Six Washington State Patrol troopers started working in Clark County this week, marking the first time in nearly four years the agency has been fully staffed in the region.
“We’re so excited,” WSP spokesman Trooper Will Finn said. “When we’re down people, people can’t take vacations, they can’t call in sick because they don’t want to leave their partner hanging. … People were being overtaxed, and morale was low.”
The last time the agency had no vacancies locally was October 2012, Finn said. But on Monday, local staff honored the occasion and welcomed the six troopers to the area with a barbecue.
“Really, it’s to welcome them into the family,” Finn said.
District Commander Capt. James Riley said that the additions are overdue.
“With the growth and population here, we’ve been burnt out going to call to call to call,” he said. “We have less time for proactive work.”
The six troopers were all previously working in other parts of the state and have transferred to the area.
“This is a trooper’s haven,” Aaron Dustan, one of the new transfers, said. “You get to stop more people for speed instead of going there after a collision and cleaning up the mess.”
Dustan graduated from Evergreen High School and worked in Hoquiam for the past 18 months. Along with four other transfers, Dustan is returning home, and he said that he’s looking forward to making his family and friends safer.
“I’d like to help the community I grew up in and make the roads safer,” he said.
The transfers aren’t leaving any gaps in coverage around the state, though.
Thirty seven troopers are scheduled to graduate from the academy today, filling the positions left vacant by those who transferred and now work in Clark County.
Filling the ranks in the area is a hopeful sign for an agency that has been experiencing a crisis.
“It just shows that we’re starting to turn the tide around and getting more troopers in the door,” Washington State Patrol spokesman Kyle Moore said.
A shortage of troopers has been consistently growing since 2009.
In March, more than 100 of the agency’s 671 positions were unfilled, and the agency last year reported losing an average of nine troopers a month.
Part of the problem was pay — the entry level pay for a trooper was $54,000 while other agencies across the state paid $10,000 higher. But lawmakers earlier this year budgeted for higher pay, translating to a 5.8 percent raise.
Though the agency still has a large amount of vacancies — there are 132 open positions as road troopers — and 72 officers are eligible to retire this year and next, Moore said there are signs that state patrol is coming out of the crisis.
Numbers from earlier this year showed a slowing in the numbers of troopers they’re losing to about five a month, Moore said.
They also have 60 troopers in the next academy class that starts in a couple of weeks.
That is a large increase from the class of 25 troopers the agency graduated in November.
“We’ve got a battle,” Moore said. “It’s going to take a couple of years … but we’re getting more people through the door and we’re also seeing less people leaving.”
The Associated Press Contributed to this story.
