GCSO looks back and plans forward

EPHRATA — The Grant County Sheriff’s Office saw successes and challenges during Sheriff Joe Kriete’s first year in office in 2023. Kriete said he’s overall very proud of his department and has a deep appreciation for the support county residents generally show him and his officers. 

“We’re very lucky to live in the area that we live here in Grant County,” Kriete said, “And I just spent two days over in Olympia the last few days, and while I’m over in Olympia, at the Capitol there, visiting with all the other sheriffs and police chiefs over there, I realize how lucky we really are here in Grant County. And, not only as an agency. We’re lucky to have the support that we have in our community.” 

Kriete was speaking during the Feb. 9 episode of the Columbia Basin Herald’s STUDIO BASIN podcast and focused mostly on the future of the department as it moves into 2024. During a prior segment though, Grant County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Kyle Foreman recapped the department’s first year under Kriete with a look at both the challenges and victories of the year. 

“I had somebody from our Human Resources team the other day that congratulated me for making it through my freshman year of being sheriff, and we had a giggle about it,” Kriete said prior to closing out his segment. “But there’s a lot of truth to be said about that. We had a very interesting 2023. It was good (and we had) a ton of learning points.” 

2023

Foreman said part of the learning was dealing with an increase in need in the county for GCSO services, with an estimated 15,500 calls that deputies responded to.

“The sheriff’s office, just like every other agency in Grant County, has experienced an increase in calls and that reflects that the community is changing,” Foreman said.  “Our call volume is higher than it was 10 years ago, and the call volumes of the other agencies around us have changed and increased from 10 years ago as well, and that reflects a trend that we are a growing community.”

The data associated with those thousands of calls is useful, he said, because it allows county officials, including Kriete, to plan to address the growth and be able to mitigate crime and other issues proactively. 

The data doesn’t reflect the number of offenses directly on a one-for-one basis, Foreman said. Some calls are for simple assistance before a crime occurs or to promote safety or manage traffic. Additionally, when a deputy arrives at, for example, a call for a suspicious vehicle, they may find that the car is stolen resulting in a vehicle theft charge. The parties in the vehicle may be casing vehicles to burglarize or steal, thus there are charges associated with burglarizing a vehicle; and, the suspects may have weapons leading to related charges. The numbers do tend to be similar though, he said. 

“You’d have a number of different crimes under one case number, so they’re just about the same, so 15,576 offenses are (where we’re at) right now we’re at 15,507 case reports or case records,” Foreman said.

Foreman was speaking Dec. 29, 2023, and expected that number to increase slightly to cap out the year during the following weekend.

At the end of the year, GCSO had about 60 commissioned officers, Foreman said. That includes Kriete, command staff that report directly to the sheriff and deputies on patrol. With just those staff available to handle calls, it can be hectic. As 2024 moves forward, he said he expects new hires to take the place of retirees.

“We saw some retirements this year,” he said. “It was, you know, 20 years ago, there was a block of deputies that all signed on at the same time and they all reached retirement at about the same time. And so, there’s been a lot of backfilling those positions.”

Foreman said one of the challenges presented in 2023 was the shooting at the Beyond Wonderland music festival that saw the death of two young women and multiple injuries. The suspect, James M. Kelly, is alleged to have taken hallucinogenic mushrooms and opened fire. 

“It ends up being something that you play out in your head over and over and over again,” Foreman said. “And you go to the ‘what if’ scenarios. What if we have a shooting here at the Gorge (Amphitheatre) or during a concert? You know, there’s over 25,000 people attending many of those concerts out there, as was the case with Beyond Wonderland.” 

Multiple agencies and event security addressed the issue, and Foreman said there was heroic action taken that day. While he felt the department overall handled the situation well, there were points for improvement such as better use of social media and alerts to advise people of what happened and how to stay safe. Given the time since Grant County had a mass shooting of any kind — the last one being the Frontier Middle School incident in 1996 — Foreman said many of the officers with direct experience were gone, but training and experience still led to the department being able to respond appropriately with the aid of other agencies that serve the area.

“We learned a lot about plans that we need to do a little bit more work on or make some changes to, and to make us better prepared for … if it happens again. We don’t want it to, but if it does happen again, we’ll be prepared for it,” Foreman said. 

Outside of GCSO, Foreman said the county and state are working together to improve travel to and from The Gorge. Roadways are being expanded in the area and that should allow easier exit if any similar incidents happen. Those improvements should also help mitigate traffic in the area such as the snarls that happened during a Lumineers concert in September of last year. 

Wildfires were also an issue last year, Foreman said. The Barrett Springs Fire burned about 2,500 acres and threatened Crescent Bar as well as farms north of the water. Evacuating people was part of the challenge that fire presented because there was only one way in or out of the area for the public. That caused inconveniences for travelers as well with State Route 28 being shut down in the area and people being rerouted to State Route 2 or over to Vantage and then north to Wenatchee and Leavenworth. The priority with that and all other fires in the county was human life, Foreman said, and from that and other perspectives, the fire season went smoothly for GCSO. 

“That was one of the big challenges there, was getting the evacuation; making sure we could get people out safely. And also to allow for the safety of firefighters who were working the fire. That’s going to be the number one priority right there, is human life — firefighters and the public.” 

