Why Snohomish Sheriff Fortney overturned termination of two deputies

Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney recently overturned the terminations of deputies Matt Boice and Evan Twedt, who were previously terminated following an investigation into what essentially was a traffic stop in 2017, where they’re accused of carrying out a warrantless search and then trying to cover it up.

He joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss why he decided to make the change.

“There was some unethical behavior that took place, and that was during the writing of the search warrant, which was about a week later, and that deputy was later fired and is still fired and he’s not reinstated — the deputy who wrote that search warrant application,” he said.

“It comes down to whether these two — Matt Boice and Evan Twedt — whether they knew the policy or not, if this was malicious or this was a mistake. And I think in order to buy the former sheriff’s decision on this, you have to believe that there were four deputies involved in that traffic stop that night, and only one later wrote the search warrant. I think you have to believe that they conspired from the very beginning, and I don’t believe personally that happened at all after reading the file.”

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Sheriff Fortney added that there were other investigations by the former administration that found that assessment to be truthful, and that there was mass confusion with the patrols, so this is not simply based on his opinion. For the traffic stop, it came down to whether it was malicious and they were trying to cover something up, or if it was a mistake. Sheriff Fortney believes the latter.

In this case, the felon was found to be illegally in possession of a firearm, meth, and a drug pipe.

“My whole thing is if I had other guys coaching him, telling him to lie in the search for it, that’s not good. That’s a termination level case. I’m saying that was not proven in this case, and I don’t believe it at all. I think there’s so much more that went into this, the confusion over policy and I just think this was a mistake. I think the unethical behavior occurred with that kid who’s still fired.”

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