SEATTLE — The city of Kent will pay more than $1.5 million to settle a dispute with a former assistant police chief who was disciplined for posting a Nazi rank insignia on his office door and joking about the Holocaust.
Former Assistant Chief Derek Kammerzell had initially been given two weeks off without pay as discipline for his actions, but an outraged response by Kent citizens and members of the Jewish community resulted in Mayor Dana Ralph demanding Kammerzell’s resignation.
The city’s attempt to essentially discipline Kammerzell a second time led to a bitter dispute and standoff between his attorneys and the city that appeared headed for litigation. However, interim city Chief Administrative Officer Arthur “Pat” Fiztpatrick, who is also the city attorney, said Friday the city has resolved the matter through negotiation.
Ralph, in calling for Kammerzell’s resignation last January, acknowledged that the decision to revisit the discipline issue would likely “come at a high cost.” In a release Friday announcing the resolution, the city said it would pay him $1,520,000 to resign.
Fitzpatrick said in a release that officials “strongly believe that settling this matter will be a substantial step toward meeting our commitment to the community and continuing with the excellent work the Police Department is doing.”
Had the city simply fired him, officials said, he likely would have won his job back through arbitration due to federal and state labor laws.
“It was clear the assistant chief would have significant difficulty being an effective leader in the Department and in the community, and that his presence would have distracted from the mission of the Department,” Fitzpatrick said.
Kammerzell, a 27-year department veteran, was initially given two weeks off without pay by Kent Police Chief Rafael Padilla in July 2021 after a detective complained that insignia used by high-ranking generals in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich appeared on Kammerzell's door above his nameplate in September 2020.
An internal investigation concluded that Kammerzell knew full well the meaning of the insignia, which belonged to an “obergruppenfuhrer” — a high official in Hitler’s dreaded paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews in Europe during World War II.
Kammerzell also had been overheard joking about the Holocaust, according to the internal investigation, saying that his grandfather had died in the Holocaust — when he got drunk and fell out of a Nazi guard tower.
The investigation, conducted by an attorney at the Seattle law firm of Stokes Lawrence, concluded that Kammerzell’s claim that he didn’t know the significance of the insignia and had heard about it in the television series “The Man in the High Castle” — where one of the main characters holds that rank — was not believable.
The series is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel, which presents a dystopian alternate future in which Germany won World War II and occupied America, where the Nazis continue their efforts to round up and exterminate Jews.
One of the key antagonists in the series, an American Nazi named John Smith, holds that rank, which is identifiable by a collar patch depicting an oak leaf and two diamonds — the insignia Kammerzell posted on his door.
Moreover, Kammerzell acknowledged during the investigation that he once shaved his facial hair into a “Hitler mustache,” and investigators looked into allegations that a photograph taken of Kammerzell, dressed in lederhosen and standing behind Ralph at a city Octoberfest celebration in 2019, appeared to show him give the stiff-armed “Heil Hitler” salute. Kammerzell suggested the photo caught him in the middle of waving.
Publicity about the city’s initial two-week suspension sparked outrage among Kent’s citizens and drew blistering condemnation from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
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