Save money without losing service
MEDICAL LAKE - The newly revised interlocal agreement between Medical Lake and the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office was unanimously approved during the July 5 City Council meeting.
According to Mayor Terri Cooper, the city will still receive adequate police coverage during the hours that are considered peak hours. Even though they will be losing some hours of coverage with the deal.
She said the city analyzed a “heat map” from Spokane County that shows when and where the most calls come in.
“Most of them happened from seven in the morning to seven at night,” Cooper said. “That’s the majority of our calls.”
Cooper also said people can still get help in the middle of the night. She also said that the response time will be around seven minutes.
According to Cooper, emergency calls are dictated by the county. They are prioritized depending on the level of emergency according to the mayor.
She also explained that the sheriff’s office was having trouble staffing the overnight shifts.
“When we had 24/7 coverage, Spokane County Sheriffs did not want to be here,” Cooper said about the overnight shifts. “That middle of the night shift was brutal and we couldn’t get officers to be here.”
City Administrator Sonny Weathers echoed the thoughts regarding the midnight shifts.
According to Weathers, graveyard shifts were hard to staff and the value to the residents seemed to be declining.
As a result, the city decided to find a more affordable and efficient option for policing the city.
“Initially, in the end of 2022, it was just too expensive,” Weathers said. “Sheriff Knowles met with city officials after he took over as Sheriff to discuss potential restructuring of the agreement.”
The new agreement is based on a simplified cost plan which includes two full-time deputies, rather than four, he said. The change reduced costs from $1.2 million to $600,000.
“In addition to that, our representatives in the Sixth Legislative District were able to procure a provision which will reimburse the city $317,000 for expenses incurred from police responses at Eastern State Hospital,” Weathers previously said. “Approximately 20% of the total calls received by the officers in the city came from the hospital. Those calls were for high-acuity, usually more dangerous situations, and we’ve been subsidizing the costs for a long time.”
The reimbursement also allows the city to add extra deputies on holidays and special-event days, Weathers said.
Cooper said the city will have full 12-hour daytime coverage running seven days a week.
The mayor also said the city will have some influence over which officers serve in Medical Lake.
“We get to vet them ourselves and have a say if we think they are a good fit for the community,” Cooper said.
The mayor also said there is an increased effort in creating a community policing platform.
Sheriff Knowles acknowledged this during the initial conversation.
“One thing I was interested in is the city’s forthrightness about what they expected from the police. A dedicated police presence can really drive costs up. So, the mayor really wanted to focus on community-oriented policing.”
The Sheriff’s Office was able to reduce costs and maintain effective police visibility, Nowels said.
“It’s about having the capacity to cultivate a positive rapport with the community members, and that’s based on trust and effective relationship-building,” Nowels said.
According to the mayor the city is working on getting more people involved in programs that allow them to work with SCOPE or the sheriff’s office and upgrading the police department in the city as well.
“So, the other thing we’re doing is remodeling the police office,” Cooper said. “It’s going to say Medical Lake Police Department, and the cars are going to say Medical Lake Police.”
The mayor also said this project will initially be run as a test run, and the city and county will be collecting and analyzing data.
Councilman Art Kulibert brought up the idea of a neighborhood block watch.
“I wanted to add something about the importance of block watch,” Kulibert said. “Because patrol officers are always in the wrong spot, but if a neighbor sees something they can say something.”
“We can have neighbors looking after neighbors,” Kulibert added.
Another agreement that was passed will bring extra policing to the parks.
This extra coverage agreement for the parks will cost the city around $30,000 for the rest of this year and about $50,000 annually after that according to Mayor Cooper.
Matthew graduated from West Virginia University-Parkersburg in 2011 with a journalism degree. He's an award-winning photographer and enjoys writing stories about people.
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