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Another potential budget victim: Drug crime patrol

City could save $107,765 but it would come at a cost

By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published November 23, 2008

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Olympia Police Cmdr. Tor Bjornstad said the department is concerned about how losing a detective with the task force would affect Olympia. He said he thinks the task force still would work cases that involve the city.

"Olympia's not going to be some no man's land where they don't go into at all," Bjornstad said. However, the task force could do less enforcement at houses where low-level drug activity is a chronic problem.

Those types of cases "could be left to Olympia" police and the department's own resources, he said.

"That's a huge problem," Bjornstad said, because the department does not have the resources to cover all those types of cases without the task force's help.

Olympia police also don't have the resources to work cases in which a traffic stop turns into a large narcotics investigation, he said. Pulling officers from patrol to work those types of cases could create a gap in service, Bjornstad said. During an Oct. 10 traffic stop by an Olympia officer on Conger Avenue, for example, officers seized about 11 pounds of marijuana. After that, they called the task force to assist with the case, which included serving search warrants on cars and at a home on Scammel Avenue.

The drug task force's executive board has discussed paying for Olympia's narcotics detective for one year using money that the task force has recovered during drug seizures.

But Olympia Police Chief Gary Michel, who is on the executive board, said Wednesday that such a proposal wouldn't work because it's not sustainable in the long run; the task force would eventually go broke if it paid its salaries that way.

Also, it brings up issues of fairness for other local law enforcement agencies that contribute a detective to the task force but pay for their detectives with their own money.

Michel said that because of the city's budget crunch, "my anticipation for this year is that (the city's) position has been reduced or eliminated."

Olympia City Manager Steve Hall said the city's declining tax revenue has made job cuts a grim reality for all city departments. Under the current proposal for the city budget, jobs for 21 full-time city employees will be eliminated, he said.