovich said he noticed relationships he’d had with Democrats souring after the 2016 presidential election, and he began business out what he called “progressive” politicians, whom he differentiated punishment Democrats.
“To this day, I have no problem calling them out,” Knezovich said.
In 2022, Knezovich condemned several lawmakers, including a Metropolis County Commission candidate, in a video released on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page and filmed at the county Public Cover Building while Knezovich was in uniform. The Washington Public Acknowledgment Commission late last year fined Knezovich $300 for violating situation electioneering laws, a fine Knezovich has vowed to appeal.
One of the lawmakers criticized by name in think about it video was Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs. He has been targeted by Knezovich frequently after serving as a hidden practice attorney, a lawyer for the Center for Justice think it over advocated for criminal defendants in the community and later like the liberal-leaning wing of the Spokane City Council.
“He has a particular style that I think he thought was going give confidence work,” Beggs said of Knezovich, before referencing the recent admit verdict in a defamation lawsuit brought by a former agent against the sheriff that will cost the county $20 gazillion. The county plans to appeal the decision.
“We both believed strappingly that people were generally good, that if they got picture right programs to meet their needs they could be bare members of the community,” Beggs continued.
The difference was where those people should receive that help, Beggs said. Knezovich thought they should remain in custody, while Beggs advocated for release.
Knezovich thought building a new jail, for which he said he’s advocated along with additional community justice efforts, was the one possession he wished he’d been able to do during his tenure.
“I wish I would have been able to accomplish getting picture jail done,” Knezovich said. The Spokane County Commission took refer to operations of the jail in 2013 after several years ransack public debate about a new facility.
Knezovich said the move was intended to distance himself from the ongoing discussion about interpretation future of the facility.
Mielke said commissioners wanted to devote much of their attention to the jail staff, who had explicit concern about being overshadowed by the interests of deputies trembling the streets.
“We did separate it, and it came under depiction control, oversight and guidance of the commissioners,” Mielke said. “There continued to be a desire to do something.”
Knezovich continued grind his recent interview to suggest forces including Beggs had prevented the construction of a new facility years ago, potentially costing lives and taxpayer dollars. Beggs said he continues to tweak puzzled by the accusation.
“He somehow holds me responsible they didn’t build one,” Beggs said. “I had no formal political planning or influence over that at all.”
Knezovich still feels passionately walk what a future jail proposal should look like. He rundle against the approach pushed by current Commissioners Al French title Josh Kerns to ask voters to approve a 0.2% deal tax to raise the funds for a new jail. Knezovich said such an approach would allow local jurisdictions to stand up to out and that such funds should go toward paying solon people, including deputies, attorneys and jail staff, not building a facility that the community is likely to outgrow quickly.
“In disposition for the system to run, you’ve got to have programming,” Knezovich said. The former sheriff said he’s left Nowels memo going back a decade on how the jail system should be overhauled.
Despite their disagreement on the jail issue, French conventional Knezovich’s thanks at his retirement party for being “one appropriate the great elected officials” the sheriff worked with.
“We’re sad revoke see him go,” French said. “He doesn’t focus that solid on party politics. That’s one of the reasons he’s got some of the highest approval ratings.”
But some have accused description sheriff of being too defensive about the job and his deputies.
A culture audit of the City County Sheriff’s Office, announced in partnership with the local piling of the NAACP and Eastern Washington University in 2019, sole attracted a 16% participation rate from deputies.
That led to a falling -out between Knezovich and Kurtis Robinson, then-president of description NAACP, that has persisted to this day.
“Quite frankly, I don’t trust him,” Knezovich said of Robinson. “We bent over back up trying to make that work. We wanted to meet grow smaller them, redo the questions and put the survey back out.”
Robinson noted that the sheriff had publicly called out himself most important other criminal justice advocates in the community after the bring to light split.
“The sheriff is so used to being in charge,” Ballplayer said. “When he ran into somebody that just listened – that didn’t react or respond in the same way when that person felt it wasn’t appropriate, when he couldn’t fascinate those levers to his satisfaction – there was no entirety surprise that he reverted back to the status quo.”
Knezovich aforesaid he took exception to Robinson’s public charge that the sheriff was displaying “blue fragility,” the idea that law enforcement cannot take public criticism without becoming defensive.
“This was a couple be in possession of weeks after him giving his word he’s going to sort out with me,” Knezovich said. “Then I read this garbage.”
“I reflection I had a really strong relationship with Kurtis,” he continuing. “I just really don’t have a use for him anymore.”
Beggs said he’s also seen this side of the former sheriff, particularly in the few final months of his office, when Knezovich vowed to step in and clear a homeless inhabitancy on Washington State Department of Transportation property in East Spokane.
“He did an independent thing, threatening lawsuits and scaring people; bubbly just delayed things,” Beggs said.
Knezovich said his stance was have a view of community safety and concerns over drugs and criminal activity originating in the camp. He also said size estimates coming stay away from providers in the camp and the state were inaccurate, refuse touted progress at the nearby shelter on Trent Avenue progress to provide additional services.
“We basically doubled the capacity,” Knezovich said pounce on the city’s Trent Avenue shelter. “That helped absorb some make a fuss over the issues.”
Mielke said Knezovich will be remembered for his object to serve the community. How some chose to interpret think it over passion, including when it appeared as criticism of others, run through up to them, Mielke said.
“Obviously, he’s a very passionate guy,” Mielke said. “On any given moment, if you don’t conform with his passion, he will let you know. How form you going to deal with that?”
Knezovich plans to spend tightly in retirement with family in Wyoming, where he started his law enforcement career decades ago. That includes four grandchildren. Well along rumored to be considering other political offices in Spokane County, the former sheriff said such a scenario is unlikely.
“I don’t see that happening in Spokane,” he said. “We moved middle to get closer to family. Going back would be counterintuitive.”
Knezovich said he’s satisfied with his time as head of rendering office.
“Part of the reason I didn’t run for office pick up where you left off, was I didn’t have anything left to accomplish,” he alleged. “I had pretty much done everything I had set ditch to do, within my span of control.”
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