Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders spoke to members of the Rainier Senior Center during a “Coffee with a Cop” event on Wednesday, Feb. 15, as he touched on topics like funding, recruitment and the Tenino sex offender housing situation.
Sanders, who last visited the senior center in November, discussed how his first two months as sheriff have gone.
“Things have gone pretty good so far. I came into the job with this huge expectation of all these things I wanted to do,” Sanders said during the event. “Then life in the state of Washington came and kind of slapped me in the face.”
Sanders said he has spent a lot of his time and energy focused on the Supreme Living facility in Tenino, which would house up to five clients of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), some of whom are released sex offenders from McNeil Island Special Commitment Center.
Sanders said the state has a problem it didn’t create, due to the ninth circuit court ruling that the individuals who would benefit from the sex offender housing need a path toward success.
Sanders was also frustrated that DSHS and the state Department of Corrections canceled a scheduled town hall hearing in Tenino related to the sex offender housing. Due to safety concerns, the town hall was moved to an online webinar.
“It feels disrespectful to me, as the sheriff, and also to my constituents in Thurston County,” Sanders said. “I felt even more disrespected when just a couple days ago, they did a (town hall) in Enumclaw.”
Sanders said he has made it clear to DSHS and DOC that he does not want to serve as a middleman between the community and their organizations.
The sheriff added he has spent a lot of time testifying on different bills related to public safety, including the controversial pursuit law.
“I’m not too confident that is going to occur,” Sanders said. “There is bipartisan support, but there’s a lot of politics going on and I would (advise) everyone that it might be status quo for another two years.”
A streamlined process for victims of domestic violence to present protection order identification has been in the works as well, according to Sanders.
Sanders said he has spent time trying to improve domestic violence responses as it’s a large portion of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office’s call volume. He testified on a bill that would allow domestic violence victims to receive information on their driver’s license to present protection order information, instead of having to carry around “tons” of paperwork. He said the bill has a lot of support and he expects it to pass with ease.
“What we see a lot of times with domestic violence is victims don’t have very many resources and it’s hard to find an attorney to represent them,” Sanders said. “We’re just trying to tip the scale a little bit so victims have resources.”
He added the state covers a small cost for the identification portion, but domestic violence victims won’t have to pay anything out of pocket.
Sanders also touched on recruiting and retention at the sheriff’s office, which he said has been a high area of focus for the department since he was elected.
Thurston County has a population of around 300,000 people, with the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office being responsible for serving 150,000. Currently, there are 35 out of 56 officers serving those people. The remaining 21 positions include vacancies, injuries or family leave. The sheriff’s office currently has .23 deputies available for every 1,000 people, according to Sanders, who noted the national average is 2.33 deputies per 1,000 people.
Sanders said the department was given an overtime budget of $25,000 in January, but due to a lack of staffing, they spent $70,000 on overtime. He added the patrol department worked 1,200 hours of overtime in January to “keep things afloat.”
“It’s not like patrol deputies can take Fridays off. It’s a 24/7 operation,” Sanders said. “We have to staff that. Our minimum staff is seven in the morning, eight on the swing shift and seven in the evening. That is extremely low.”
While Sanders knows it will take time to rehabilitate the staffing levels, he believes the office is already off to a strong start. The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office has almost finished hiring a second background investigator, which would bring the total in the department to four. He added the department has also gone from one to two full-time recruiters.
Another new concept that Sanders is trying with his department is a “flex” program for his deputies on their shifts. The one hour-per-shift time slot would allow deputies to either workout or pursue their degree, as long as all their work, training and paperwork is complete. Sanders believes the program will help prevent burnout.
“We want educated, fit deputies working in our community,” Sanders said. “As the sheriff, I don’t think we can ask them to do it when they’re off duty. We’re trying to improve the work-life balance.”
The department is also taking steps to change its hiring process. Sanders said there are typically 20 individuals in the background process at any given time. The process typically takes 12 to 18 months to complete, before the academy and field-specific training.
He said the department has moved the “chief interview” to the front of the application process in order to prevent applicants from dropping out. Sanders said applicants could receive a conditional offer right away based on their interview results.
“We saw the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re hoping these things will help the process of getting people hired on, but it’s too early to tell if anything we’re doing yet is particularly special,” Sanders said. “But what I can say is, out of the two positions we’ve put out there for crime analyst and financial services legal assistant, when we put the crime analyst out one year ago, we got seven applicants. When we put it out one year later, we received 56 applicants across the entire country.”
He added last year there were 10 applicants versus 38 applicants this year for the financial services job.
Sanders said he has been in talks with the county’s public health department, the courts, prosecutors and defense attorneys about reopening the Thurston County Jail, as it is still under heavy booking restrictions due to COVID-19 guidelines.
“A core part of my job is booking people that need to be booked into jail, into jail. When you can’t do that, it becomes frustrating and you lose a sense of purpose,” Sanders said. “That’s adding on to our retention issues.”
He said last year, the department lost five deputies to the Lacey Police Department. That was due to a $1,500 pay increase they received, as well as being able to book criminals into the Nisqually Jail, where Thurston County deputies couldn’t book people.
The state of Washington sets the COVID-19 guidelines, which trickles down to the Thurston County Board of Health, who then interprets those guidelines, Sanders said. He said the sheriff’s office doesn’t decide who gets to be booked into jail, but they decide how many people can be booked.
Sanders also spoke about the idea of a community advisory board, which he also talked about while he was campaigning for sheriff. He said he hasn’t been able to begin the process of putting that board together yet.
“It isn’t as easy as just throwing a board up,” Sanders said. “There are a lot of state laws about how you can choose the board and how it operates.”
Sanders said he will have a volunteer assist him on implementation of the board once he is able to. While he would have already liked to allocate time and resources toward the community advisory board, Sanders said it’s hard to do when his office is running up its overtime budget.
