Federal funding provides Chelan County Sheriff’s Office with de-escalation tools
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office will utilize federal funding to equip its deputies with several new de-escalation tools.
On Thursday, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison was joined by U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, D-8th District, Chelan County Commissioner Shon Smith, and Public Defense Investigator Juan Miranda outside the Chelan County courthouse to highlight the funding.
Schrier helped secure the $713,000 in Congress through Community Project Funding. She told NCWLIFE her office listens to local jurisdictions and sheriff’s departments to determine what is most necessary to help do their jobs and serve the community best.
“I hear from officers about their needing to stay safe in these encounters because they can escalate quickly,” Schrier said at the podium. “And so this helps keep officers safe, keep transparency, keep businesses safe, and keep the community comfortable. And everybody deserves to feel safe in their community.”
During the press conference, the sheriff’s office showed examples of the new less-lethal tools they will acquire. The first is a wrap system that will allow officers to secure individuals who are in crisis or combative, and Morrison said it helps protect the individual’s head and body and helps make transport safer while preventing damage from vehicles.
The second tool is a pepper ball rifle that has projectiles that can break glass and fill a vehicle with pepper spray. Morrison said his agency assisted Douglas County on an incident where a person had stolen a vehicle in Brewster and crashed around Orondo.
“Deploying the glass-breaking rounds from the pepper ball rifle, we were able to break out the car's windows because the subject had barricaded himself in there,” he said. “We filled the vehicle with pepper spray and then they were able to come out.”
The sheriff’s office then used a 40 millimeter launcher, which shoots out rubber projectiles and will be issued to every deputy in the agency. Morrison said the individual dropped the knife he was armed with and was taken into custody without incident.
“If we had gone back to the beginning of my career, it would have been automatically transitioning over to lethal tools – your rifle and your pistol – and that subject, most likely, if he had not complied with commands, would be deceased,” he said. “So we're glad to see that these less lethal tools have already been utilized and implemented in the field.”
The sheriff’s office will also acquire Taser 10s, which can send 10 individual probes without the need to reload.
“These are the tools that you're going to start seeing coming out with every single one of our deputies. And this is certainly an investment that we want to see, that we have peaceful resolutions and have different opportunities to come to a better conclusion to our incidents,” Morrison said.
Morrison told NCWLIFE some of the equipment is already in place but his office is still going through the ordering process. When selecting what to purchase, his office consulted with subject matter experts, the SWAT team, other agencies and industry experts to learn what is most effective.
“If we're in a scenario where we have a barricaded subject or we have a non-compliant subject or subject in crisis, we understand you don't want to just keep using the same tool over and over and over again if we're not getting the results we want,” Morrison said. “So if it's not working, then we transition over something else, and we just keep trying to work through our problem and we come up with that solution.”
In 2024, Schrier helped the sheriff’s office secure $660,000 in federal funding for body worn cameras to promote transparency. Morrison said the cameras have helped with criminal investigations, but also to clear complaints when concerns are raised about how deputies may have conducted themselves in the field.
“We're not hiding anything,” Morrison said. “We want to highlight our deputies. We're highly trained, we're efficient in operations. We control the pace. We're in compliance with Washington state law when it comes to de-escalation.”
During criminal investigations, the cameras aid in processing scenes, which can also later assist mental health providers in understanding certain situations when deputies seek support.
Additionally, Morrison said the cameras also serve as a natural form of de-escalation.
“If we remind you, ‘Hey we just want to let you know you're being recorded both audibly and visually right now,’ you see a change in a lot of people's personality knowing, ‘oh, what I'm doing is being recorded,’” he said.
Morrison and Schrier are continuing to work together in hopes of securing more funding in the future to purchase a new marine vessel, which helps the agency get to areas only accessible by boat, like Lucerne and Holden Village.