A King County sheriff’s deputy bullied potential witnesses and engaged in other “bizarre and terrifying” actions in the days following a high-profile ruckus outside of the Sportsmen’s Inn last May, according to the first substantive volley in a legal dispute over the incident.

Steve Mueller, hired to defend former restaurateur Jessica DeWire, charged with assaulting a police officer, paints a picture of a rogue deputy who used profanity-laced language and physical posturing to intimidate witnesses and ensure his version of the events surrounding the May 7 incident carried the day.

The allegations are contained in his 12-page motion calling for the third-degree assault charge against DeWire to be dismissed. Mueller filed the motion, a public document, in King County Superior Court last week.

Mueller also said the officer, Dep. Kevin Savage, and his partner Dep. Mark Silverstein falsely arrested DeWire based on an account of the incident that is “absolutely untrue.” The two men said DeWire struck first, sinking her fingernails into Silverstein’s face in an aggressive attempt to interfere with his arrest of an intoxicated man. Mueller, however, contends that Silverstein threw DeWire to the ground — and it was only then that she scratched him.

After the incident, Mueller said, the two officers “conspired to write false reports.” Then, he added, “In an effort to make the false reports stand up, Dep. Savage used fearsome, outrageous threats in a deliberate and concerted effort to intimidate people who were known to him as likely defense witnesses.”

Hours after the incident, for instance, Savage went to the home of one of the witnesses in the middle of the night — a move Mueller describes as “chilling.” While there, he insisted that the witness, Katina Gabri, was wrong in her account of the event, ranting for 45 minutes and using his 6-foot-two-inch stature to intimidate her, Mueller wrote.

“He gesticulated violently, spoke loudly and obscenely and acted out circumstances in which he would subdue a subject, using Ms. Gabri as the hypothetical subject, coming to within inches of her as he did so,” he said.

The display “was terrifying” to Gabri, he said. “As a result, she chose not to respond when King County detectives tried to contact her.”

The incident is one of several Mueller recounts in his motion, which is slated to be heard in open court on Jan. 13.

Savage, meanwhile, is no longer working on Vashon.

Sgt. John Urquhart, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department, said the deputy was reassigned “due to complaints received from Vashon residents.” Savage is currently working in White Center, where he’ll stay “until the complaints are resolved,” Urquhart said.

Savage has run afoul of the sheriff’s department before. According to a document attached to Mueller’s motion, obtained through the Public Disclosure Act, Sheriff Sue Rahr — head of the department — suspended Savage for three days in March of this year, after he used foul language and bullying tactics to get some misbehaving children to sit down during a police incident.

In a memo to Savage, she said her investigation “clearly shows a pattern of inappropriate use of your authority.” She added: “I am disgusted at your rationalization that the language was appropriate because (the children) sat down. If you pointed your gun at them, I’m sure that would have made them sit down as well. That doesn’t make it right. … What you in fact taught this family is that police officers are unprofessional and bullies who threaten people into cooperating.”

The May 7 incident on Vashon drew headlines and news accounts throughout the region, after the King County Sheriff’s Office broadly issued a press release contending that DeWire intervened in an arrest of a patron at Sportsmen’s Inn. DeWire, former co-owner of the now-closed Gusto Girls, grabbed Silverstein’s arm to stop him and, when he tried to fend her off, “sunk her fingernails into his face,” the sheriff’s department reported in its release. It was only after she scratched him that Silverstein took DeWire to the ground and use pepper spray to subdue her, the police report said.

But some witnesses to the event told The Beachcomber a different story. DeWire, they said, did not initiate physical contact and was a few feet away when the officer turned to her and threw her down. Once on the ground, they said, DeWire, apparently in a state of panic and self-defense, scratched Silverstein.

Mueller put it more boldly. According to his brief, DeWire “was violently assaulted” by Silverstein; he “suddenly took several steps towards her, struck a blow to her shoulders and neck with his arm, drove her backwards and hurled her to the pavement, landing on top of her and pummeling her.”

The officers quickly came up with another version to protect themselves, Mueller wrote. Once in the police cruiser, DeWire overheard Savage tell Silverstein that he saw blood on his face before “you even touched her,” repeating the words “in a manner which seemed directive,” Mueller said.

What then followed, Mueller said, was a series of actions meant to intimidate some of the witnesses. Savage, for instance, confronted Jared Middlecalf, an eyewitness who made a statement to the police that the deputy had acted without justification, the day after the incident; Savage approached Middlecalf while he was getting off work, explaining his version of the events to the Vashon resident.

Several months later, Middlecalf overheard Savage describing the incident to someone in a restaurant; when Middlecalf spoke up, disagreeing with Savage’s account, Savage told him to “shut the f*** up” and told Middlecalf he’d be found guilty of perjury if he testified about what he had seen.

In yet another incident about a week after DeWire’s arrest, Mueller said Savage stopped two young women who had witnessed the arrest and subjected them and a third occupant of their car to “a 20-minute obscenity filled outburst.” He told the three young Islanders that he hadn’t “called this stop in and no one knows I am here. There is no dispatcher on the Island and no one to keep tabs on me. I can do any f***ing thing I want to do.”

Mueller, reached Monday, declined to comment on his motion, saying the brief stands on its own.

The investigation, which has already taken months of his time, is ongoing, he added. Mueller, a Vashon lawyer, is pouring considerable time into the case because of the severity of the allegations against DeWire.

“Whenever someone is charged with assaulting an officer, it’s a very, very serious allegation,” Mueller said.

The trial was scheduled to begin Jan. 3 but has been postponed and will likely take place sometime after Mueller’s motion is heard on Jan. 13, according to the prosecutor’s office.