EVERETT — Two years ago, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office concluded deputy Daniil Nazaria should be fired for abusing the power of his badge.
On- and off-duty, he interjected himself into a dispute between a married couple who lived across the street from him in Granite Falls. He gave both the husband and wife legal advice for how to avoid prosecution.
According to the woman accused of punching her husband in the jaw, Nazaria knew he was crossing a line, telling her, “I could get in a lot of trouble for calling you, but I’m trying to help you guys.”
As he meddled in the case, he also stopped a driver and searched his car without probable cause or a warrant.
The wife reported Nazaria to his employer for misconduct in fall 2019.
A judge later issued a no-contact order to protect that neighbor, 36, from Nazaria’s “unlawful harassment,” according to records from Snohomish County District Court’s Cascade Division in Arlington.
Judge Jennifer Rancourt ruled Nazaria was “NOT credible” in those court proceedings. His testimony included statements that “were so inconsistent with other credible testimony or evidence so as (to) demonstrate a reckless disregard for the truth in representations being made under oath,” Rancourt wrote in July 2020.
Nazaria, now 26, still works for the sheriff’s office.
Two days after the 2019 election, sheriff’s officials decided to postpone his discipline until a new sheriff was sworn in.
Instead of firing the deputy, new Sheriff Adam Fortney and Undersheriff Jeff Brand told Nazaria in January 2020 they had decided to punish him with a one-day suspension and a written reprimand.
Twice in early 2020, the woman reported to the sheriff’s office that deputy Nazaria continued to harass her.
“I feel sick to my stomach every time I have to take my garbage bins out to the street or open my garage door for any reason,” the woman told the agency in an official statement. “I am a single mother with two young children and I deserve to feel safe in my own home. I am again asking the Sheriff’s department to step in and do something to stop this harassment on behalf of one of their deputies before it progresses any further.”
After the first internal investigation, as he was about to be disciplined, Nazaria conceded he made mistakes. But he denied breaking the law. In court testimony, he repeatedly denied allegations he stalked, harassed or intimidated his neighbor. To the contrary, he contended he went out of his way to avoid her after she filed her first grievance.
The county agreed late last year to pay $325,000 to settle claims over the deputy’s misconduct.
Nazaria’s case raises questions about the risks of holding law enforcement leaders responsible for policing those among their own ranks. Fallout for the deputy’s actions came at a time when activists’ calls for greater police accountability reverberated here and across the country.
Fortney, the former longtime president of the Deputy Sheriff’s Association, drew scrutiny early in his tenure as sheriff when he reinstated three deputies who had been fired for past misconduct.
One of them was Art Wallin. The past sheriff found Wallin violated department policy when he shot and killed Nickolas Peters, 24, at the end of a high-speed chase east of Lynnwood in 2018. The other two deputies had been fired for covering up an illegal search of a vehicle’s trunk without a warrant.
The sheriff has said he stands by those reinstatements. They became flashpoints in a failed recall effort against him.
This is the fourth example of a Snohomish County deputy who Fortney has found fit for duty, overruling conclusions of the previous sheriff’s administration.
Nazaria’s personal attorney did not return a Daily Herald reporter’s phone call and emails seeking comment.
‘Some kind of personal vendetta’
In spring 2020, the sheriff’s office completed a second internal investigation, dismissing the reports that Nazaria kept harassing his neighbor. According to the sheriff’s investigator, Sgt. Jeff Stemme, the evidence suggested the “allegation is false or is not supported by the facts.”
But Judge Rancourt disagreed with those findings last July, when she granted the woman a protection order against Nazaria for one year. The judge’s final order, as well as testimony and investigative documents in the public record, shed light on the extent of the deputy’s wrongdoing — and how his discipline was ratcheted down to a nominal punishment.
