Former Chelan County Sheriff's Deputy Alleges He Was Punished for Leaving Grace City Church
As well as refusing to ostracize fellow former Deputy Jennifer Tyler and attempting to move to Wenatchee Police Department
Former Chelan County Sheriff’s Deputy Aaron Shepard alleged he was “harassed and bullied” by supervisors for leaving Grace City Church in 2016, as well as “refusing to ostracize” deputy Jennifer Tyler during her lawsuit against Sheriff Brian Burnett in 2017 in a formal complaint filed Aug. 29, 2021.
“Since leaving Grace City Church in early 2016, refusing to ostracize Deputy Jennifer Tyler during her lawsuit against the county in 2017, and applying to the Wenatchee Police Department in 2018, I have been progressively retaliated against and harassed by members of the department and the department’s leadership,” he wrote. “I have been denied training positions, bullied by SWAT Team members/team leadership, and received a reprimand for conduct routinely allowed and or promoted by the Sheriff’s Office.”
Until April 2022, Shepard had been with the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office since 2013 and wrote that he had “little to no issues relating to my work performance under multiple sergeants.” He earned accolades like the “Traffic Safety Deputy of the Year” two years in a row. One of his supervisors, Sergeant Jeff Middleton, even nominated him for deputy of the year in 2019.
“I was a member of the Regional SWAT team for three years with no disciplinary issues whatsoever. I was the K9 handler on SWAT for a year prior to becoming a full time SWAT team member. I assisted the team prior to being selected as the K9 handler,” he wrote. “I served several missions with them as a regular K9 handler, including marijuana grows, building searches, and other high-risk events.”
But according to Shepard, things changed when Sergeant Brian Lewis got hired on and became one of his supervisors.
In the nine-page letter to CCSO human resources manager Cathy Mulhall, Shepard outlined a pattern of bullying and abuse by superiors and peers that began after he left Grace City Church and accelerated after Lewis became his boss.
“Since SWAT leadership changed, I have been harassed and bullied” by team members “under the leadership of Sgts. Lewis and Foreman,” Shepard wrote.
The Foreman he references is Sgt. Chris Foreman, who in Nov. 2021 was promoted to Chief of Special Operations at the CCSO. Foreman and Lewis are both listed in Grace City Church’s membership directory and members of “The God Squad,” according to sources familiar with the CCSO.
Shepard provided screenshots from group message conversations in an app called GroupMe, which the SWAT team uses for internal communications. According to Shepard, it was customary to have conversations outside of official law enforcement business on the app. And at times, those conversations could become toxic.
“The department is aware of this messaging function and its uses. There were exchanges that occurred on that message application that were both humiliating and harassing,” Shepard wrote. “The SWAT leadership directly participated in these exchanges.”
Shepard details one such instance in June 2018, after he broke his toe training off duty.
He wrote that he could not walk without a boot or crutches for six weeks, and his doctor was “contemplating placing steel rods into my foot because of the break.”
But several other SWAT team members told him to “suck it up and get back to work,” he wrote. Deputy Lee Risdon rejoiced in the opportunity for overtime his colleague’s injury afforded him.
Shepard wrote on another occasion in the thread that Lewis told him to choke himself and provided a screenshot of that.
In Dec. 2019, Shepard got married. On his honeymoon in Mexico, he sent a message about the restaurant where he and his new bride had dined.
Lewis had some comments about that.
The day after he returned from his honeymoon, he attended a SWAT range day training.
“I was asked if my name was Mr. Hankins (My wifes maiden name), it was written on the wall as my attendance for training,” Shepard wrote. “I was told prior to the firearms portion training that, ‘I was going to fail the qualification anyways.’”
Shepard left the training after telling Sgt. Lewis and Sgt. Foreman he was being bullied, and leadership was doing nothing to stop it. He was later suspended from the SWAT team for an internal investigation, but the harassment didn’t stop.
“The name calling continued,” he wrote. “This was the breaking point for all the harassment during the last year. I spoke with Chief Johnson about this incident in Spring 2020 while I was on IA as requested by SWAT Team Leaders Lewis and Foreman. I informed him about the bullying and harassment during the investigation, but absolutely nothing was done about it and bullying/harassment continued.”
According to Shepard, Lewis’ aggression toward him became physical during an explosive breach training. Door breaching is a process used by the military, police, and emergency services to force entry into a building.
