A recent $42 million tort claim filed against the State Attorney General’s Office and its client Washington State University stemming from a police use of force database project has been handed over to the AGO’s Tort Claim Division to investigate.
In his tort claim filed to the Department of Enterprise Services' Office of Risk Management, Police Strategies CEO Bob Scales accused the AGO and WSU of numerous illegal acts, including racketeering, to ensure that the university received a $15 million contract to build a police use of force database that would be available to the public.
Scales’ company was a potential subcontractor, but chose not to submit a bid with a university; WSU was ultimately the only institution of higher learning to submit one.
In a July 17 letter addressed to Scales, DES Office of Risk Management Executive Assistant Melynda Campbell wrote that the investigation has been assigned to the AGO’s Torts Claim Division, noting that the “AGO represents the Washington State University and the AGO.”
In a July 22 email response, Scales wrote that “I understand that ORM’s standard process may be to assign tort claims to the Torts Division of the AGO. However, referring my claim to the AGO would create a serious conflict of interest that would prevent my claim from being assessed in a fair and impartial manner.”
He further argued that “state ethics rules would require the AGO attorneys to refuse to take this case and they should have referred this matter to outside counsel. If the Office of Risk Management refuses to assign my claim to a non-AGO attorney for legal review, then I would like to amend my claim to add ORM as a named defendant. By assigning this claim to the AGO, ORM is creating additional conflicts of interest and is assisting the AGO in covering up their criminal enterprise.”
The tort claim is the culmination of a series of allegations Scales has leveled against AGO and WSU employees since a request for proposal was put out for the police use of force database. While all of them have either been dismissed or not further pursued, the AGO has been directly or indirectly involved in those investigations.
Last year, Scales filed an ethics complaint against an AGO employee for allegedly violating the Ethics In Public Service Act. That complaint was dismissed by the Ethics Board, whose staff is entirely composed of AGO employees and whose executive director is a former AGO assistant attorney general.
Scales then filed an ethics complaint with the WSU Provost against two of its employees. He eventually received a letter on April 11, 2023, via email from WSU President Kirk Schulz, who has no formal role in ethics violation investigations, saying the complaint would not be pursued further.
Copied in the email was Nathan Deen, the division chief for the WSU Division of the Attorney General's Office, who was also in communication with Schulz between the time of Scales' complaint and when the April 11, 2023, letter was sent regarding Scale's ethics complaint.
Scales would later receive an email from WSU Provost Elizabeth Chilton saying she had been out of the office and would be looking into the matter, though no decision on whether to launch a formal investigation occurred.