Rancourt found Nazaria’s inappropriate behavior began on July 25, 2019, when the wife was arrested for investigation of domestic violence assault in the fourth degree. Within the next two days, Nazaria “tried to convince (the wife) to feign a mental condition as a defense” and encouraged her to “reconcile” with her husband, even though she told Nazaria she was in an abusive relationship, Rancourt found.
The deputy’s impropriety continued well into 2020, when he intimidated the woman with his rifle and later spit at her vehicle as she drove past his driveway, Rancourt ruled. The sheriff’s office had found those two incidents didn’t rise to the level of harassment.
Rancourt cited several statements from the deputy that raised questions about his credibility.
In a sworn statement filed in court in May 2020, the deputy wrote: “My understanding is that the sheriff’s office is going to reverse my discipline from the first investigation, because it has become clear that (the woman) is falsely accusing me of misconduct as part of some kind of personal vendetta against me.”
Nazaria later testified he got that impression from a conversation with a sergeant, though the same sergeant denied making any comment of the sort.
Rancourt granted the woman’s petition for a protection order, but denied her request that the deputy be ordered to surrender his firearms. Nazaria’s attorney Nikki Carsley, of Seamark Law Group, argued forfeiting his guns would make him unable to do his job.
“Having worked for the former administration, I know that their focus was on discipline by punishment,” Undersheriff Brand testified in district court. “And that is not the focus of our administration. Our administration is more focused on if we can change a person’s demeanor, their actions — if we can train them instead of just punishing them.”
Rancourt’s scathing ruling landed Nazaria on the county prosecutor’s running list of law enforcement officers with credibility concerns. It’s also known as a “Brady” list, a reference to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that established prosecutors cannot withhold from defendants any evidence that might lead to exoneration, including when police witnesses have a documented history of lying.
‘The biggest misuse of power’
Before the trouble began, Nazaria got to know the couple over several months in 2019, sharing meals with them and occasionally working on yard projects with the husband, court records show.
Nazaria later became a character witness for the husband in the couple’s divorce case.
In July 2019, though Nazaria was not assigned to patrol Granite Falls, he responded to the domestic violence call at the couple’s home. The husband reported they were arguing when his wife hit him. Another deputy arrested the woman. She was jailed overnight but never prosecuted.
Nazaria later called the husband and offered advice about how to minimize the chance of criminal charges against his wife, the sheriff’s office found in its initial investigation. The deputy spoke with the wife, too, at the husband’s request. Nazaria admitted in court that he called the husband and wife to answer questions about how the case would proceed, but he denied giving legal advice.
Then on the night of Oct. 3, 2019, Nazaria saw a Toyota Camry parked near the couple’s home. Hours later he stopped the same car and demanded to know why the man was in the neighborhood. He forced him to open his trunk for a search — actions that “served no legitimate purpose” but to harass and intimidate, Rancourt wrote.
Nazaria testified that the vehicle stop stemmed from a report he received the previous night of someone stealing tools at a construction site in his neighborhood. The caller reported the thief was putting the stolen goods in the trunk of a white Toyota Camry. The deputy arrived to find a white Camry parked and empty.
He searched license plate records and learned the car belonged to someone who did not live nearby.
Nazaria found no evidence to substantiate the reported theft.
He spotted the car again the next morning on Highway 92, accelerating away from him, he testified. So he stopped the driver and told him about the reported theft.
According to Nazaria’s testimony, the man then opened his trunk voluntarily to show there was nothing stolen in it.
The driver, however, testified the deputy did not simply ask: He ordered him to pop the trunk, so the man obeyed.
“I was trying to follow orders from a police officer, and didn’t know I had an option to say no,” the man testified. He was in the area because he was friends with the woman, and he had just left her home.
Nazaria then asked him, twice, who he was visiting in the neighborhood, the man recalled.
The man first questioned why the information was relevant. But when Nazaria persisted, he answered with the woman’s name.
“It was pretty clear to me that he was pulling me over to verify that I was at (the woman’s) house,” the man testified. “And the minute he got that information, he was done with me.”
