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KING COUNTY, Wash. - King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht fired Detective George Alvarez for his decisions prior to the deadly shooting of a suspected truck thief, officials said Thursday.
In November of 2019, deputies said Anthony Chilcott was suspected of stealing a Ford Raptor pickup truck with a 4-year-old poodle named 'Monkey' inside. After a tip on the stolen vehicle, multiple agencies in southeast King County began looking for the truck.
A short time later, two plain clothes detectives from the King County Sheriff’s Office Precinct 3 Special Emphasis Team were in an unmarked Yukon when they saw the stolen truck. Investigators said the suspect began ramming the detective’s vehicle. The detectives got out of their vehicle to make contact with the suspect, who was seated in the truck, and an altercation ensued. During the encounter, both detectives shot the suspect. He died at the scene.
On April 1, 2021, the sheriff's office announced that Detective Alvarez was being terminated "based on his decisions leading up to the use of force."
According to a news release, the sheriff found by "clear and convincing evidence that the tactics used here were substantially below what is required in our de-escalation policy, expectations based on your years of training, experience level and organizational knowledge from lessons learned from prior events."
"Instead of waiting for backup, which was only minutes away, Alvarez initiated contact with Chilcott despite the fact Alvarez was driving an unmarked vehicle, without lights and siren, and was not wearing a ballistic vest marked "SHERIFF" or clothing identifying himself as law enforcement. This violated KCSO standard operating procedure, specifically updated in April 2019 after lessons learned from the fatal shooting of Mi’Chance Dunlap-Gittens in 2017. The Sheriff found Alvarez’s decision to initiate contact with Chilcott in an unmarked vehicle and without clothing identifying him as law enforcement put himself, his partner Lerum, and perhaps members of the community standing nearby, at risk."
Johanknecht made it clear that he was not being terminated for the use of force in shooting Chilcott.
"At the specific point in time when both detectives used deadly force, both detectives feared they could be injured or killed by Chilcott’s actions," the release stated. "The Sheriff and an internal Critical Incident Review Board found the use of force within KCSO policy, based on the fact that Chilcott had pulled Alvarez part way in to the truck’s cab, at one point grabbed Alvarez’s gun and was actively revving the engine of the truck. Alvarez and Lerum feared one, or both, of them could be injured or killed if the truck became dislodged from a rock and managed to drive away."
Read the sheriff's letter to Alvarez below:
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