Mason Countyommissioners heard an update from the sheriff
nd sheriff epartment staff Wednesday covering staffing shortages in the jail and patrol, major criminal cases handled this year, a growing backlog of firearms in evidence storage, and plans to expand the county DARE program to additional schools. The sheriff
lso described operational impacts from a recent large wildfire and a patrol boat that sank while staged for fire response.

The briefing opened with the sheriffxplaining the departmenturrently has eight open positions in the jail, six of which are in background screening and two of those are at conditional offer stage. "We currently have, 8 open positions in the jail. We currently have 6 of those are in background, and 2 of those 6 are conditional offers," the sheriffriefed. Patrol has three open positions with several candidates in background and recent departures to other jurisdictions, including "1 to Thurston County" and one to Arizona to care for family.

The jail population as of the morning briefing was 68 people in custody plus four housed at Nisqually, and the sheriff noted the office took in 12 people over the preceding weekend, creating additional processing demands for court work. "Jail population as of this morning, we had 68 in custody plus 4 in Nisqually. We took in 12 over the weekend," the sheriffriefed.

Staff highlighted two homicide investigations this year that consumed detective resources, including one involving an infant and an arrest following a prior detention of a suspect on a bridge. Patrol also handled a recent armed robbery/shots-fired call that led to a SWAT warrant service, the sheriff said; the suspect was taken into custody and officers recovered about 30 firearms. "Needless to say, suspect's taken into custody. Nobody else is injured or hurt. Taken 30 guns," the sheriffxplained.

That recovery has contributed to an expanding firearms evidence inventory. The sheriff said the evidence room is approaching capacity and that state rules and market changes have complicated disposal or sale of seized firearms: "We're getting very, very full in our evidence system with firearms. ... State doesn't isn't really clear on how we can get rid of guns anymore, because they've restricted the sale of a lot of guns."

The briefing also covered regional mutual-aid work and investigative teams. Mason County is leading Region 3's Critical Incident Investigative Team this year and assisted on a shooting in Lewis County, and the sheriff described recent Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) work that produced multiple local search warrants and arrests. "We had 4 of them in the last 2 weeks, which means we had to serve search warrants, go arrest people, go take in evidence," the sheriff said, adding those operations add workload to detectives and patrol.

On community outreach and prevention, the sheriff
nnounced the DARE program has trained a second, part-time DARE officer and will expand to two smaller schools next year in addition to Pioneer. "Our first class, we had 55 graduates at Pioneer. Our second and third class we're gonna start this next year ... We are going to start a class at 2 of the smaller schools ... Pioneer, Great View, and Southside," the sheriff said. He identified Nicholas Monteo as the department's newest DARE officer and said Monteo speaks three languages and grew up in Belfair.

Commissioners and staff discussed the beaching/sinking of a patrol aluminum boat staged for fire response; the sheriff said the likely cause was bilge pump failure and that the boat will be repaired. The sheriff also thanked patrol and command staff for their handling of a high-speed multi‑mile pursuit that ended with spike strips and no serious injuries.

Discussion-only items included the departmentxploring options tied to jail capacity and a recent eight‑page addendum to a larger jail study that analyzed full outsourcing options. The sheriff said the addendum had just been received and would be scheduled for discussion with the commission. The sheriff also raised a potential budget increase from a vendor (Macecom) that could affect county and city partners; the board requested the sheriff and board president take that back for further vetting before decisions.

No formal commission votes were taken during the sheriffriefing; staff asked commissioners whether they wanted more frequent briefings, and commissioners expressed openness to a regular check-in cadence.

Ending: The sheriff
nd staff left the commissioners with operational updates and requests for further discussion on the jail study addendum and budgetary options; commissioners did not adopt any policy changes during the briefing.