Plateau playing big role in new agency
Published 12:14 pm Thursday, December 11, 2008
By Kevin Hanson
The Courier-Herald
A new law enforcement bureau - aimed at catching those guilty of King County's most horrendous crimes - has a decidedly Plateau feel.
The Major Crimes Task Force, which rolled out last week during a formal ceremony in Black Diamond, is dotted with police personnel from both Enumclaw and Black Diamond.
The official kickoff was a high-powered affair, featuring Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and including words of encouragement and support from King County Prosecutor Norm Maling.
The task force is an offshoot of the Coalition of Small Police Agencies, a tight-knit group of 14 King County police departments. The group came together more than four years ago, following a dispute between the county's smaller departments and the King County Sheriff's Department.
Eventually, those smaller agencies realized they could provide valuable resources for each other when one was hit with a serious crime. Roughly a year later, the task force came into being.
When it comes to the responsibilities of state government, "Job One is to ensure public safety," Gregoire told those assembled for Thursday's kick-off ceremony. "There's no room for error when responding to violent crime," she said. "We cannot afford to have a mistake made."
With that, the governor pledged to make the Washington State Patrol and its crime labs available to assist the task force. Also working with the force will be experts from the Most Dangerous Offender Program, a function of the county prosecutor's office.
The task force will be activated when one of the member cities experiences a murder, kidnapping, rape or other violent crime. Trained officers from throughout the county will be on call, immediately responding where they're needed most. It will be up to the city to ask for assistance and local jurisdictions will remain in charge of each case.
Maling called formation of the task force "the most significant advance in law enforcement" he's seen during his quarter-century of service to King County.
Once the planning process began, Christopher Hurst of the Black Diamond Police Department was named commander of the Major Crimes Task Force. Also part of the chain of command are a pair of "scene incident commanders," and one of those is Eric Sortland of the Enumclaw Police Department. The force is rounded out with a squad of 11 detectives, which includes Brian Lynch and Steve Robinson from Enumclaw and Heather Dunn from Black Diamond.
"We have some extraordinarily talented detectives on the team," Hurst said prior to Thursday's event. Task force members came with their own police training and have received more since joining the group.
"We'll do as good a job, if not better, than any unit that exists" in the state, Hurst said. "Within a year, nobody will be doing a better job with homicides or other violent crimes."
Hurst pointed out the difficulty in bringing 11 different police agencies on board to support a single, multi-jurisdictional unit. "It was amazingly complex," he said, but the various chiefs determined "we'd do it 100 percent right, or not do it at all."
Participating cities, aside from Enumclaw and Black Diamond, are Algona, Carnation, Clyde Hill, Duvall, Hunts Point, Issaquah, Medina, Lake Forest Park, Normandy Park, Pacific, Snoqualmie and Yarrow Point. Together, they represent almost 78,000 citizens, making the Coalition of Small Police Agencies larger than 25 counties in the state.
When the task force is called upon, cities will feel the effect of having one officer missing; that void can be filled by most cities through the use of reserve officers or paying regular officers to work overtime. Either way, additional costs are incurred.
The financial impacts to member cities will be relieved through a $100,000 appropriation made during the latest session of the state Legislature. Gregoire presented a symbolic, oversized check to the task force during Thursday's festivities.
Kevin Hanson can be reached at khanson@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/courierherald.
