Kennewick Worker Claims City Fired Him Over Views of Pasco Shooting

A $150,000 lawsuit has been filed against the City of Kennewick by a former employee who claims his opinion on the Pasco Zambrano-Montes shooting got him terminated.

Former building inspector Mark Faith captured a video of the shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes. His cellphone video captured part of the incident prior to the shooting.

The video, lasting 34 seconds, was requested by the Special Investigations Unit, who is looking at the case.  Kennewick police officers requested the video. Faith apparently had loaded the video onto a thumb or zip drive, prior to his phone experiencing what he called technical issues.  Faith says his Verizon phone stopped working, and says company tech support told him to reset the phone.  Faith says when he did that, it deleted the original video, along with other data stored on the phone.

Although he reportedly downloaded the clip,  he could not give investigators the original video from the phone itself.  According to an earlier press conference given by Sgt. Ken Lattin of the SIU,  any cellphone videos of the shooting had to be viewed on the device they were recorded on as part of the validation process for official evidence by the State Crime Lab.  Lattin said a number of witnesses had already given their phones to investigators so they could validate the videos, then the phones were returned to the owners.

Faith gave an interview to SIU investigators shortly after the incident, during which time he voiced his opinion that the shooting was unwarranted.  He had originally declined to give police his cellphone because of personal information stored on the unit.  The video was reportedly too large to send by email to investigators, so Faith downloaded it on the thumb drive with the intention of giving to the SIU.

Shortly after that, Faith says, is when his phone stopped working.

According to officials,  videos or other visual evidence that has been transferred or downloaded compromises the integrity of the evidence, as it could be altered, edited or otherwise affected without investigators knowing it.

Faith then says a few weeks later, he was terminated by the city.  According to his attorney, the city claimed he was fired for talking on his phone while driving, arriving and leaving work late, and not cooperating with with police over an investigation.  The city claims he provided false statements about his phone.

According to KNDU-TV,  Faith ran for Franklin County Commissioner in 2012, but came under scrutiny for not residing in the county at that time, and for allegedly renting a room in a friend's house so he could fulfill the residency requirement for candidacy.

Faith is being represented by one of the lawyers also working with members of the Zambrano-Montes family, Charles Herrmann.  He refutes the claims made by the city, and says Faith was fired over his view expressed about the shooting.