“During the breaching movement, Sgt. Lewis lost his temper and grabbed me and shoved me back because I did not understand where to go,” Shepard wrote. “His aggressive behavior was unprofessional. This was my first explosive breach training exercise and I did not understand what he wanted.”
Later at a SWAT team overnight event in April 2020, Shepard wore sunglasses in a group meeting. Another officer called him “Elton John” in front of the entire team, including Foreman and Lewis. Shepard wrote that the whole team laughed, and Sgt. Foreman said, “And it begins.”
He wrote that during his last year and a half on the team, he had constant anxiety and could not sleep the night before training because he was “terrified about the leadership bullying me.”
But it’s a call in late November 2020 that illustrates how the Covid-19 pandemic was creating confusion within the agency and how Shepard found himself being punished for what he took to be direct orders from a superior.
When Shepard told Frank he had gone into the home to take photos for the investigation, the sergeant was “extremely upset,” he wrote.
He was orally reprimanded, and the incident came up in his yearly evaluation.
The Last Straws
On July 5, 2021, Lewis reprimanded Shepard for allegedly “violating the civil rights” of a man he arrested on East Woodin Ave in Chelan during a traffic stop a little after midnight. In the incident report, Shepard said he caught a white sedan going 52 in a 30 mph zone on E. Woodin Ave. He turned his fully-marked patrol vehicle around and conducted a traffic stop.
According to Shepard's report, a female was driving, a male was in the front passenger seat, and another was in the backseat. He took the woman’s license back to his patrol car, ran a check on her, and noticed she had a no-contact order against a male who looked a lot like the man in the passenger seat.
Shepard returned to the white sedan and asked to see the man’s ID, which he refused to provide. After some back and forth in which Shepard thought the female might try to flee, he and another deputy who had arrived to provide backup got the male to exit the vehicle, arrested him and found his ID in a pocket. The photo on it matched the image RiverCom had sent him.
The man he arrested was violating a no-contact order due to domestic violence, and by his account, the other deputy who showed up to support him was “shocked to learn I was being written up” for his actions.
He even reached out to Chelan County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney and current candidate for district court judge, Allen Blackmon, about it.
“Blackmon did not believe I violated the rights of the suspect and assured me there was nothing to worry about,” Shepard wrote.
District Court Judge Kyle Mott found probable cause and forwarded charges in the case.
When he spoke with former union president Deputy Doug Corulli about it, Corulli told him there wasn’t much the union could do since there was no punishment against Shepard for his actions.
“Deputy Corulli advised it was ‘obvious’ Sgt. Lewis was ‘messing with me,’” Shepard wrote.
Not long after that, Shepard was passed over for a “Defensive Training Use of Force Instructor” position he applied for, even though he is a jiu-jitsu practitioner who had been “called repeatedly to teach training sessions in hand-to-hand combat at multi-agency in services bi-monthly” for years before applying for the position.
“All individuals in charge of DT training insisted that I apply for the position because I was already teaching for the department and due to my many years of training in non-lethal force martial arts, it was impressed upon me that I MUST apply,” he wrote.
But again, Sgt. Lewis stepped in. Lewis wrote a formal letter to the administration to “prevent me from receiving an interview for the position,” Shepard wrote.
Shepard went to his union leaders and superiors about the matter. According to Shepard, Undersheriff Jason Mathews sent union president and current candidate for Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison an email that confirmed Shepard was allowed to apply for the position.
So Shepard showed up for the interview only to be turned away at the door.
“The interview process had already been concluded, Shepard wrote. “I was turned away from the application pool at the door after arriving in full uniform for interview. This was humiliating.”
Not long after, Shepard submitted his formal complaint on Aug. 29, 2021. Near the end of the letter, he wrote that he had “exhausted all remedies by taking these issues to immediate supervisors and using my chain of command.”
He wrote that the harassment he was subjected to by Lewis, Foreman, and other team members because he left Grace City Church and refused to shun former Deputy Jennifer Tyler caused him “extreme anxiety and fearfulness of losing my employment.”
He asked his union representative Detective Paul Nelson to file a grievance against Lewis and the CCSO.
“The hostile work environment this has made for me at the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office should not be tolerated,” Shepard concluded.
After submitting his formal complaint, “The County promptly retained Amy Klosterman, an experienced workplace investigator, to conduct an impartial investigation,” HR manager Cathy Mulhall wrote in a response letter on Feb. 22, 2022.
