Revamped process leads to Spokane County Sheriff’s Office best year of staffing in nearly 20 years

SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — After years of recruitment and retention struggles, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office is reporting its best year of hiring yet.

SCSO’s large focus on hiring and recruitment led to more applicants for the department. Right now, there are around 40 new deputies going through the training process which you could soon see reflected out in the community.

“In nine months, our citizens are going to notice more people out on the street than they’ve ever had,” said Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels.

Sheriff Nowels said this could be the best staff they’ve had in nearly 20 years.

“It’s going to reduce our demand on overtime,” he said. “It’s going to increase our ability to have more people on the scenes to help de-escalate a little better than maybe we would have the opportunity to now.”

Getting to this point was not easy. It took a revisioning of the hiring process that is now more focused on retaining current employees and making the application process more efficient.

“Sometimes it was taking six months to get people through the process to now where we’re far below 90 days for most applicants,” said Sheriff Nowels.

These hiring challenges have been felt across the board for law enforcement agencies.

“Statewide, we still have about 150 vacancies for our field operations bureau,” said Trooper Heather Axtman, a Washington State Patrol recruiter.

Axtman has helped rethink WSP’s hiring approach, focusing on making the process more interactive by engaging with communities in various settings.

“We’re able to go in and I’m able to share that I’m a wife and I’m a mom and I have everything with this amazing career that I want to share with them and afford them the opportunity to be able to also be part of this,” she said.

These revamps have paid off for WSP and SCSO, but the work isn’t done yet.

“We’re getting to the point now where we’re going to have to figure out ‘How do we stay competitive without throwing out that kind of cash?'” Sheriff Nowels said. “Budget constraints are challenging us there and we don’t have quite the number of open positions that we had even last year.”