SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. — Starting later this month, the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office will permanently reassign several specialty units to help cover patrol crews due to staffing shortages across the department, the sheriff said in a letter to the public Monday afternoon.
Sheriff Adam Fortney said the Office of Neighborhoods (OON), Directed Patrol (DP) and the K-9 unit will be among the specialty units reassigned to patrol crews to fill current vacancies in the department.
The OON pairs up social workers with law enforcement to connect with homeless and vulnerable populations in the county. According to the county's website, the OON's goal is to "break the cycle of homelessness, mental health, and/or chemical dependency in our county."
The reassignments will start by mid-June, Fortney said in the letter.
"While the following staffing decisions were hard to make, I also know it is the right decision at this moment in history to ensure we can protect our community and protect our first responders," Fortney said.
Fortney said the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office set a hiring record in 2021, but it has not been sustainable in 2022 as "law enforcement officers around our state are choosing to leave this profession at a faster rate than we can hire."
So far this year, 30 deputies have resigned or retired, according to the sheriff's office. The office has hired 16 deputies who are currently training.
The sheriff's office has 27 deputy vacancies.
The sheriff said staffing shortages and criminals "becoming more emboldened and more violent" have created a safety issue for Snohomish County deputies on patrol.
In the last three weeks, four Snohomish County deputies were sent to the hospital and there were three calls to help officers being seriously assaulted, Fortney said.
In his 20 years working patrol for Snohomish County, Fourtney said he heard just three calls to help an officer, a mark that has been matched in the past month alone.
The most recent incident involving a deputy pushed Fortney to re-assign specialty units to cover patrol. He said a deputy was severely assaulted in south Snohomish County to the point where he was not able to call for additional help. It was then, Fortney said, he felt he needed to make "drastic changes" to staffing to safely respond to 911 calls.
Before reassigning specialty units, the department tried smaller staffing changes to cover the shortages, but Fortney said the measures were not working.
"Our response times to get adequate resources on scene for what could be a life-or-death incident is taking far too long due to our patrol crews being understaffed in a county of our size," Fortney said.
Fortney said for the next six to 12 months these specialty units will work full-time patrol beats and respond to 911 calls for service.
The sheriff did, however, leave the door open for the specialty units to be re-instated to their original roles if conditions within the department improve.
"I want to be clear that I believe in everything these specialty units are doing for our community, but at this time we need them to help stabilize our patrol division and ensure safety remains our top priority," Fortney said. "If our staffing situation dramatically improves, we could re-establish these specialty units sooner."