Benton County to ask AG, state patrol to investigate sheriff

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — Benton County commissioners are calling for a criminal investigation into 14,000 rounds of county-owned ammunition found last year at embattled Sheriff Jerry Hatcher’s former home.

The board on Tuesday said it will ask the prosecutor’s office to prepare a letter to Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Washington State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste, the Tri-City Herald reported.

Commissioner Jerome Delvin proposed the action which was agreed to by Commissioner Shon Small and Chairman Jim Beaver. They hope to have the letter ready to be approved and signed at their Sept. 1 meeting.

“I know when the information came to the public and to us, there was some back-channel efforts made by the prosecutors and others to try to get something like that done,” Delvin said during Tuesday’s commission meeting.

He said some agencies declined then, but it is time now for the county to make a formal request.

Hatcher told the Tri-City Herald he considers the commissioners’ action a witch-hunt, a vendetta and outside their scope.

He questions why the commissioners have never just asked him to come in and talk about the ammunition, and said they should worry about running their own office and not another elected official’s department.

“They’re just trying to make an example of me because they dislike me,” he added.

The county’s letter will ask the two state agencies to investigate the ammunition, more than eight months after it was discovered by Monica Hatcher as she was packing what was left of her estranged husband’s things in their Kennewick home.

A judge had previously granted a temporary protection order for Monica Hatcher, and as part of it the sheriff was ordered to relinquish his weapons to Kennewick police. That...