Rahr Speaking Notes—Press Availability—November 18, 2010

Thank you for coming.

Now that the King County budget for 2011 is finished, I wanted to take a moment
and discuss what the ramifications will be for public safety in unincorporated King
County.

First let me say I recognize this was another difficult budget year trying to cover a
$60 million deficit, on top of similar deficits in years past.

The money in the general fund is limited, and therefore the money to support
criminal justice in King County is limited. We realize and reluctantly accept that
there is simply not enough money to maintain all the services I believe are
important.

All the cuts in police services were difficult. All the cuts will mean a hardship for
the 305,000 citizens living in unincorporated King County, especially if they are
victims of a crime. I wish none of the cuts were made.

But they were. In light of these reductions, my first priority for the Sheriff's Office
is to maintain emergency response. If you call 9-1-1 in 2011, it will not take
longer for a Sheriff's deputy to arrive. If you need to be rescued from a flooding
river or have a hiking accident, we will still have a team to respond.

My second priority is to preserve our response to crimes against

persons….rapes, assaults, robberies, and homicides. We will continue to actively
and aggressively investigate those crimes.

As I’ve said before it is primarily the investigation of property crimes that will
suffer. That means if you are the victim of a burglary, car prowl, theft, auto theft,
fraud, and so on, we will have no detectives to conduct the follow-up
investigation. Our citizens need to know this.

I hope to train our patrol deputies to take on the follow-up investigations of

property crimes. But follow-up investigations can be complex and time intensive
and often require coordination across many jurisdictions. It’s pretty unrealistic to
expect that most deputies will be able to do this in between answering 911 calls.

But we will try.

I’m sure you’ve also heard that I’ll have to send School Resource Officers back to
patrol, along with storefront deputies and detectives and deputies from several
units from around the Sheriff’s Office including; Civil Unit, Marine Unit,
Registered Sex Offenders, Homicide, and several others. We will have to end
our participation in nearly every regional task force on terrorism and gangs.
All of these changes will mean our citizens receive less service from the Sheriff's
Office.

Essentially I’ve chosen to keep deputies assigned to units that can protect life
over property.

The bottom line for the Sheriff's Office is this draconian budget leaves 198
Sheriff's deputies and supervisors to serve the 305,000 people living in
unincorporated King County.

This is a rate of .65 officers-per-thousand, 2nd lowest in the entire state, and
significantly lower than our two neighboring counties, Pierce and Snohomish.

Now you may have heard a council staffer earlier this week tell the King County
Council that the rate is actually 1.37 and rising up to 1.5 officers-per-thousand by
mid year. That number is wrong. To reach that rate, we would have to have 400
deputies patrolling unincorporated King County. I can assure you that is not the
case. Not even close.

So why is this number important at all? Because it is an objective measure of the

number of police officers serving a community. It allows comparisons from year
to year and from one like agency to another.

If the number is not accurate it can give citizens a false sense of security and a
false sense of the level of police protection they are receiving. It left the Council
with the impression that we have twice the capacity that we actually have. It
would be misleading and unethical to leave this very inaccurate number standing.

And now we come to the Guild contract. I wish the Guild had decided to give up
at least part of their wage increase for 2011. It would have meant we could hire
back some, if not all, of the deputies we will lay off.

But that is not my decision, and quite frankly there is nothing I can do about it.
It’s the decision of the union leadership and their members. I still hold out hope
there will be a vote and some portion of their raise next year can be used to save
jobs.

Finally, let me close with a very real example of what these cuts will mean.

Two days ago our School Resource Officer at Thomas Jefferson High School
had a distraught student come up to him and say that a student had a gun on
school grounds. She told the SRO who that person was and who he was with.
The SRO put the school into lockdown and tracked the student and several of his
friends to a spot nearby, but off school grounds. One was armed with a handgun
and several rounds of ammunition.

The 16 year-old student said someone at school had given him the gun because
another student planned on shooting the first student, and he wanted to protect
himself.

A gun in the hands of a 16 year-old at a school was recovered because we had a

deputy at that school that had developed a relationship with the students. Those
SROs at schools in unincorporated King County are going away beginning in
January.

As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in King County, I have an obligation to the
citizens of King County to keep them safe. The dedicated men and women of
the Sheriff's Office intend to do that as we always have. 2011 will be a very
trying year for many of us, and the citizens of unincorporated King County have
to be ready for a reduced level or service. But we will do all can to keep them
safe.