Pierce County proposes deputy retention bonuses amid crime wave, biased policing concerns

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department suffers 43 staff vacancies amid an uptick in violent crime. The Tacoma Police Department reports 5,242 violent crimes in 2021, over 4,467 in the prior year.

As a remedy for the shortage, the county executive is calling for $10,000 retention bonuses for deputies, and passage of a slate of state legislative bills that modify use of force and detention policy passed in 2021. That request falls amid the turbulent landscape that is police reform.

A recently released report from the Pierce County Executive’s office shows biased policing from the county sheriff’s office in the form of disproportionate use of force against the Black community.

Report shows biased policing from Pierce County Sheriff’s Department

“We’ve reviewed the data in depth. We’ve run multiple scenarios of the data using various measures of force and, most importantly, different measures of a baseline. Every way that we analyze the data shows the same pattern of disproportionality,” Julie Demuth, performance director with Pierce County, told KIRO Newsradio.

“So we are very confident that the results of the report indicate disproportionality and that there’s really no other way to interpret the data,” Demuth added.

With that in the background, Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier is throwing his weight behind two bills that loosen use of force restrictions and redefine the purview of an officer to detain suspects. Police allege that bills passed in the year prior cause officer reluctance to use force and detain as threat of decertification looms.

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“I am not asking [our deputies] to lower their standards,” Dammeier told KIRO Newsradio.

“I think there were unintended consequences. … The standard they put in there was unrealistically high and has had a net negative impact on our community. When you look at car thefts, the restrictions on pursuit, have yielded a kind of really dramatic increase in car thefts; our deputies and the criminals all know it. Now they know if they run, law enforcement can’t respond, can’t chase them. And that’s had a huge impact on our community.”

Dammeier released two letters Wednesday calling for action on both the retention bonuses and the police reform scale-back.

“I’ve gotten very positive reception on both the letter and the proposal for $10,000 retention bonuses,” he added. “I anticipate that the council will be supportive of that, but the initial reaction has been very good. And again, today we are presenting at our county’s equity review committee, this citizen review board proposal as well. So I think we’ve got a lot of good things going forward.”

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