When I first took office as a 32-year-old city council member, I immediately had a problem sitting on my desk that I didn't fully understand.
It was 2012. We had a brash, unprepared new mayor and an equally brash, equally unprepared new councilmember (me). We also had no shortage of confidence, which in retrospect may have been part of the problem.
Politically, we were very isolated from the rest of our city government, but now we had our hands on the ship's rudder. We had both run on reform platforms, and one of the many things we had talked about was police accountability.
Then the governing started.
There was one important difference in the position I found myself in. By then, I had already spent years working in public safety. I had relationships throughout the region, and more importantly, I had earned the trust of people working within that system.
That's how the report found me.
An outside agency had conducted a massive investigation involving a senior law enforcement official. Someone needed to do something with what they had found, and they made sure the report ended up in my hands.
I can't get into the details of that investigation, even to this day. All of what I and one of our detectives were quietly dealing with was extraordinarily sensitive.
It was also fraught with peril. We were politically isolated and, even inside our own city hall, there were people who were decidedly not on our side and couldn't be trusted with all the information. One false move in almost any direction could have exposed a very small city to enormously expensive litigation.
But doing nothing wasn't an option either. The situation could not go unchecked. So, we worked through it quietly and carefully. Ultimately, it was resolved in a way that protected our community, not only locally, but beyond it.
What I can say is that the investigative report documented more instances of dishonesty than I could reasonably recount here.
At first, I understood that primarily as an employment problem. It wasn't. Or, more accurately, it wasn't only an employment problem. There is certainly a story worthy of a Netflix series in what happened back then, one of many unexpected adventures public office has managed to put me in over the years.
But this isn't that story. Some things need to remain where they are. What matters for this story is what I had to learn very quickly.
I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the criminal justice system. Before entering elected office, I had worked for the Washington state Department of Corrections as a community corrections officer, what most people would call a parole officer. I held a limited commission and had the authority to arrest DOC offenders in the community for violations of their conditions of release.
But even with that experience, I hadn't yet fully understood what a police officer fundamentally is, or why an officer's credibility could become something much bigger than an employment issue.
I write about this now because it all came to mind when I, along with everyone else, read Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders' recent announcement that one of our deputies had been terminated following an internal investigation. I'm not going to weigh in on that personnel matter. That's not what this column is about.
What caught my attention was a line near the end of the announcement stating that the prosecutor's office had been provided with a Brady notice. I knew immediately what that meant.
Then I started reading the questions and comments. What's a Brady notice? What's a Brady cop? Does that have something to do with the Brady gun law? Why would something an officer did in one situation affect their ability to work other cases?
Those are good questions.
And they reminded me just how unusual this concept is if you've never had a reason to encounter it.
To understand Brady, you first must understand what a police officer fundamentally is. We tend to think of police officers in terms of their authority. The badge. The gun. The patrol car. The power to detain. The power to arrest. But that's only part of the job.
A police officer is also an investigator, collector of evidence and professional witness for the state. When an officer determines probable cause exists and makes an arrest, that arrest isn't the end of the process. In many ways, it's the beginning. The officer documents what happened. Interviews witnesses. Collects evidence. Records statements. Establishes timelines. Writes reports. Preserves evidence and explains why particular investigative decisions were made.
All of that may eventually be handed to a prosecutor. And if the case goes to trial, that officer may sit in a witness chair, raise a hand and tell a judge or jury: This is what happened.
The state may then ask a jury to rely, at least in part, upon that officer's investigation and testimony when deciding whether another person should lose their liberty. That's what I had to understand in 2012. Credibility wasn't merely a character trait. Credibility was part of the chain of evidence.
That brings us to Brady. And no, it has nothing to do with gun laws.
In 1963, the United States Supreme Court decided Brady v. Maryland. The decision established the prosecution's constitutional obligation to disclose material evidence favorable to the accused. Subsequent cases developed that principle to encompass material impeachment evidence, information that can matter when assessing the credibility of a government witness.
In plain English, the government doesn't get to hide material evidence favorable to the defense simply because that evidence is inconvenient to the government's case.
Here's a simple example.
Imagine an officer says they saw a suspect throw a bag of drugs from a car. There is no video. No second officer saw it. No civilian witness saw it. The defendant says it never happened. The officer says it did. Suddenly, credibility isn't peripheral to the case. Credibility is the case.