Before letting the man go, Nazaria asked if he knew the woman’s husband.
The man testified that his encounter with Nazaria was “the biggest misuse of power I’ve ever experienced.”
Nazaria acknowledged he called the husband later and told him a man had visited his wife. The deputy knew at the time the husband had moved out of their shared home. Rancourt concluded Nazaria “made the call to his friend,” because he believed the woman “was exercising poor judgement by having a male visitor late at night while her children were presumably home,” as the deputy had recounted himself in a statement to the court.
Rancourt wrote in her ruling that the husband “then contacted a fellow neighbor to help keep (the woman) under surveillance.”
The woman eventually moved away from the neighborhood to escape the deputy, said her attorney, Sumeer Singla of Seattle-based law firm Williams Kastner.
The sheriff’s office declined to comment on the case. Brand referred a reporter to the county for comment on the civil settlement.
In late 2020, the county agreed to pay the woman $200,000 over the alleged harassment. A $125,000 payout went to the man who claimed to be the victim of the illegal vehicle search. The county admitted no liability in the settlements.
Jason Cummings, chief civil deputy prosecutor for the county, had no further comment.
‘A very clear message’
Sheriff’s Lt. A.J. Bryant took the woman’s first complaint on Oct. 4, 2019, the same day Nazaria stopped her friend’s vehicle.
Bryant concluded in late October that Nazaria’s actions not only violated the law, but also sheriff’s office policies regarding conflicts of interest, searches and seizures, and promoting a positive public image.
Bryant recommended the deputy be fired.
“I do not find it credible that the subject opened the trunk without being prompted to do so as told by Deputy Nazaria,” wrote Bryant, who has since retired, in an investigative report. “I find that Deputy Nazaria searched the trunk and did so without advising the driver he was free to refuse the search or limit the search. I find that Deputy Nazaria did not hold a warrant or probable cause for the search of the trunk.”
In court, Undersheriff Brand said the current leadership at the sheriff’s office agreed. He said he mistakenly wrote the search and seizure violations were “not sustained” in his official report. They were sustained, Brand told the judge.
Those findings were central to Snohomish County Prosecutor Adam Cornell’s decision to officially flag Nazaria as a law enforcement officer with questionable credibility, according to a notice Cornell sent to the sheriff’s office last fall.
Every time Nazaria’s name appears on a witness list for a case filed by county prosecutors, the same notice is now given to the defendant’s attorney.
Lt. Bryant noted Nazaria’s “knowing and intentional actions” were considered Grade 3 offenses, the most serious violations under sheriff’s office policy. The recommended discipline for a first-time Grade 3 violation ranges from a written reprimand to termination.
Nazaria’s captain, as well as then-Operations Bureau Chief Susanna Johnson and then-Undersheriff Rob Beidler, all agreed on Nov. 5, 2019, that the deputy should be terminated. It was Election Day. Incumbent Sheriff Ty Trenary lost the race to one of his sergeants.
Sheriff’s officials then met with a Deputy Sheriff’s Association representative to discuss Nazaria’s status, as he was still on probation from his hiring. They decided on a “new plan,” the bureau chief wrote Nov. 7 in an email to union representative Marcus Dill.
“Per our discussion,” Johnson wrote, the sheriff’s office requested the deadline to issue the agency’s findings on the complaint be moved to Feb. 1, 2020.
Dill responded in an email, saying the union agreed with the postponement and a one-year probation extension, records show.
The internal investigation file “basically sat on a desk until our new administration came in,” Undersheriff Brand told the court in the protection order case.
Brand was the first to disagree with the recommended firing. Fortney concurred that the penalty was too harsh, Brand said.
In a disciplinary letter informing Nazaria of the lesser sanctions, Brand wrote that Nazaria “owned” his mistakes in the hearing.
The deputy also reported he had avoided his neighbors since learning of the investigation the previous fall.
“Other than speculation, there is nothing that confirms the allegation that you were keeping (the wife) under surveillance,” Brand said.
