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From local leaders and hometown heroes to breaking stories and in-depth conversations, the KMAS Podcast brings you the voices that matter in Mason County, Washington. Hosted by longtime broadcaster Jeff Slakey, each episode dives into what’s happening around the Hood Canal—government, education, small business, the outdoors, and everything in between.
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Well, here we are again on a beautiful first Friday of the month at the Fjord Oyster Bank for our Sheriff's Sit Down presented by our community credit union. How you doing Sheriff Spurling? Good, how are you doing? It's a beautiful day. It is a beautiful day and we are moving into kind of the busy season here around Mason County as we had Forest Festival last weekend and it was a great turnout.
It was a great event. Such support for you guys in the Sheriff's Office. I saw you walking with Chief Kostad from Shelton Police, also representatives from State Patrol and one of the tribes who was who else was with you there? Squaxin Tribal Chief Ed Harold was with me along with the sergeant from the local State Patrol Detachment Jason Rowe.
Tell me a little bit about again and we talk about this all the time. Tell me a little bit about how important it is for you guys to be seen in the community and these types of events and the support that you see from the community at these types of events. Absolutely, you know I'm a little bit of a history buff so I go back to the historical roots of law enforcement.
Back to the 1800s and Sir Robert Peel, they're called the Peelian Principals and the police over in England are named after him. They're called Bobbies after Sir Robert Peel. Is that why they're called Bobbies? Yeah, they're named after him.
That he was the one that kind of wrote the nine law enforcement or local law enforcement principles and one of the things that he said was law enforcement is a member of the community. He's just the member that gets paid to dedicate full-time attention to law enforcement or to safety and security where it's everybody in the community's responsibility. We are a member of the community.
We have to be connected to the community. We have to be involved. People have to know us and feel comfortable to come to us because there's not enough of us to do it on our own.
We need everybody in the community to help us with eyes and ears and tell us what's going on, feel comfortable if they've been victimized, all of those type of things. But the more separate that law enforcement is the less that that is the interaction that's needed to really police our communities. Can you think of or tell me how those principles, those nine principles came about? What in his background brought him to these? Or how, I mean, how were they developed and then initially adopted and accepted by? You know, I actually, I should pull them up for you real quick and read them because you will actually be floored.
You'll think that they were written recently. And that's what, that's what, you know, when names like this stick around, they, they tend to just like our forefathers, you know, in the creation of the country, they come up with these things and they do have the longevity associated with them. They do have kind of that sense that these principles will be here for a very long time.
And it's fascinating to me, whether I guess it speaks to kind of the more we change, the more we stay the same kind of principles. But yeah, yeah. If you could find some of those.
Yeah, I'm digging them up right now. But basically what it was is military occupation was the thing, right? Okay. Now, military occupation in a community is very different than a law enforcement because military usually indicates that it's somebody different, whether it be Rome, the Romans occupied, whatever, when they took over all the known world at that point or Greece, they would have their military occupation and they'd have soldiers in those communities to keep law and order according to the new laws.
Well, law enforcement's not that. And the office of sheriff, for example, goes all the way back to the Magna Carta in the 1200s. The office of sheriff was mentioned multiple times.
And the sheriff, actually, the sheriff of Nottingham was a real thing type of, you know, not necessarily that name, but they collected taxes. They had the jails and they were shire Reeves. And I think it was a King Canutt was the first one to call them sheriffs.
But it was a shire in England. And a Reeve was somebody that was hired by the king to do certain things. So the office of sheriff has been around for back in the 1200s, even earlier than that.
So how law enforcement evolved is an interesting study. But Robert Peel, he was the one that became known for developing these principles, which kind of lead law enforcement and have ever since the 1800s. So he was a politician in Britain.
And I've found him, but I want to see his the principles. I'm still looking him up there. No, that's OK.
Because I got him down pretty loosely, but I would like to actually read him because there it'll just blow you away as to what they say and how they're applicable today, not only in law enforcement, but just to our society. Can you can you see or do you think that and you mentioned a kind of a collective citizenry as well? We talk a lot about that, too. See something, say something, volunteer, be a part of search and rescue or come to these luncheons where people are gathering and talking about issues or community space.
Do you get the sense or do you think that the citizenry's reliance on law enforcement has taken out some of what they either would see as their responsibilities in the community? Absolutely. Like say, wow, the police will take care of this one. Well, unfortunately, society has abdicated their responsibility to keep their community safe to law enforcement.
And there's just not enough of us. So it just flat doesn't work. Right.
You have to be involved because, again, we've got maybe point nine deputies per thousand citizens. Yeah. And we cover a thousand square miles.
And there's no way we can be everywhere and see everything. But everybody in the community does. Some of our lower crime rate communities, for example, what where would you guess would be our lower communities for crime rates and why you would think that? I mean, my first guess would be the lower population centers.