Like Kriete, Foreman expressed appreciation for the community’s support of first responders and one another, noting an incident near Crescent Bar wherein a man drowned and community members supported his friends and family by bringing them food, blankets and other comforts at the time. 

Opioid issues and small theft were a constant issue, but Foreman said the department handled those cases as they came up and is skilled in dealing with the issue.

2024

Kriete said he was glad for the accomplishments and lessons of 2023 as he moves into 2024 and sets GCSO up for success as it moves forward. A great deal of energy will be spent on recruitment, starting a crime prevention unit, bringing on two new canine officers and working toward the new Grant County Jail being constructed and properly staffed. 

Kriete said he appreciated Grant County Central Services Director Tom Gaines’ efforts to ensure the construction of the county’s new jail moves forward smoothly. 

The 512-bed facility, which the county has hired Lydig Construction to build, will have the capability to hold more and be expanded upon if the county’s needs increase. The land has been cleared at the old raceway near the Walmart in Ephrata and Kriete said he is hopeful that a foundation will be poured soon and the construction will go vertical in March sometime. 

Construction equipment can be seen at the site now and a great deal of site prep has already been completed. 

“And then, once it starts going vertical, we’re looking at probably 30 months after that, we should have a completed product,” Kriete said. “So it’s been, boy, it’s been a long road, and it really felt like there wasn’t a lot moving. But I’m here to tell you, there is a lot to be done paperwork-wise when it comes to building a large, large multimillion-dollar facility like that.” 

Specific costs for the jail are not finalized. Kriete said a not-to-exceed amount may be announced in March because of economic factors such as inflation and rising construction costs for all industries.

Kriete said the jail will have safety features to keep both staff and inmates safe. The new building will have a better flow for the prisoners, he said. He also said the jail will have something he believes is unique from a staffing standpoint. 

“As far as jails go, we might be the only one in the state of Washington that’s going to have an actual investigator that’s going to be assigned to the jail,” Kriete said. “That’s their job is to be an investigator and work crimes that occur in the jail.” 

Kriete said the new position will look into how contraband makes it into the facility, fights and related situations. By investigating these things thoroughly, he hopes to ensure safety and accountability for inmates and staff.

Recruiting that position, and others is a priority as well this year, Kriete said. The department hired just less than 30 staff, including deputies and administrative employees, in 2023. However, there are more deputies expected to retire this year and filling their positions will be important to maintaining service countywide. Overall, he said, patrol is where he needs it to be and that’s a good thing that will allow him to move the department forward.

“We’ve been able to finally get our patrol staff to where it needs to be and we are to the point (that) now we can start backfilling some of our specialty units,” the sheriff said. 

One of those special unit types is K9 officers, Kriete said. Two dogs have recently been retired and Moses Lake Industries has donated funding, as have others, in support of the K9 program. The program is vital to ensuring officer and public safety, he said, and two officers on staff are already certified to work with K9 deputies. 

One other aspect of special purpose units and proactive policing is the creation of a crime reduction unit. The idea is to have a unit that addresses what are seemingly more minor crimes that are more common. Issues like catalytic converter thefts, wire thefts and others that may appear unrelated, but often are. Crimes that cause issues throughout the county, and often pull in youth who are facing challenging times, Kriete said. 

“Wire thefts that we have in our farms. Vehicle thefts. You have smaller organized high-crime groups that have these lower-level narcotics cases that are out there distributing or selling narcotics that are reaching into our youth in our community,” he said. “But we haven’t had the resources to really address those levels of crime for quite some time. So, what we’re going to do is start this crime reduction team that that’s what their specific target is going to be — to aggressively work and investigate those types of crimes that we haven’t been able to address for years.” 

The goal is to have a team of five investigators with a supervisor and four deputies making up that team, he said. 

Part of the team’s responsibility is going to be addressing drug dealers and that sort of thing, but he expects other things to be found as the team works. 

“I think that a lot of the drug cases they’re probably going to stumble into are going to be an offshoot of other types of burglary, or larger theft cases (they’re) going to be working. I think that … narcotics cases are going to just evolve out of it, because that’s the nature of the beast, right? No matter what crime we investigate, there always seems to be a level of attachment of some sort (to) the narcotics world,” he said. 

In all, Kriete said he was excited about the advancements 2024 will bring and expressed appreciation for his staff. 

“My team has been great for me this past year. The administrative team — the support team — has been great. All of our deputies (on) the corrections side, the patrol side. It was a change for them too, you know, and the sheriff coming on and the different adjustments that they’ve had to make with the different ideas that I’ve had,” Kriete said. “And in our learning process, they had to have their growing pains as well. So, thanks to all of our staff.” 

R. Hans “Rob” Miller may be reached at editor@columbiabasinherald.com. He is a resident of Ephrata and a U.S. Army veteran.

    Construction equipment works at demolition at the site of the new Grant County Jail in early 2024. County administrators are hoping the jail is completed by mid-2027.
  

    Grant County Sheriff's Office K9 Officer Chewbacca in a photo commemorating his ninth birthday. Chewy has since retired, but GCSO is working on getting new K9 officers in 2024 to ensure the public is served. Many law enforcement officers applaud canine units for their ability to defuse tense situations.