Clark County Sheriff John Horch spoke about deputy wellness, the need for a new headquarters, staffing and growth in the county at a town hall, Thursday, April 25, in Ridgefield.
It was the first quarterly town hall Horch has offered in 2024.
“I thought there were great questions and great community engagement — thought-provoking questions. They’re doing the research. They’re asking these questions. People are concerned about crime,” Horch said after the session. “They’re a whole litany of 911 questions, staffing across the board. So, I thought that was the best engagement with the community going back and forth and listening to them, hearing what they had to say, and then the updates … I love the community engagement because I need to hear what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong and how we can improve.”
Staffing
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) numbers have risen since the pandemic era. The sheriff’s office operates with 157 sworn members, with shift minimums of seven on graveyard and 10 on day and swing shifts. Horch said the per-capita portion of staffing still falls below the one officer per 1,000 residents as CCSO lands at 0.57 deputies per 1,000 residents in its coverage zone of over 250,000 residents in unincorporated Clark County.
A revival of the reserve program could assist the lower staffing levels, but Horch said, due to the expansive current training requirements and the lack of time available for training full-time deputies, a reserve program will not return for the foreseeable future.
Officer wellness
Horch believes promoting good health both mentally and physically will improve CCSO’s staff and extend deputy careers because of a better quality of life outside of the uniform.
“We have our own families. We have our own issues, and we go out there for 10 to 12 hours a day, and we’re going to calls and seeing horrific things and going to family services and doing good work out there,” Horch said. “But, yet, it takes a full emotional pull, and when I started in 1989, when you didn’t talk about problems you face, you didn’t talk about it, you went home and you kept it on, and if you brought anything up l ike that, they would either put you on leave, or they would say you’re on mental leave. And so it was taboo, you know. [You would] go get a six pack, drink. That was kind of the standard thing. We drink our problems away.”
Horch said law enforcement’s peer support and protocol for addressing problems has come a long way in his 34-year career.
“We have a great peer-support team … Peer support is if Commander [Phil] Sample is having some issues at home, whatever they are, and he comes to work, and his supervisor here sees him, and he’s not quite right, he’s free to talk to him about those things,” Horch explained. “We can talk to him and get him help before something bad happens, before he makes a mistake out here and does something [and] he gets in trouble, or it’s not good for the community. We probably have 10 or 12 on our peer-support team, and that conversation is protected now — not admitting to crime — but other things: ‘I’m struggling with alcohol, and I’m going through this. I’m not making good decisions.’ We can get people help before they make bad decisions.”
Another way the sheriff’s office is promoting good health is through a grant that funds massages.
“When we said massages, we all kind of laughed about that, but you have to consider the fact that over the course of years wearing all this gear and having this equipment on and sitting in a vehicle and you’re in and out, you really don’t have time to stretch or relax,” Sample said, adding that the massages work out their muscles and joints, leading to prolonged careers.
New headquarters
Currently, CCSO headquarters, built in 1984, sits below the jail in downtown Vancouver. Horch said, as part of the jail expansion, CCSO is moving from there. Horch also said that, within the next few years, he wouldn’t be surprised if the fire departments sharing the space with CCSO at the west precinct would want to fully take over the entire space.
“So we do need a sheriff’s office headquarters that can house everybody,” Horch said. “We don’t have that. We’re in several different locations right now. The [county] council is aware of this, and the county manager is aware of this. So what we’re going to look like, and where we’re going to be, we need to be out in the community and have a training facility there, a community room, and that’s where all the employees can be, under one roof.”
Horch said the sheriff’s office could utilize small offices on the east side or west side of the county, but he hopes a centralized headquarters could be located along a freeway, either Interstate 5 or Interstate 205.
For the short term, CCSO will obtain space at the county’s Public Service Center for background and training units to meet the present needs. For the future of CCSO, administrators hope to obtain a permanent facility suitable for the agency’s long-term needs.
According to Horch’s action plan, a permanent facility would ideally house agency training space for firearms, defensive tactics, emergency vehicle operation and de-escalation tactics. A community center would allow CCSO to streamline agency administration for concealed weapons permits, community resource information and veterans outreach. Lastly, a new headquarters would create greater accessibility for community engagement through town halls, citizen academies, neighborhood association meetings and more community events.
Most Popular
Comments / 0