Chuck Atkins had been retired for two years, following a 35-year with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, before coming back to lead the agency after winning election in late 2014.
He got a nice break and did a little traveling, but he said he’s been too busy to miss retirement.
“I knew it was a snake before I picked it up. I knew what I was getting into,” he said.
Atkins took over as sheriff at the start of this year after Garry Lucas retired in 2014 following 24 years in the office.
“I love this agency, and I worked many, many years here, and I didn’t see what I believed to be what was right for this agency knowing Garry was walking out the door,” Atkins said.
He said he’s trying to take the long view, and said he thinks his first year has been successful in that regard.
“I’m not going to be 72 and still working here,” he said, referring to Lucas’ age at retirement. “If I do well and the people like me, then I’d like to do two terms — then somebody else is going to be prepped and ready to step in with my support.”
To him, a lot of the office’s success this year started with staffing and personnel needs, something he sees as a core part of the agency’s health.
“I believe, and I’ve said many times, the success of this agency is the character of the people that work here,” he said. “My biggest concern when I was running and hoping that I would win was, ‘Who was I going to surround myself with to make sure the job is getting done?’ ”
For his command staff, he appointed Mike Cooke as undersheriff, Steve Shea as chief civil deputy and John Chapman as chief enforcement deputy. Atkins retained Ric Bishop as chief of the corrections branch.
Chapman had been working with the Vancouver Police Department before moving to the sheriff’s office. He said although the command staff had a lot of experience with the sheriff’s office, there was still a learning curve.
“For the first three months, it was sipping from the fire hose,” he said.
Shea said he had the same experience, but it seems to be working out.
“The energy of this place — I’ve heard from employees in all three branches, they love the energy and the change in feel,” Shea said. Not that it was bad before, “just a new thought process, new blood. I think that really just says what’s happened.”
Then there’s handling personnel for rest of the agency: About a third of the sheriff’s office is probably eligible to retire at any time, Atkins said. On top of that, the sheriff’s office hasn’t been fully staffed since around 2009.
“One of the things we found out immediately when we came in is we had a lot of vacancies,” Atkins said.
The sheriff’s office has re-emphasized lateral hires, which allow it to more quickly hire officers who have been working with other agencies, and instituted a year-round job testing schedule.
Would-be peace officers can submit their test scores to multiple agencies, and they can take the tests at any time, so if an agency isn’t accepting scores at that time, they miss out, Atkins said.
With the pool of applicants shrinking, the amount of space at police training academies limited and the fact that it can take up to 18 months to get a fresh recruit fully up to speed, the office needs to find any efficiency it can, Atkins said.
It seems to be working. The office would hire about 14 people annually in previous years, Atkins said. Chapman said the agency will likely break the 50 mark this year.
“That’s huge. That’s more than we ever imagined we’d be able to accomplish,” Atkins said.
The office is still short-staffed — Clark County usually ranks around the bottom statewide for deputies per capita, Atkins said — and addressing that will involve working with the county council to find the funding.
Another ongoing concern, one that will also take some budget wrangling at the county level, is the county jail and other capital projects.
The Clark County Jail opened in 1984 to house 306 inmates. Bishop said its average daily population this year has been 714.
The county is leasing 15 beds a month from Skamania County, and has been successful in pushing its re-entry program, which helps prevent recidivism, so much so that it has a waiting list.
A detailed report on the success of the re-entry program is expected in the first quarter of 2016, Bishop said, and a study on the jail is due in July.
This year, the sheriff’s office also started a 40-hour crisis intervention training program, and Bishop said the plan is to run two classes yearly, but the condition of the facility limits the corrections staff’s ability to help inmates with mental health issues.
In July, Clark County councilors approved spending $300,000 to update a study assessing the potential for remodeling, expanding or replacing the jail.
That study will help the sheriff’s office and county come up with options, such as whether to remodel or knock the building down and try anew, which will also help the county decide if it needs to go to voters or find another means of funding, Bishop said.
Until there’s a new or updated facility, Bishop and Atkins said the jail is trying to make do where it can.
Atkins said the seeming increase in encounters corrections or police officers have with people dealing with mental illness or other behavioral problems has grown into a crisis.
Starting next year, deputies on the road will carry naloxone, a medication formulated to prevent deaths from heroin overdoses that’s often only carried by EMTs.
The office secured money to acquire the drug, which it’s getting as a nasal spray, and the accompanying training through a federal grant, Chapman said.
“We don’t physically have them. We’ve got the lesson plans, everything’s physically in place — except the product hasn’t arrived,” he said.
The jail or other building issues, such as the sheriff’s office’s central precinct office — which was built in 1973 for temporary office space and isn’t entirely up to code — and its aging boat house, will take time to address, Atkins said.
“The jail is a big deal for us, and it will be until they break ground on something new,” Atkins said. “It’s a priority. It has to be.”
“If we could see a new jail and a precinct, and our staffing up, and safety as a primary focus when I walk out the door seven years from now, I will feel successful.”
