By Alexandra Duggan and Mitchell Roland
The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — The workload at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office has reached a point where property crimes detectives are investigating sex crimes — and it’s no surprise, considering the office has the lowest number of officers per capita out of any county in the state.
Every position is filled, and caseloads can span nearly 20 per investigator, Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels said. Even so, he refused this year to sign a data agreement that would bring in more money to alleviate those problems.
The sheriff’s office is opting out of the local law enforcement grant program, a program approved by the Legislature this year to distribute $100 million in grants to police agencies across Washington over a period of four years.
To receive the grant money, the sheriff’s office must provide by Sept. 1 detailed monthly use-of-force data to the Washington State Data Exchange for Public Safety at Washington State University , the state-appointed data custodian for analyzing police use of force methods. That data also would be available to the public.
Reporting use-of-force incidents isn’t out of the ordinary, said David Makin , the principal investigator for WSU’s data exchange project. Agencies already are required by law to report the information to the state. Because an internal review is required any time an officer uses force against a person, agencies should have this data already, Makin said — but that’s if they are fully reviewing their use-of-force incidents.
“Use of force would be reviewed anyway, but now they have to report this information,” he said. “Some agencies feel it’s an extra piece of work.”
But Nowels said the sheriff’s office doesn’t collect some of that data. For example, if an officer shoots and kills a civilian, the data exchange is asking agencies to report how long it took to fire their weapon. It’s otherwise known as “time-to-force.”
“Time-to-force is one point that would generate a tremendous amount of work for us,” Nowels said. “Do we have the data? Yes. Do we collect it? No.”
The law also requires law enforcement agencies to report any additional data required by the statewide use of force data program.
In 2022, the Attorney General’s Office Law Enforcement Data Collection Advisory Group approved additional requirements to add to data collection. Time-to-force was one of them.
It’s not in the budget to hire an analyst to collect it, either, Nowels added. The county is already facing a forecasted $20 million shortfall, and county commissioners this year asked agencies to reduce expenses by at least 7%. Nowels said this forced him to give up 10 vacant positions he could have filled to put more officers on the street. The current grant also only funds 75% of one’s salary, something Nowels believes the office cannot sustain.
“The state isn’t fully funding these positions, and it doesn’t fund them enough,” Nowels said. “If they want to make a difference when everyone’s money is tight, why not fully fund them?”
The Sheriff’s Office position contrasts with plans of the Spokane Police Department , which is slated to participate. No additional hires were needed in the city to provide data, Officer Daniel Strassenberg told The Spokesman-Review .
Short-staffed and seeking solutions
The lack of personnel is not unique to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office .
Last year, Washington had 1.38 officers per 1,000 residents, which ranks 51st — behind every other state and the District of Columbia — according to data released by the Washington Association of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs . Nationally, the average in 2024 was 2.31 officers. Washington’s low ranking has persisted for years.
In Spokane County , the problem is even more acute. According to the association’s 2024 annual report, the Spokane County Sheriff’s office had 0.89 law enforcement personnel per 1,000 unincorporated residents, the lowest rate of any county sheriff’s office in the state.
During his inaugural address in January, freshly sworn in Gov. Bob Ferguson indicated he wanted to increase the number of officers in the state and work across the aisle to do so, including with Cheney Republican Sen. Jeff Holy .
” Sen. Holy , thank you for your legislation proposing a $100 million grant program to help local law enforcement agencies hire more well-trained officers to improve public safety,” Ferguson said in the speech. “That idea was a cornerstone of my campaign for Governor. Any budget I sign must include this funding.”
Holy said in an interview last week that the final legislation was “awkward, at best” and that he wasn’t “a huge proponent of the contents of this bill.” Still, after trying to provide additional resources to local law enforcement agencies for more than a decade, Holy said you “take victories where you get them” and offered praise for Ferguson’s work.
“He’s at least paying attention to the needs of law enforcement,” said Holy, who was among five Republican state senators who voted for the legislation.