“There is no evidence that any action taken by CCSO to address performance concerns were motivated by your decision to leave Grace City Church in 2016, apply for the Wenatchee P.D., or any refusal to ostracize Ms. Tyler,” she wrote. “Although I do not find any violations of County policy based on the investigation, your complaint did raise valid concerns regarding how members of the agency communicate with one another.”
Shepard quit CCSO in April 2022.
Doing The Due Diligence
I reached out to Mulhall and the county to ask a few questions about Shepard’s complaint, Klosterman’s investigation, and what, if anything, changed in the culture of the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office since Shepard quit.
I will update this piece if and when I hear back.
I also requested and received the police report for the arrest Shepard conducted in Chelan in the early morning hours of July 5, 2021 – the one that caused Lewis to allege Shepard violated the man’s civil rights.
I also put in a public records request for Amy Klosterman’s report on her investigation and am currently waiting for those documents. When I get those files, I will write a follow-up piece.
Update as of July 7, 2022
Chelan County Public Information Officer Jill FitzSimmons got back to my request for comment and questions sent to Cathy Mulhall and April Peterson, executive assistant to Sheriff Brian Burnett, on July 5.
For reference, here are the questions I sent to Mulhall and Peterson:
“Hi Ms. Mulhall and Ms. Peterson,
I have a few questions and a request for comment from the CCSO regarding a formal complaint filed on Aug. 29, 2021, by former deputy Aaron Shepard, and the response letter to Shepard sent by you, Ms. Mulhall, on Feb. 21, 2022. In his complaint, Shepard says he was retaliated against for leaving Grace City Church and refusing to ostracize former deputy Jennifer Tyler. I've requested Amy Klosterman's report on her investigation into the matter but thought the CCSO might be able to provide some additional information.
Was Grace City Church's teachings on women in leadership/authority positions over men discussed during that investigation?
In your letter to Shepard, Ms. Mulhall, you refer to training "specifically tailored to address some of the concerns" Shepard raised. Were those training sessions conducted? And if so, what topics were covered in those training sessions?
Has the topic of bullying been addressed before or after Shepard's Aud. 21, 2021 complaint?
Shepard wrote that he broke his toe and was pressured by his peers and supervisors to return to work despite doctors' orders to the contrary, was anything done to address that dynamic in CCSO culture?
Is it common in GroupMe message threads for deputies to use words like "Patriot" and "communist" when referring to each other or civilians?
In your response letter, Ms. Mulhall, you write that there was no overlap between Sgt. Lewis' employment and Ms. Tyler's employment and therefore there appears to be no reason why Sgt. Lewis would single Shepard out for retaliation or harassment. The fact that Lewis is a GCC follower and Shepard left the church in 2016 seems germane to that dynamic. Was the fact Lewis and Foreman were still GCC followers and Shepard walked away from the organization discussed internally by CCSO or by Ms. Klosterman with subjects during her investigation?
Why did Lewis write a letter to the administration to prevent Shepard from receiving the position as defense training use of force instructor? As a martial arts *instructor, he had the expertise, had served in that capacity before and wrote that he was encouraged to apply for the position by Sgt. McCue. I didn't notice that point was addressed in the response letter to Shepard.
According to Shepard's letter, Lewis reprimanded him for "violating the civil rights" of a suspect he arrested regarding case number 21C06090, yet Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Allen Blackmon and District Court Judge Mott agreed that Shepard had probable cause and didn't violate the suspect's rights. According to Dep. Corulli, it was "obvious" that Sgt. Lewis was "messing with me," Shepard wrote. Are there any CCSO policies that outline repercussions for supervisors who file frivolous reports or complaints against peers or subordinates?
Can the CCSO provide an estimate for how many hours were spent investigating and responding to Shepard's complaint, including the cost of Ms. Klosterman's time?
Thank you and best regards,”
*One point to clarify/correct is that Shepard says he is a student of jujitsu and not an instructor.
This is the response from from the Sheriff’s Office via FitzSimmons:
“Dominick,
In response to your questions related to human resources, a complaint was made by Mr. Shepard and the County thoroughly investigated that complaint with the aid of the Washington Counties Risk Pool, of which Chelan County is a member. The investigation determined there were no policy violations. We are in the process of hiring an outside HR professional to lead a training addressing some of Mr. Shepard’s concerns.
Thank you,”
If you’d like to read Shepard’s complaint letter, see the screenshots that came with it and see Mulhall’s response letter; paid subscribers can access them after the paywall break below.