Annual sheriff's report released

Matt Baide | Oct 14, 20210

The Mason County Sheriff’s Office released its annual report for 2020.

According to the report, the traffic enforcement division made 5,370 traffic stops and contacts compared to 5,458 in 2019. There were more citations issued in 2020, with 649 compared to 646 in 2019. DUI arrests were down in 2020 to 16 compared to 23 in 2019.

Mason County Sheriff’s Office Chief Ryan Spurling attributes the 2020 traffic numbers to COVID-19.

There was a decrease in collision investigations, property damage and injury from traffic incidents in 2019 but there were more fatalities in 2020.

““After the shutdowns, we worked every day, we weren’t shutdown and the freeways were empty, the highways were empty,” Spurling said. “When people started coming back, the speeds were ridiculous. We were trying to catch up and put a damper on that so that’s why you had kind of a bubble in 2019. 2020 also has to do with just what’s going on in the agency, what’s going on in law enforcement, what’s going on in a lot of things and our call volume has been high as well so they haven’t had as much time to do traffic as they have been responding to calls.”

The marine enforcement division shared some statistics in the report. Spurling said there were 127 water related incidents the MCSO responded to, compared to 54 in 2015. The report details where these calls came from, with 36.4% of water related incidents occurring in Puget Sound and 33.9% of incidents occurring in Hood Canal. Mason Lake accounted for 15.3% of water related incidents and Lake Cushman had 3.4% of incidents. Lake Kokanee had 2.5% of incidents, Island Lake had 1.7% of incidents and Lost Lake, Spencer Lake, Robbins Lake, Lake Devereaux, Lake Wooten, Haven Lake and Larson Lake each had one call for service in 2020.

The report also details the number of registered sex offenders in Mason County. There are 288 offenders at the end of 2020, an increase from 272 in 2019. There are 216 level one offenders, 46 level two offenders and 25 level three offenders.

Financial details were provided in the 2020 report. The report states the population at 65,650, an increase from 64,980 in 2019. The calls for service increased to 25,357 from 24,093 in 2019. The MCSO budget was $13,373,363 in 2020, an increase from $12,863,715 in 2019.

Spurling and the MCSO participated in the budget workshop last week with the Mason County commissioners and spoke to the commissioners about some of the budget requests, including a FTE position in north Mason County.

The first year of the L.E.A.D. program (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) was a success. The program, intended to improve community and health safety by reducing criminal justice system involvement and instead direct them to behavioral health and social services, saw 45 total referrals in the first seven months of implementation. This accounted for 15 arrest diversions.

“It is going fantastic. We’re very excited to be able to start getting more successful,” Spurling said. “For our first year, we are very pleased with it.”

Civil process numbers are significantly down from 2019 and this is attributed to pandemic court closures and the inception of E-serve in the prosecutor’s office. There were 15 Sheriff’s Sales compared to 34 in 2019. There were 3272 civil process services compared to 6,853. There were the same number of standbys at 31 and evictions with deputy assistance were 18 compared to 44 in 2019, but this includes the pandemic and an eviction moratorium during most of 2020.

The Alternative Sentencing Program, established in 2018, allows for electronic home monitoring, work release, remote alcohol monitoring and litter crew participation for low-risk inmates without taking up a bed in jail to help mitigate some of the overcrowding problems. report states that inmates worked for 3,811 hours in 2020 and helped clean 1,351 miles of road. Inmates also helped cleaned 53 acres of land and they cleaned a total of 60,330 pounds of litter.

“We have had the litter control program for a while through corrections and this has been a hugely successful program,” Spurling said.

Looking back on the year, Spurling sees in the numbers and his experience, a year that was different because of the pandemic.

“Everything is a little bit different because of COVID except for our call volume is still way high,” Spurling said. “The new laws have changed a lot of what and how we do things, so you’re going to see numbers change there. I think the biggest impact for us as a result of COVID is our mental health calls are very high. We’ve got a lot of people that we deal with that are in crisis, it seems like more than normal. It could be because of alcohol, drugs, whatever it is, we have a lot of people in crisis and we’re starting to slowly gain other resources as the state invests in other resources and as this machine starts to get going.”

To view the full report, visit the Mason County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.