There is much the incumbent Thurston County sheriff and his challenger agree on.
Sheriff Derek Sanders and Detective Kevin Burton-Crow both believe that addressing the Thurston County Jail is a top priority in the next four years, that continued community engagement is needed, and that the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is in a better position now than it has been in recent memory.
Where they differ — the value of accreditation for the sheriff’s office, how best to engage the community, and whether the sheriff belongs in the field or behind a desk — is where the voters will need to weigh in.
The two candidates for Thurston County sheriff faced off Saturday in a virtual debate hosted by Tony Taylor of the “Leaders Lead” podcast.
Taylor has previously interviewed Thurston County Commissioner Emily Clouse and Washington state 2nd Legislative District representative candidates Angela Taylor and Jenn Marie Strickling as part of his “On The Record” series.
His two-hour Thurston County sheriff candidate debate aired live Saturday evening and had garnered nearly 4,400 views as of Monday afternoon.
Taylor’s questions to the candidates were focused primarily on their leadership strategies and their priorities if elected.
Both candidates agreed that addressing the overcrowding and failing infrastructure at the Thurston County Jail was a top priority for the next term.
Sanders’ proposed solution to that crisis isn’t to build more jail space, but to add a mental health wing that would remove mentally ill offenders from the general population and place them in “a more therapeutic setting.”
Burton-Crow did not offer a specific plan for addressing the jail, but questioned why Sanders didn’t make it a priority during his first term.
“Spending on capital improvements and investments on wants kind of outweighed some of the needs that could have been creatively addressed with the county commissioners, just with a little bit of patience,” Burton-Crow said.
He questioned the fiscal responsibility of the sheriff’s office, saying, “I think there are ways that our money is being spent that is kind of a misrepresentation of where our priorities should be.”
Specifically, Burton-Crow said, more money should be spent on training for new hires.
“We're currently at nine weeks for entry level, and it should be much more than that,” he said.
Sanders defended the investments the sheriff’s office made under his leadership, particularly in improving employee contracts, adding new signage, fleet upgrades, and a new headquarters.
“I'll argue that there's no sheriff's office, no police agency in this state, that's experienced more growth, more benefits, than Thurston County Sheriff's Office, for our staff,” Sanders said.
Those improvements to staff conditions were essential to improving the sheriff’s office’s hiring and retention rates, Sanders said.
“We just knew there were so many structural deficits within the sheriff's office that that's where my priority was basically staying during my first three years.”
Of his decision to not make the jail a top priority when he was elected, Sanders said, “Quite frankly, I didn't know enough about the jail at the time.”
However, since becoming the sheriff, he said, “I've had a lot more opportunities to get inside the jail, to get to know the staff, to understand the challenges and problems occurring within it, and I've started working with county commissioners to really find a solution forward because we do have a space issue inside of that jail. We do have corrections deputies who are taking care of people who are mentally ill in high violence scenarios where they really shouldn't be doing some of that work. So I really look forward to revamping that into the future.”
One of Burton-Crow’s top priorities if elected sheriff is to seek accreditation for the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.
“Accreditation is a huge thing, so that we can prove that we are doing what we say we're doing,” Burton-Crow said, committing to getting through the process within his first year in office.
The accreditation process involves bringing in an external auditor to go through the agency’s processes and procedures.
“It's not just a Facebook feed that is purely a narrative or a stream of consciousness. It's someone coming in and actively reviewing your policies and procedures, things in our organization that haven't been updated in some cases since 2019,” Burton-Crow said.
Sanders argued that, while he doesn’t necessarily oppose accreditation, he doesn’t believe it to be the community trust-builder that Burton-Crow presents it as.
“It's not an external trust-building mechanism. It is an internal validation. It's for other agencies to compare back and forth and say, ‘Yes, we're accredited,’ and that's why so few agencies have pursued it,” Sanders said.
Sanders has not pursued accreditation during his first term because of its cost and because of a lack of clear benefits to the community, he said.
“The public doesn't even have the comprehension of the accreditation process for me to understand how it could possibly be a trust-building tool,” Sanders said.
The most effective way to build trust, Sanders said, is to continue investing in de-escalation training to ensure better outcomes in critical incidents.
“Those are the things where the public sees the footage, they see the police reports, they see the cases, they see deputies using time, distance, and cover to mitigate risk and make sure everyone gets to go home alive. Those are the things in my mind that actually build trust, and it's not just a sticker you put on the side of your car,” Sanders said.
Burton-Crow said he found Sanders’ characterization that the community doesn’t understand accreditation to be “somewhat insulting.”