And I'll say kind of the area surrounding Matlock, maybe or here in Hoodsport Union. And that's only because the population density is smaller. But there's going to be some of that because of population density.
But I'm talking about communities where people live as the lowest crime rates. It's the one with the highest number of retirees that are watching and they're at home and they're paying attention to what's going on. And they report it.
So you look at Lakeland Village, you look at Alderbrook. Yeah, they're a little bit remote, but they have such a high population of people that are home paying attention that there's less crime because they know they're being watched. That makes sense, too, because we hear a lot of folks here at the lunch from Lake Cushman in that area, and they talk a lot about that.
And it seems like there is a more active community watch that's going on. And that's a key piece. And that's one of the reasons why I'm really trying to push neighborhood watch programs, because we know that if criminals or people that are up to no good know that the community is being watched and paid attention to, they're less likely to commit the crime in that neighborhood.
They're going to go to someplace where there's less people and they can get away with it easier and nobody's going to witness what they've done. So I found him here. All right, let's hear him.
So there's nine policing principles. The first one is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment. So like I said, it's to prevent crime without military.
Number two, to recognize always that the power of the police is to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent upon public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. Again, this is in the 1800s. And it's called policing by consent is what it's termed as.
Number three, to recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing the observance of laws. Number four, to recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives. So again, even in the 1800s, they knew that if there's excessive force and cops are out there beating people, that the public doesn't trust you and they're not going to give you their willing cooperation.
And number five, to seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to law in complete independence of policy and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws by readily offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing by readily exercising courtesy and friendly good humor and by readily offering individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. I mean, it's so applicable now. It has not changed.
Number six, to use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public cooperation to the extent necessary to secure the observance of the law or to restore order and to use only minimum degree of physical force, which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving the police objective. Again, sounds like stuff that... Yeah, it really does. You know, they think that they're coming up with it as if it's something new.
Number seven, to maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives the reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police. The police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to the duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. That's exactly what we were talking about.
Number eight, to recognize always the need for strict adherence to police executive functions and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary. In other words, let the courts do their job. We don't... Wow.
We're not the judges and the jury, right? Wow. And avenging of individuals or the state and the authority, authoritatively judging guilt and punishment of the guilty. So that's not our job.
And number nine, to recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action and dealing with crime. This is one reason why we don't post every time we arrest somebody. Yeah.
Because that's really not the true test of policing. The true test is crime reducing. It's seeing the crime numbers going down.
It seems like from then till now, I mean, those principles, you could use those and say, here's what we're going with. But there seems to be so many more layers now that you guys have to deal with and deal through when it comes to the legislative side of all of these things. Do you think that ever, or how is it being talked about to get back to some of just these core principles and let's maybe reset? If you know what I'm talking about.
Oh, absolutely. You have so much, you have so much you have to think about on a daily basis when it comes to a call, whether or not you are allowed to engage in this situation or you have the authority to do this and that. And it seems as though it's almost pulled you away from these principles that kind of started the whole thing off.
Yeah, you know, the way I describe it, we teach this obviously to our officers, we teach it in our leadership classes, we put it back in front of us all the time, because just like anything, the analogy that I use is if you're driving across the state in the summer on an evening in eastern Washington, your window is going to get covered with bugs. Yeah. And in the profession and in our society, law enforcement officers, our windshield gets covered with bugs.
And every once in a while, we have to clean the bugs off and reorient. Why are we here? What are we doing? What is our mission, vision and values? And refocus on exactly what those nine principles bring out. This is what we are here to do.
Why do you think or do you get enough support or enough, I guess, support from lawmakers when it comes to you doing your job? It made it clear in those nine tenets, one of them was let the judges do what they're going to do and they're going to rule based on what they see as the law of the land. But in that same aspect, the laws have changed so much that it seems, again, lawmakers who may or may not have ever been in law enforcement or spent too much time interacting with police professionals are making more and more suggestions that often become law that are hampering those your ability to do those things. And, you know, that's one of the things my daughter is also a deputy, my youngest daughter, and I hear her frustration and I've experienced it.
My officers experienced it. OK, I made the arrest. I did everything that I needed to.
And then the court just slapped their hand and let them go. And they're back in the community committing the crime again. And, you know, a lot of that comes back to different ideologies.
It comes back to different thought processes. But ultimately, we need to stay in our lane. Ultimately, we have our job to do.
And it's up to the voters who the judges are. It's up to the voters who the lawmakers are. It's up to our society.
And when our society gets involved and gets educated, they will put the people in those positions that create the society that they want. And that's how we were built as a society. That's why it's we the people.
It's not just the government gets to decide for everybody. And the big part for us, we don't do a good job educating people what we do and why we do it and how we do it. And, you know, we get exposed to evil.
