If he were still with the Seattle Police Department, former Capt. Keith Swank would have been fired for inflammatory social media comments he made in 2023 disparaging transgender people and defending the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a disciplinary report released Friday.
But Swank retired from the Police Department in June 2023. This month, he was sworn in as Pierce County’s sheriff.
Former interim Chief Sue Rahr signed the disciplinary action report on Thursday, among her last actions before newly appointed interim Chief Shon Barnes took the helm.
Swank, 56, had worked at the Police Department for 33 years, including a stint as night watch commander before he retired in 2023, shortly after the department’s civilian-run Office of Police Accountability opened an investigation after complaints about Swank’s social media presence.
Rahr said she wasn’t issuing discipline, as Swank is no longer an employee. She concluded, however, that Swank’s violation of the Police Department’s antibias and professionalism policies was egregious and needed to be addressed, even after the fact, to bolster and restore public trust.
“You gave the people we serve reason to believe that you and the officers under your command would not treat them fairly and equitably, particularly given your rank,” Rahr wrote. “Biased, inflammatory rhetoric has no place in policing.”
“SPD’s core values, and the values you very publicly espouse, clearly do not align. You dishonor the department and the profession,” Rahr wrote. “If you were still a department employee, I would have terminated your employment.”
Swank, in a response via text message on Friday, wrote “SPD’s mischaracterizations are completely false and one hundred percent politically motivated.”
“If SPD’s top brass, mayor, and city council spent as much time fighting crime as they did on partisan politics then Seattle would have fewer serious problems,” he continued.
Rahr concluded that Swank’s posts to X and Facebook showed prejudice and were derogatory toward people’s gender identity, political ideology and race.
For example, she wrote, “your reference to [a] Black teen as a ‘thug’ — which is a racially charged slur — should reasonably be construed to be prejudiced and/or comment based on race.”
When President Donald Trump during his first term questioned Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage, with taunts of “Pocahontas,” Swank took up the insult, using the term “Fauxahontas,” which also was racist, Rahr concluded.
While with SPD, Swank ran unsuccessful campaigns as a longshot Republican candidate for Congress in 2020 and 2022.
Swank has said that he ran for Pierce County sheriff because God ordered him to “in a resounding voice” while he sat in his hot tub in Puyallup one night. During the 2024 general election, Swank won a narrow victory over former Pierce County Chief of Patrol Patti Jackson to become the county’s elected sheriff, despite controversy and publicity over those remarks.
He took office Jan. 1, replacing former Sheriff Ed Troyer. Swank was officially sworn in Jan. 15.
Swank’s disciplinary report states that, despite having retired, Swank agreed to meet with Rahr before the report’s release Friday. In that interview, according to Rahr, Swank asserted that because he is a politician, everything he says “falls under” the First Amendment. He explained when he made those posts he was running for Congress, according to the report. Swank lost a race against Rep. Marilyn Strickland in 2022.
Rahr notes that neither Swank nor his Seattle Police Management Association representative disputed that he’d made the comments, which included conspiracy theories and statements that “Democrats enjoy — deeply — chopping up babies and selling their body parts,” that Rep. Nancy Pelosi “coordinated the deadly attack” on the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and that Ashli Babbitt — a Jan. 6 protester killed by police — was murdered.
“You told me the new administration is going to do more investigation into ‘J6’ and suggested that your tweets about the takeover of the U.S. Capitol may in the end prove to be meritorious,” Rahr wrote.
During the interview, Swank stood by his disparaging posts about transgender people and told Rahr that he believed transgender women are “men pretending to be women” and opined that the Office of Police Accountability just didn’t like his politics, according to the report.
“I believe you when you say you were intending to be provocative in order to make a name for yourself,” Rahr noted. “But that does not absolve you.”