“I'm not saying that it's a silver bullet that will cure all ills in law enforcement. I'm saying that it's a foundation,” Burton-Crow said.
He cited studies that he said show that agencies that have “been forced” to publish policies and procedures are more “open and transparent.”
“We use that word over and over again,” Burton-Crow said, adding that the sheriff’s office claiming to be transparent bears little weight unless the public can verify the sheriff’s office is doing what they say they’re doing.
Burton-Crow additionally advocated for a new community advisory board, which Sanders said is already in the works.
While Burton-Crow admitted that Sanders has been a “catalyst” for the sheriff’s office, he said that Sanders’ tendency to “lead from the front” has left him neglecting his administrative duties.
A sheriff’s role is meant to be more like a CEO than a deputy, Burton-Crow said.
“They are the visionaries. They're not always out there on the factory line punching out widgets. They have to be able to ensure that the processes behind the scenes are taken care of, so that they can employ that exponential capacity, so that those below them have the faith, the trust and the stability in the institution, so that they can go out and do the work,” Burton-Crow said.
Among the administrative work that’s been neglected since Sanders took office, Burton-Crow said, is updating the sheriff’s office's policies and procedures and updating the sheriff’s office’s website.
“You have to spend time in taking care of the administrative functions as well as the social media outreach,” Burton-Crow said.
Sanders acknowledged that there is still plenty of internal work to be done within the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, but defended the priorities and leadership style of his first term.
“Our job in the first term as a command staff was to stop the bleeding, and we've done that and so much more,” he said.
Of his decision to go out into the field, Sanders said, “I just don't believe the sheriff belongs sitting behind a desk Monday through Friday. I don't. I believe that that's highly attributed to retention issues, to the sense that ‘the sheriff lives in the glass palace and never comes down here to see what's going on.’”
He ultimately described his position as being in the middle of a three-circle venn diagram — one circle represents the public, one represents other elected officials and government bodies, and one represents sheriff’s office employees.
“It is the sheriff's job to find a way to take those three circles that sometimes like to pull away from each other in different directions and unite them under one cause. That is our vision, which is unified public safety,” Sanders said.
He did acknowledge his role as "cheerleader for the office” and the “face of the organization,” responding to public criticism about his frequent online presence.
“One criticism I hear all the time is that ‘it’s all about me,’” Sanders said. “I think the sentiment that I have a big ego is maybe true, but I also try to stay grounded in what Thurston County needs.”
Burton-Crow added to the criticism of Sanders’ social media use, saying Sanders’ Facebook page is not an appropriate place for him to be posting the videos and case updates that he does.
“The sheriff's office owns that footage, and the public owns the sheriff's office. So it really should be put out under the Thurston County Sheriff's Office social media page in a formal and appropriate context,” Burton-Crow said.
Burton-Crow also criticized the way Sanders has engaged with community partners.
Both candidates did agree that Sanders has established and continued positive relationships with lawmakers, municipal partners and other agencies across the region, but Burton-Crow expressed concern that Sanders has not done enough work to establish those relationships on behalf of the whole sheriff’s office.
While the partnerships “at the top” are “very valuable,” Burton-Crow said, he expressed interest in arranging joint training sessions with partner agencies — particularly local fire departments — to further build relationships between first responders from different agencies.
“I appreciate the relationships that are built at the top, but oftentimes it's not those at the top that are responding, and those relationships need to go down throughout the organization and have true instituted training,” Burton-Crow said.
While the two candidates aired their disagreements during the debate, they ended with a round of compliments for each other.
“I do respect you quite a bit, and I wanted to say that there is something I genuinely appreciate, which is that you were a catalyst that this agency needed,” Burton-Crow said. “Thank you for doing that, being a catalyst in the agency and in the community.
In reply, Sanders called Burton-Crow “one of the smartest people that I know” and acknowledged how, in Burton-Crow’s role as union president, his knowledge and thought for policy and procedure has been a great help to Sanders as sheriff.
“We're very different. I think Kevin's a little more black-and-white, and I'm a little more gray, but as the sheriff and the union president, that’s actually sometimes very helpful. Kevin is going to remind us of those structures and the process and those types of things. That is his strength, bar none,” Sanders said.
Both candidates expressed their dedication to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and committed to continuing to serve the community regardless of the election’s outcome.
“Both the sheriff and I are going to be there together for public safety. Just a bit of a different vision,” Burton-Crow said.
The full debate can be viewed online at https://tinyurl.com/47rc3vzv.