Brand also noted Nazaria had no previous violations or complaints, and he had positive performance reports.
Still, Brand wrote, the violations “have brought a loss of confidence and reputation on you as well as the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office and Snohomish County.”
The disciplinary letter is set to remain in his file for another year.
“Further violations of this or any other rules may result in discipline up to and including termination,” says the letter, sent to Nazaria on Jan. 27, 2020.
After the woman received a letter notifying her of Nazaria’s punishment, she called Undersheriff Brand. She said she feared retribution. She reported the deputy had also tried to intimidate her with a gun. He glared at her, rifle in hand, from his front porch as she left for work, she recalled while testifying in District Court. Brand dismissed the complaint. He reportedly told the woman Nazaria was probably just taking the gun inside after his night shift.
The woman’s daughter, age 4, had been in the back seat. She noticed the man glaring at them, too. It was a “very clear message” Nazaria was sending, the woman told the court.
“It was a dead stare,” she said. “And it scared me.”
Rachel Riley: 425-339-3465; rriley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @rachel_m_riley.
Timeline
July 25, 2019. Deputy Daniil Nazaria responds to a call at his neighbors’ home in Granite Falls. One neighbor is arrested after her husband tells police she punched him.
July 27, 2019. Nazaria calls the wife, at the husband’s request, to discuss her case. He advises her about how to avoid prosecution and encourages her to reconcile with her husband, even though the wife tells him her spouse is abusive, according to Judge Snohomish County District Court Jennifer Rancourt’s ruling.
Oct. 4, 2019. Early in the morning, Nazaria stops the car of a driver who he’d seen parked near the neighbor’s home the previous night. The deputy misuses his authority to stop the car, question the driver and search the trunk without probable cause, Rancourt later finds. He learns the driver was visiting the neighbor — information he then shares with her estranged ex-husband, who had moved out of their shared home. The same day, the neighbor files her first complaint with the sheriff’s office about Nazaria’s behavior.
Oct. 30, 2019. Lt. A.J. Bryant, who investigated the first complaint, concludes Nazaria violated sheriff’s office policy. Bryant recommends that Nazaria be terminated.
Nov. 5, 2019. Nazaria’s captain, as well as then-Operations Bureau Chief Susanna Johnson and then-Undersheriff Rob Beidler, all agree Nazaria should be terminated. Incumbent Sheriff Ty Trenary loses election to Adam Fortney.
Nov. 7, 2019. Trenary’s administration and the Deputy Sheriff’s Association agree to postpone the agency’s final decision on the investigation until Fortney takes office.
Jan. 20, 2020. New Undersheriff Jeff Brand provides Nazaria a memo that summarizes the “potential policy violations” and informs him a pre-disciplinary hearing will be held on Jan. 23, 2020.
Jan. 24, 2020. Nazaria intimidates the neighbor while staring at her from his porch, holding a rifle, according to Rancourt’s later ruling. The neighbor reports the incident to Brand soon afterward.
Jan. 27, 2020. Brand provides Nazaria with a memo stating his punishment for the 2019 violations will be a day’s suspension and a written reprimand.
March 22, 2020. The neighbor files a third complaint with the sheriff’s office about Nazaria. She reports the deputy is still harassing her.
March 24, 2020. The neighbor files a peitition in county district court for a protection order against Nazaria.
March 27, 2020. Sgt. Jeff Stemme, who investigated the third complaint, finds the facts do not support the ongoing harassment allegation.
July 24, 2020. Rancourt grants the neighbor’s petition for a protection order. She finds Nazaria’s testimony “NOT credible.”
Oct. 16, 2020. County Prosecutor Adam Cornell informs the sheriff that, because of Rancourt’s ruling, Nazaria has been flagged as a law enforcement officer with credibility issues.
Dec. 18, 2020. The county agrees to pay $325,000 to settle claims against Nazaria.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
