A former Tacoma police officer who was hired as a sheriff’s deputy in a neighboring county — despite his involvement in the violent fatal arrest of Manuel Ellis in 2020 — has resigned his new job after just two days. Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said in a written statement Wednesday that he failed to anticipate the community’s strong objections to the hiring of Deputy Christopher Burbank. Burbank and two other officers — Timothy Rankine and Matthew Collins — were each cleared of criminal charges by a Pierce County jury last December in the death of Ellis, an unarmed Black man who was shocked, beaten and restrained facedown on a sidewalk as he pleaded for breath.
