Thurston Sheriff Sanders touts recruitment incentive program as board approves extension
Recruitment incentives have helped the sheriff’s office hire nearly two dozen lateral patrol deputies since last year, Sheriff Derek Sanders recently told the Board of County Commissioners.
The board first approved the incentives in January 2024 in an effort to attract lateral applicants to the short-staffed sheriff’s office. Since then, Sanders said his office has received 59 applicants and hired 22 deputies in the patrol division. However, the program has proven less successful in the corrections division, which only hired two deputies out of 25 applicants.
Still, the results persuaded the board to unanimously approve extending a version of the program through Oct. 31
“There’s a cost savings in hiring laterals because they don’t have to attend the academy and they also have a condensed training phase,” Sanders said.
Sanders said it takes about 14 months for a patrol deputy to start working on their own. For a lateral, he said it takes about four weeks. Additionally, he said laterals are more of a “sure bet” than entry level candidates who may not finish academy training.
“A lateral basically saved about $63,000 in a rolling 12-month period when you account for overtime, training, benefits, all those types of things that we’re paying to keep the agency up and running.”
The program has attracted applicants as far as Boston and Alaska, Sanders said. This program, along with other wins, has helped improve the image of the Sheriff’s Office, he said.
“From 2021 to 2024, the sheriff’s office had zero lateral applicants get hired, which told me that there was a problem with our sheriff’s office, that there’s not a single cop out of the million in the country who want to come work here.”
Commissioner Emily Clouse asked Sanders how many non-lateral patrol deputies have been hired since the pilot program began.
Sanders said the sheriff’s office hired 15 entry level deputies and zero lateral deputies in 2023. In 2024, he said 19 entry level deputies and 11 lateral deputies were hired.
Through the first half of this year, he said four entry level deputies and seven lateral deputies were hired.
At the June 10 meeting, Sanders told the board he thinks the corrections division has had less success with this incentive program because there doesn’t appear to be much movement between jails.
“We are not losing corrections deputies in our jail to other correctional facilities, and likewise, we’re not getting corrections deputies from other facilities,” Sanders said.
He said the corrections division has remained stagnant with 20 vacancies. He said many new correctional deputies eventually leave to join the patrol division. He said it’s a trend throughout Washington state.
“There’s still a high level of police officer vacancies across the state, so a lot of corrections staff are saying, ‘I’m going to jump into a better retirement system that pays more, I can retire earlier, and I’m going to go do the police work side of things,’” Sanders said.
The Board removes key incentive from the program
This is the second time the Board has voted to extend the program, but the first time they have pared it back.
When it started, the program offered new lateral hires a $25,000 hiring bonus paid in three installments as well as an award of 40 vacation and 40 sick hours upon their hire.
Additionally, the program offered current employees 40 hours of incentive leave if they referred a lateral candidate that was subsequently hired.
The amended program eliminated the hiring bonus and kept the remaining incentives.
During the June 10 meeting, Sanders said the county paid for the bonus with the Public Safety Sales Tax and vacancy savings.
“I would say this program has been successful for us,” Sanders said. “It’s bailed us out big time with hiring.”
“What we’re just asking for now is to get rid of the cash bonus, that was helpful for the time being that we implemented it, and keep the things that aren’t costing us the actual cash bonus money.”
On the topic of the referral incentive, Sanders said he believed that program has been successful as well.
“It’s very rare in government that you actually get to be directly rewarded for these kinds of things,” Sanders said. “So, I think it’s a cool program that’s worked out well for us.”
Can other offices and departments offer incentives?
Clouse asked Human Resources Director Maria Aponte at the meeting if similar incentives are offered to other county employees.
Aponte said the county allows appointing authorities to offer up to 40 hours of banked leave to new potential hires. That incentive was approved in March.
County Manager Leonard Hernandez said that incentive was a huge step forward among other changes being made to personnel policies.
“I have seen from my level, department heads and hiring managers use that effectively, especially when folks are coming from long established careers in the federal government or in the state, they have large leave bank hours,” Hernandez said.
“This is a great way to bridge that as they come over and are hired by the county.”
However, Aponte said a similar referral incentive has not been implemented countywide.
Clouse then asked if the board may want to analyze the cost of offering the referral incentives to more offices and departments.
Commissioner and Board Chair Tye Menser said the county could look into it, but this program was created in response to specific challenges in the sheriff’s office.
“There were some special reasons why we did something that was not just something to do for everyone that I think were valid,” Menser said.
For his part, Sanders said he thinks it’s a “really good idea” to expand the referral program to other offices and departments.
“There’s no agency probably within Thurston County that’s more expensive to run that kind of program because of the nature of our 24/7 minimum staffing, there always has to be seven deputies working type of mentality.”
An employee using their awarded leave may generate overtime costs for the county, he said, but it may be worth it in the end.
“That’s a drop in the bucket if the lateral then comes in and back fills that for them and there’s no overtime,” Sanders said.
