City Council discusses public safety

At a Shelton City Council work session Feb. 13, Mayor Eric Onisko asked Shelton Police Chief Chris Kostad the same question he asked his two predecessors: "What's your dream? How many officers would be in your world if it was perfect?"

"Four per shift ... one sergeant, three officers per shift," Kostad replied.

The Shelton Police Department has two officers for each 12-hour shift. Staffing, recruitment challenges, the K-9 program and future projects were among the subjects discussed during the 90-minute session at the Shelton Civic Center that focused on public safety and communication.

"We really feel we can improve our partnership with this community and the council and have better conversations and get to know each other better and understand what is best for the city and how we want to go about it," Kostad said.

Kostad gave a rundown of the department's personnel, which includes 19 sworn positions and two "civilian" employees. They include the chief, a captain, four patrol sergeants, two corporals, two detectives, and two evidence/records clerks. The department is budgeted for eight patrol officers and has five positions filled and one at the police academy.

"If we have a major incident, you can't do much with two officers, you can barely shut down two sides of the road," Kostad said. "We still have to investigate it. With something like that, we literally have to pull in another department to help with the investigations, the sheriff's office, WSP (Washington State Patrol), whoever we can get."

The city is waiting for the Shelton School District to make a budget decision on hiring a school resource officer, Kostad said.

"The school resource officers are awesome because they get to know the kids by name and face and they know who they are and where they need to go," he said. "They're an invaluable resource."

Like police departments across the county, the City of Shelton is having a difficult time finding qualified applicants, Kostad said. The department was fully staffed for about two weeks last year, he said.

Entry-level hires require 12 to 18 months of training, Kostad said.

"You're looking at about a year's investment in that person before they can be out on their own so that's a huge commitment to put toward one person, so you really want to make sure you grab the right individual there. And sometimes it doesn't work out."

Sometimes it takes two to three months to get them into the police academy, a course that takes five months, Kostad said.

Another challenge is "obviously, the current environment for law enforcement officers isn't very friendly and people become very skeptical and shy of entering this field anymore," the chief said. He added, "We're involved in uses of force and highly politicized and all over the news, and nobody wants to be involved in that."

Deputy Mayor Joe Schmit said that if the city can get revenue through a ballot measure this year or next, it could hire four more officers. Following training, they could be onboard in 2026 or 2027, he said.

"We currently have a public safety tax, but it's minimal," said Mayor Eric Onisko.

As an incentive to recruits, the department give officers training opportunities to help them "choose their own career paths," Kostad said. The department also provides retention bonuses, he added.

The chief also talked about the K-9 program and its two dogs, a 4-year-old German shepherd named Valor, and a 5-year-old German shepherd/Belgian Malinois mix named Lex. Both were certified in October 2022 in tracking, searching areas and businesses for people as well as articles, and apprehension. Kostad noted that during 25 deployments, the dogs captured 11 suspects.

The chief also talked about case laws and legislation that have made police duty difficult. One is House Bill 1054 passed in 2021 regarding police pursuits.

"This one really made it really hard for us to do any type of police pursuits whatsoever because you need a probable cause to initiate a pursuit and you can only initiate a pursuit for a violent crime, a sex crime or a DUI," he said.

That law created a huge increase in vehicle thefts "because they all knew it and we couldn't chase them, that we needed probable cause and we only had reasonable suspicion to stop them," Kostad said.

The law was changed in 2023 with Senate Bill 5352 so law enforcement can initiate pursuits for "reasonable suspicion," the chief said. And now proposed Initiative 2113 would change the law back to what it was prior to 2021, he added.

Kostad said his department is working with the Mason County Sheriff's Office to form a major crimes investigation team. The department is also working to improve communication to the public on Twitter and social media on such incidents as traffic accidents and active shooters, he said.