You know what's going on over in Chelan right now. Yeah, yeah. I was texting with the sheriff yesterday on what's going on over there.
And that's people are really taken aback by how could this man kill his three daughters? That's evil. And there's evil in the world. And we deal with evil on a pretty regular basis.
And we get to see the outcome of evil and the victimization that occurs. Most of society is protected from it. And they only see snapshots.
And because we see that, we get passionate about protecting those victims. And sometimes the lawmakers have different viewpoints. And they think that the person who's committing the crime is actually the victim because of the way they grew up or one thing or another.
And we cannot hold them accountable. So it's just different approaches. I think we all want the same thing.
We want a civilized society. We want the evil to be reduced. Let's move on to a little bit more as we are kind of starting in the summer.
Summertime. And that also means new laws are enacted when it comes to the end of the legislative session. The governor has a couple of weeks after the end of the session to get things signed.
And there was a new one that came through you wanted to mention. Tell me about that. That's 1163, which my thought on it again is it doesn't do much for keeping guns out of criminals hands.
It's just making it harder for good citizens to get a gun in their hand. And I understand. I think we all have the same goal in mind, and that's less gun violence.
But I don't believe that this law actually is going to help in that aspect at all. All it's going to do is prevent good citizens that want to get a law or get a firearm. It's going to make not prevent, but make it more challenging for them to do it with longer waiting periods and other things.
And, you know, that's a whole different argument right there as to whether the Second Amendment offers that or not. And in Washington state at this point, that doesn't seem to be the focus of making sure that the citizens have that Second Amendment right. It's more of making it hard.
So one of the things that we're doing is I'm getting together with the local gun dealers, getting together with the Sportsman Association and seeing what we can do, because this will take effect in 2027. OK, seeing what we can do for our community to provide the classes that are going to be to make sure they get the live fire qualification or shoot that's certified and rally the community together to make sure we can meet all of those. Or jump through all those hoops that are being put in place.
Again, I do not think that it's going to keep guns out of criminals hands. Yes. So explain if you know kind of why these continued pushes.
You're right. So you hear this all the time. They're going to find guns.
There are guns out there now that folks can go find. It's very rarely necessarily getting a brand new one off the street or something like from a from a registered store. The folks that go do that, they're the ones who are sportsmen or concerned about their home safety.
So, again, if there's already a mass amount of firearms out there that after 2027, people are going to have to take these tests to get new ones or concealed pistol license or even to purchase a firearm. How I mean, how does that help with what the current situation is so that they are so readily accessible? I'm not sure exactly what the thought process is and the lawmakers and maybe just reducing the number of guns in society. I don't know.
I mean, you look at that happened down in Australia 30 years ago and they still have violence. We just had 11 people in Oregon stabbed at a union gospel mission. We have people driving.
If somebody wants to hurt groups of people, they're going to use whatever tools available. It just happens to be we are in a society that has a lot of guns. So does that does that also keep people from engaging in that kind of what we first were talking about, their personal helping of protecting society? I mean, they're they're too worried about lawsuits or what happens if they do.
Well, let me put it this way. If you were a person who is going to do an armed robbery and you're going to do a home invasion, are you going to break in with a gun into a home where, you know, they're armed and they know how to use the weapon? Or are you going to try to find something that is a little easier? You know, that's that philosophy. But, you know, you got to go back to our founding fathers.
Why is this the Second Amendment? Why is this one of the most important things next to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble in the First Amendment? Why was the Second Amendment such a big deal? Well, what's the history of our country? They came from monarchies, right, where the government controlled. But if you arm the citizens now, the government cannot come in and just overrun the citizens because they can defend themselves, whereas if you take those firearms away. And that was one of the things I found.
But the citizens are armed. That's less likely to happen. Tell me a little bit more about what's going on locally with things.
I was driving out today and I know it's a city thing, but it could spread out into the community. It's the homeless situation, that Brewer Park, which is just down the block from you guys. There are so many tents there.
And I know groups that come and talk to you often, and especially people here that come to these luncheons. They bring it up a lot, too, of what can be done, both from a law enforcement standpoint and from a community cleanup standpoint. Where, I mean, where is this going to end up? There's a lot of people out there that may need the support.
They may need the help, whether or not they're getting it or not. That's a whole other subject. But it appears to me that, you know, that's a city park and they're camping on the city park.
And again, I know this could be a Shelton police issue, but broadly, I mean, how do you work through those types of issues? This is a complicated, very complicated thing. But in my mind, it's pretty simple when it comes to, there are homeless or people that are without a home that are in down times that if you provide services, they will get themselves to a better position. And it's because of circumstances sometimes outside of their control.