Unlike Holy’s proposal, the version passed by the legislature allows agencies to use the grants to hire and retain not only new law enforcement officers and peer counselors, but behavioral health personnel “working in co-response to increase community policing and public safety.” The version adopted by the legislature also included additional requirements to qualify for the grant, including to implement use of force data collection and reporting.
Nowels praised Holy’s original bill but chastised the Legislature for the final version. If they had passed what Holy put together, “we would have been utilizing it in a heartbeat,” Nowels said. “But the Legislature tried to control the police.”
Holy said he had conversations with Nowels “early on, way early on” in the legislative session about potential issues with the bill.
“Yes, I’m aware there might be an issue with that,” Holy said.
Steve Strachan , executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs , praised both Ferguson and Holy for their work in securing the funds.
“Without those two, we wouldn’t even be talking about this,” Strachan said.
Cutting through the noise
Spokane County may later end up ineligible for the grant if Nowels allows his office to assist federal immigration authorities. Under Washington law, local police agencies cannot assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in their operations or provide them information about someone’s immigration status.
To receive the grant, agencies must also adopt policies that are consistent with the law, otherwise known as the Keep Washington Working Act.
The act has gained national attention over the past few months as President Donald Trump boosts efforts to deport immigrants en masse. Trump has called out liberal cities by name, like Seattle , and threatened intervention for not complying with immigration authorities.
Nowels previously told The Spokesman-Review he would not violate Washington law and that he would “step up and say something” if asked to violate the Constitution to pursue the administration’s immigration and deportation goals. Recently, Nowels said if the fight between states and federal law comes down to the wire and federal immigration law supersedes the Keep Washington Working Act, he would have no choice but to follow it.
“We are sitting on the fence of this battle,” Nowels said. “I won’t put ourselves in a bad position.”
Holy and Strachan knew the final version of the bill likely would isolate agencies that couldn’t meet the other demands to obtain the grant. Some smaller agencies don’t have a lot of resources to write grants, send people to the additional training that is required or accurately report the data due to technology issues, in what Strachan called “a catch-22.”
Another hiccup with certain agencies is teetering on whether to sign WSU’s data use agreement. Some of them, like the sheriff’s office, felt the agreement allowed WSU to change the allotted terms at will and opened them up to more liability .
Each agency needs to ensure their protected from liability and litigation “for things like public disclosure, inadvertent release of information, all of those things that they need to be mindful of,” Strachan said.
“That, along with the scope of the data that is being requested by WSU, are two of the main concerns that I’m hearing,” Strachan said.
Strachan said discussions on the data use agreement have been ongoing “for months” between legal advisers for WSU and local agencies throughout the state. Some, he said, have expressed concern to him.
From a practical perspective, the data use agreement is like one “with no teeth,” Makin said, adding that it’s purely for transparency and standard practice purposes. He reiterated that WSU’s primary task is to store the data and tell the state whether local agencies are reporting it — not to change it or sell it.
According to Makin, the data exchange program answers these questions:
* Is the agency reporting reportable use of force on a monthly basis, including entering 0 reports?
* Is the agency reporting incident-level data, in the form of computer-aided dispatch records?
* Does the agency have at least two verified points of contact?
The only situation in which the agreement would change is if the Legislature were to amend the law, and in that case, WSU would issue a notice to agencies that have signed the agreement, he said.
Agencies also are able to report their data without signing the agreement, Makin said. The entire project still is being ironed out, so the confusion and turmoil over the data exchange is not unreasonable to him. Holy also said the legislation is “a first step” that sometimes requires administrative agencies to “fill in the blanks” down the road.
Makin is asking for grace and patience while navigating the complicated process. He calls it “a massive undertaking.”
“In the absence of data, we end up with anecdotes. We need to answer questions. Stories matter. We need to know if these tragedies are the outlier or the norm. And without data, we are pretty clueless. Without data, we can be prone to emotion,” Makin said. “Data is what cuts through the noise.”
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