Now imagine that same officer previously had a sustained finding for knowingly falsifying an official report.
Does that prove the officer is lying this time? No.
Does it automatically make the defendant innocent? No.
But should the government be able to put that officer on the witness stand without disclosing information that could affect how a judge or jury evaluates that officer's credibility?
Now imagine what happens if it isn't disclosed. The prosecutor builds the case. The officer takes the stand. The state asks the jury to believe the officer's account. Then the defense reveals that the government's key witness previously had a sustained finding for dishonesty, and that information wasn't disclosed. Now you don't just have a credibility problem with the officer. You potentially have a credibility problem with the entire prosecution. A good case can suddenly become vulnerable. A conviction can be jeopardized. And the focus can shift from what the defendant allegedly did to whether the government itself played fair.
That's why Brady isn't some technical rule buried in a law book.
It protects the integrity of the case itself. And that's why dishonesty by a police officer is fundamentally different from many other workplace problems. An officer may be the person who establishes probable cause, gathers the evidence, interviews the witnesses, documents what happened and ultimately testifies about all of it in court.
If that officer has demonstrated dishonesty in an official capacity, the problem doesn't necessarily stop with that incident. You've potentially compromised a link in the chain of evidence upon which the State asks a judge or jury to rely.
People sometimes use terms like “Brady cop” or “Brady list.” Those are convenient shorthand, but Washington law generally speaks in terms of “potential impeachment disclosures.”
Washington requires every county prosecutor to maintain a written protocol governing these disclosures. Law enforcement agencies must report potentially exculpatory acts by officers and misconduct affecting an officer's credibility to prosecuting authorities in jurisdictions where that officer may testify.
The purpose isn't to declare that an officer can never tell the truth again. It's to ensure the government doesn't ask a court to trust a witness while withholding material information that may be relevant to whether that witness should be trusted. This is a very practical and operational problem.
What happens when an officer whose job depends upon gathering evidence and testifying about it develops a significant, substantiated credibility problem?
Every future case involving that officer carries that baggage. And that matters to more people than the officer. It matters to the prosecutor trying the case. It matters to the other officers who worked the investigation. It matters to the victim waiting for justice. And it matters to the defendant whose liberty may be at stake.
Brady isn't a loophole for criminals. It's part of the machinery designed to ensure that when government exercises one of its greatest powers (the power to take away someone's liberty) the evidence used to do it can withstand scrutiny.
I've continued thinking about this issue over the last decade since that investigative report landed in front of me.
Washington does not have one centrally maintained statewide Brady list. Some states do. Instead, each county prosecutor develops and maintains a protocol for potential impeachment disclosures (in my experience, some do it better than others). Washington has created mechanisms intended to make that information follow an officer between agencies, but responsibility for maintaining and evaluating these disclosures remains largely decentralized.
Over the years, I've toyed with the idea that Washington should have a statewide, centrally maintained system through the Criminal Justice Training Commission.
I also haven't convinced myself that's the answer; I don't know that it solves more problems than it creates.
Who decides when someone belongs on the list? What evidentiary standard applies? What due-process protections should the officer receive? What happens when an allegation is overturned? When, if ever, should someone's name come off?
And how do we make sure a system intended to protect the integrity of criminal cases doesn't become an employment blacklist?
Those aren't small questions, and I don't pretend to have all the answers.
But after spending so much time thinking about it, I still believe there is a legitimate conversation to be had about whether information this important to the integrity of a statewide justice system should itself be maintained in a more consistent statewide way.
Police officers carry a lot of equipment. A badge. A firearm. A radio. Body armor. Handcuffs. Body cameras. All those things matter.
I've spent most of my adult life in and around public safety and the justice system. And after the education I received during my first days in elected office, I've come to believe one of the most important things a police officer carries can't be seen on their belt. It's credibility.
Because eventually the uniform comes off. The firearm gets secured. The patrol car gets parked. And the officer may find themselves sitting in a witness chair with nothing in front of them but a microphone and twelve strangers.
At that moment, the power of the badge matters very little.
What matters is whether those twelve jurors believe the person who wore it.
That's why Brady matters.
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Wayne Fournier is a firefighter, Thurston County commissioner and former mayor who has spent more than three decades working in public safety.
