Richland police chief placed on ‘Brady’ impeachment list over past nepotism allegations

Richland Police Chief Brigit Clary has been placed on an “impeachment” list that could call into question her credibility as a witness in criminal cases.

Though Clary is retiring at the end of this month, prosecutors in Benton County notified defense attorneys in three cases in which she played a role in the investigation.

Local prosecutors maintain a “Potential Impeachment Disclosure” list — often called a “Brady list” — of witnesses whose integrity and trustworthiness could be questioned if they were called to testify.

It’s rare for the head of a police department to be placed on the “Brady” list. However, locally, it happened in 2021 when former Sheriff Jerry Hatcher was given that designation. Voters have since removed him from office.

The issue with Clary stems from a more than 6-year-old report by her former employer, the Federal Way Police Department.

Benton County Prosecutor Eric Eisinger told the Tri-City Herald this week that the report, which only recently came to his attention, accuses her of nepotism and lying about 19 overtime hours for her husband.

John Clary was on the same police force in Federal Way and is now the police chief in Toppenish. He left the Federal Way department for the Benton County Sheriff’s Office shortly before she quit there to come to work for Richland police.

Richland City Manager Jon Amundson told the Herald in a statement this week that Richland officials were not aware of the Federal Way investigation before she was hired and learned of it in October or November when an anonymous source sent it to the city, county prosecutors and the Herald.

Richland’s hiring background investigation for Clary was assigned to Tom Croskrey, who is now the Benton County sheriff but was a Richland police lieutenant in 2017.

Croskrey visited Federal Way in person as part of that background check, Amundson said.

“All of the feedback given to Richland by Federal Way regarding Brigit Clary was positive and no reference was made to the findings that precipitated Benton County Prosecutor Eric Eisinger’s recent decision to place Brigit Clary on the potential impeachment disclosure list,” Amudson told the Herald in the email.

However, Croskrey told the Herald this week that Clary told him at the time that she was on paid administrative leave and he informed Richland’s then police Chief Chris Skinner

At the time, Skinner said Clary also had told him about the investigation but that he wanted to move forward with hiring her anyway, said Croskrey.

Since Federal Way police officials hadn’t wrapped up their investigation, they didn’t share any of the details of their allegations, Croskrey said.

Then, soon after Clary announced plans to retire on Jan. 1, 2024, an anonymous tip arrived in October 2023 that alerted local officials to what happened in Federal Way.

The full Federal Way report arrived anonymously in November.

That’s when Benton County prosecutors contacted Federal Way officials for more information.

J. Ryan Call, Federal Way’s city attorney, said in an email to prosecutors, “I recall that Brigit Clary decided to resign shortly after she was given a copy of the report through her union rep. The police department was certainly headed towards termination, but she resigned. ...”

The Herald obtained the email and later confirmed it with Benton County Deputy Prosecutor Terry Bloor.

She left Federal Way in March 2017 to work as a sergeant on the Richland force. She eventually worked her way up to the position of deputy chief in 2022.

She was promoted in April 2022 to the position of chief after Chief John Bruce suddenly resigned in January 2022. He had replaced Skinner after he took a job in Oregon.

Clary, who was the first woman to be Richland’s police chief, oversees about 120 employees, including police officers, emergency services workers, Benton and Franklin county dispatchers and code enforcement officers.

Clary could not be reached by email this week about the issue.

Federal Way investigation

The claims of nepotism and dishonesty are from a Feb. 3, 2017, report from Seattle-based private investigation firm Seabold Group.

At the time, the 26-page report was sent to Call who was Federal Way’s interim city attorney.

Clary had been at the department since 2002 and was a lieutenant at the time of the report. Her husband also was a lieutenant in the same department.

He left the Federal Way department in late 2016 or early 2017 before the investigation report was finished.

One of Brigit Clary’s assignments was to oversee the spending of a $25,000 grant from the King County Sheriff’s Office, including approving overtime for officers working in the department’s registered sex offender monitoring program.

Officers visited homes to verify sex offenders were living where they said were. If they hadn’t registered, then the officers would write reports so charges could be filed.

Four times in October 2016, Brigit Clary approved overtime totaling 13 hours for her husband, and two other times she asked another lieutenant to approve John Clary’s overtime for 6 hours, according to the investigation.

In November 2016 she was placed on paid leave while city officials investigated whether she violated policies related to nepotism. Her commander initially started the investigation, but then it was handed off to the Seattle firm.

She was interviewed twice and then later given the chance to clarify her statements before the final report was issued, the Seabold Group reported. The process wrapped up in February 2017.

The report concludes that she violated rules around approving her husband’s overtime for a program that she supervised. It also found she lied about knowing about the policy and procedures for administering the grant during interviews with investigators.

Because she left before Federal Way decided whether to fire her, the findings in the report were never disseminated. She left Federal Way for the job in Richland in March 2017.

Nepotism policy dispute

The Federal Way investigation found that most of the police department’s command staff believed the process for managing the grant money was clear and that Brigit Clary was not to supposed to be managing or approving overtime for her husband.

She contended to the investigators that the rules were not that strict.

She signed John Clary’s overtime for four days in October 2016 while her commander, Chris Norman, was out of the office, according to the investigation.

She didn’t contact the deputy chiefs or other commanders to approve the overtime. Brigit Clary said they weren’t available, but administrators disputed that.

The report said when her husband worked over two more times that month, she had another lieutenant sign off on it instead of her commander who was back in the office.

John Clary already had received some complaints because he was working overtime that was usually reserved for lower ranking officers. He also didn’t have the right training to complete the “failure to register” paperwork, said the report.

His lack of training ended up in one of the cases being rejected by prosecutors because of what was believed to be “an obvious defect,” according to the report.

Norman said he likely wouldn’t have approved lieutenants working overtime because they wanted to make the grant money last longer.

Brigit Clary told the investigators that she believed time was running out of the contract, and she wanted to make sure they used the full grant.

When she was reminded that the contract extended until June, she said she wasn’t sure because sometimes it takes months to get the money repaid from the grant.

Three criminal cases

Benton County Prosecutor Eric Eisinger told the Herald that he first heard about the possibility of the Federal Way investigation on Oct. 20, 2023, and then confirmed it with a federal prosecutor. An anonymous source forwarded the report on Nov. 11.

Six days later, Eisinger and a committee of three deputy prosecutors decided out of an abundance of caution to add her to the “Brady” list of potential police witnesses with possible credibility issues.

Just because an officer is on the list doesn’t mean it will come up in trial, or that the case would be thrown out, Eisinger said.

“I don’t believe this is going to prevent us form prosecuting cases from Richland police,” he said.

The potential impeachment disclosure list is based on a landmark 1963 Supreme Court ruling that required prosecutors to hand over any evidence that could be used to prove a defendant didn’t commit a crime.

“The idea is the prosecution is not in the position to be the gatekeeper whether the information is admissible,” Eisinger said. “It would be up to the judge to determine if that information is admissible.”

The three cases in which Clary had some level of involvement included the 2019 murder of Daniel Rice by Kyle Johnson-Clark, the child rape conviction of Matthew Lowe and a third child sex abuse case.

While Clary was part of those investigations, she wasn’t part of the final witness lists and didn’t testify in court, Eisinger said.

Though all three cases have gone to trial or resulted in a guilty plea, Eisinger said he felt he needed to put Clary on the list.

At least two of the cases are on appeal to a higher court and could be returned for another trial or other court proceeding.