$42M tort claim accuses Washington AGO, WSU of racketeering

(The Center Square) — A potential subcontractor for a state police use of force database project who has had a long-running feud with the state Attorney General’s Office and Washington State University has now filed a $42 million tort claim that includes accusations of racketeering.

Police Strategies CEO Bob Scales was among potential bidders on a request for proposal put out in 2022 by the AGO via Senate Bill 5259. A former King County prosecutor, Scales was also consulted by legislators as the bill advanced through the Legislature and advised them on similar bills introduced in prior sessions.

When finished, the database was intended to be a public resource where individuals could download information concerning police use of force incidents.  

However, Scales has alleged that AGO and WSU employees conspired to ensure that the university — a client of the AGO and the only entity to submit a bid — would be awarded the $15 million contract. He has filed numerous ethics complaints against both AGO employees and WSU staff, all of which have either been dismissed or not pursued on technical grounds.

In the original version of SB 5259, the contract would have been awarded directly to WSU, but that was changed to make it a competitive bidding process managed by the AGO.

In his claim filed on July 16, Scales wrote that his company had “suffered significant financial losses, loss of business opportunities, damage to business reputation, theft of copyrighted, proprietary and intellectual property, and other losses.”

“I have filed this claim for damages as a last resort,” he wrote in a press release. “My goal is to bring an end to the AGO’s racketeering and WSU’s criminal profiteering which have already wasted millions of taxpayer dollars.”

Initially intending to partner with Seattle University to bid on the RFP, Scales ultimately did not pursue it due to various contractual obligations, including that they turn over their intellectual property. Seattle University later received a letter from the AGO instructing them to seize and preserve records in anticipation of a potential lawsuit involving Scales.

After WSU received the contract, it entered negotiations with IBM as a potential subcontractor, but the company later withdrew from the project over similar concerns regarding intellectual property.

“This is not something that any business would ever agree to do,” Scales wrote in his claim. “By transferring ownership of a business’ intellectual property to a public university it is placed in the public domain for anyone to use and the business would inevitably fail.”

While WSU has hired another contractor since then, Scales’ complaint argues that the RFP process itself ran afoul of the Interstate Commerce Clause “by limiting potential bidders in the competitive public procurement process to institutions of higher education that are located in Washington State. Institutions of higher education from other states are ineligible to bid on the $15 million state contract.”

Scales recently accused WSU of illegally using copyrighted and proprietary data from his company for the database project. He has previously claimed that WSU President Kirk Schulz interfered with an ethics complaint at the direction of the AGO against the WSU professor in charge of the database project.

The tort claim also contains numerous communications from AGO that Scales asserts are defamatory, including a statement issued to The Center Square for its story regarding Scales’ cease and desist letter to the AGO and WSU, in which the AGO accused Scales of trying to delay the project after his company wasn’t selected as a subcontractor.

As part of his claim, Scales offers two separate potential settlement agreements. One would have the state pay his company $10 million, which would be used to build the use of force database. The alternative settlement would have the AGO cancel its current contract with WSU.

In an email to The Center Square, AGO Communications Manager Brionna Aho wrote, "We look forward to these outlandish claims being dismissed."