But we're seeing a big population of what we call criminal vagrants. Our community has so many services. If you're in a down situation, we have nonprofits, we have people that will help you in unbelievable ways from food to money, to mental health, to it doesn't matter, medical.
Our community is amazing. And we have a page and a half of resources that we hand out to the people when we clear a piece of property. For example, if they're squatting in the property owner wants them off, they ask us to do it because it's a crime to squat.
It's not your property. You can't just go and live and occupy that place. Plus our number of crimes in those areas.
Look at the crimes in Brewer Park. I would challenge you to chat with the city chief of police and some of the city officials. The number of calls in Brewer Park since that tent city has gone up is just been through the roof.
And these are not people who want help necessarily. And the interesting thing is it's right across our street from where we're housed. A lot of these people are not our local community people.
They've come in from other communities to come here. And we're going to have to come together as a whole community to solve these issues. But there has to be laws also to hold people accountable.
At what point and you're the highest elective law enforcement official in the county. At what point do you make more of a proclamation out there on we need to do this? We need to really think about this. You were bringing it up a little bit when you talked about what was happening on the other side of the mountains with the terrible story about the three young girls.
But at what point do you try to bring in the community more to better understand what you're doing and what the repercussions of having this are? And there's a lot of community groups that do that and a lot of people that are involved with those meetings trying to put input, giving their thoughts. And there's a lot of our nonprofits that represent different parts of our community. So there is education.
I think it's on the front of everybody's minds. We've got thousands and thousands of pounds of garbage in some of these areas. You're not talking just garbage.
There'll be a sleeping bag on top of an old tent that they were given for free. And then there's another tent on top of it. There's just no real respect for even themselves in a lot of the ways.
And I understand you get in there through mental health, through drug addiction. But we do have resources for those that want it. But how do you deal with that criminal element is the question that we wrestle with that are criminal vagrants.
They don't want help. People see it all the time and the social media channels are full of comments about one side or the other on how to do this. I know there's been task forces that they try to do or studying sessions, listening groups.
And oftentimes those plans, they don't ever go anywhere either. Millions and millions of dollars are being spent on the homeless issue. Yeah.
And it's become its own business at this point. There's organizations that they get money and exist as long as homeless exists. So I got a question whether someone wants to solve it or not.
Right. And I'm wondering, do you think that the county, the city and the county are offering too much in the form of resources, bringing people here to so they know that, oh, well, if I go down near the park on this day or this day, there's this thing that they'll give me no questions asked. And then I can just come back the next day and the next day.
Well, you know, Jeff, I'm not smart enough to have all the answers. That's for darn sure. And I don't even pretend to have the answers on all this.
But I know we as a community, if we come together with a common and shared goal, we can figure this out because that's the Mason County ways. Yeah. This is a very pioneering community.
It has been since its inception in 1854. And we got people that figure things out and we've got a lot of smart people. We could all come together if we can set aside some of those differences and make some common goals.
I think we as a community can come to some resolution. And that's what I was just I was going to add on to that is that, you know, all the people I talked to forever, they all want the best for the county. They all have different ways of getting there.
Right. And if you can just overlook some of what somebody said about something else later, you know, earlier or, you know, move on from an issue that is not even relevant to this topic and say, here's where we're starting. We're all going to work on this on on good.
You know, kind of all be in this together and focus and be willing to listen to each other that we can make these goals. I hope that at some point this that does happen. Well, we're in a boat and we're rowing.
It's just are we rowing in the same direction in a big circle? All right. We got to get in. You got a big lunch to talk to here as we are at the Fjord Oyster Bank for our sheriff sit down, followed by the luncheon here at the Oyster Bank.
Always a big crowd comes in and wants to hear from you. And you guys talk about a whole host of issues. Oftentimes, it's a lot of what we talk about here, too, on this interview presented by our community credit union.
So I do thank you for the time. Thank you. We can, you know, we could spend hours just talking about all sorts of this stuff.
And maybe one day we'll sit down and have deeper conversations on these. I don't know if people want to hear what I think. I you'd be surprised, Ryan, you would be surprised.
There's a lot of folks that really take what you have and understand it and process it. And kind of that's your kind of the compass, the guide point on a lot of these things, whether you know it or not. Thanks to you.
Thanks to your staff. I've seen them all out. We were at a day of caring a couple of weeks ago.
And Deputy Colbinson was there kind of talking about some of the other efforts you have going on in the sheriff's office. So anytime you want to get together, we'll talk more. We always can.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And thank you for what you're doing, keeping our community connected and keeping people informed on what's going on and celebrating the wonderful things that our community has and the things that there are a lot.
There are a lot of great things. It's incredible. We just want to make sure we give the time to help to try to figure this stuff out.
All right. Sheriff's lunch is coming up here. The first Friday of every month here in Hood Support.