Editor's note: Chronicle sister newspaper the Nisqually Valley News has announced Sheriff Derek Sanders as its Person of the Year. The article is republished here.
Facing a $4.5 million budget cut, Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders stood at the podium last September to speak directly to the County Board of Commissioners.
He wasn’t alone. About 100 local supporters attended the afternoon meeting, some of whom had to cram against the glass walls of the Atrium’s board room just to find a place to stand — such as Bucoda Mayor Callie Carpenter and former Yelm mayor JW Foster.
Others spilled out into the common area. There simply weren’t enough chairs.
Even Sanders, Nisqually Valley News 2025 Person of the Year, was surprised by the turnout.
“That’s at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday,” Sanders said. “Like, that’s in the middle of the week. So people are taking time off. They’re finding childcare or bringing their kids. That really spoke volumes to me.”
Their efforts weren’t in vain, either. Before the meeting concluded, Board Chair Tye Menser, with a grin, said of the public comment, “This is what real democracy looks like.”
In the end, the commissioners avoided what would’ve been the largest cut to the sheriff’s office in its history and settled at $2.5 million, a figure Sanders was prepared to absorb, in large part, by cutting already vacant corrections positions to a jail work release program.
Beyond avoiding a budget catastrophe, Sanders and his supporters had put to rest any lingering doubt about the sheriff’s actual appeal in the community — and not just on social media.
Staffing crisis averted
The state of Washington has ranked last in police staffing for 15 straight years.
According to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the number currently sits at 1.37 officers per 1,000 residents. Sanders said the national average is about 2.37 per 1,000 — putting the state essentially one officer behind the rest of the country.
The situation was worse in Thurston County, until Sanders beat out longtime sheriff John Snaza in 2022 at 29 years old. Since then, he’s made it his mission to boost staffing numbers.
“Thurston County, when I took over, was 0.56 (officers per 1,000 residents). So we’re almost a third of the state average, which is the worst in the country. That $7-million effort that the local citizens decided they were going to invest in Thurston County Sheriff’s Office has bumped us to 0.76 (per 1,000). So we’re halfway. We’re halfway to being at the state average, and the state average is the worst in the country.”
Sanders commended the voter-approved Public Safety Tax that went into effect April 1, 2024, and provided a much-needed funding boost to county law enforcement.
“We are so appreciative that local citizens stepped up, but this isn’t a local citizen problem when the entire state is so far behind,” Sanders said. “This is going to require a dedicated, concerted effort by the state to say, ‘Maybe it’s time to not be last place.’”
Sanders considers the staffing increase to be one of his biggest accomplishments as he nears a 2026 reelection bid against Kevin Burton-Crow, a Thurston County Sheriff’s Office detective.
“When I took over, we had 33 working deputies for 150,000 people,” Sanders said. “It was probably the historical low of our office, reaching that point. And we only had eight detectives — we were supposed to have 12 at the time — because we couldn’t staff the road properly. We went from 2021 to 2024 with not one single lateral applicant from another agency coming to work for our office. And since then, we have completely reversed course.”
Sanders said he now has about 55 working patrol deputies and just over 20 detectives. The jail is also fully staffed, minus a few vacancies. He called the department a “recruiting powerhouse.”
“I have 11 vacancies to fill on patrol (and) about 600 candidates to fill it,” Sanders said. “Across the entire agency, I have about 1,000 candidates, roughly, who are wanting to come work here — and there’s not that many spots.”
Sanders pointed to specialized units — such as traffic, boat, domestic violence, special victims, and cold cases — that simply wouldn’t exist without good staffing numbers.
“I think my proudest accomplishment is just getting this agency to a point where we have some breathing room, and deputies aren’t working in those strenuous shifts anymore,” Sanders said. “And they can get time off, and they can go spend time with their family.”
That includes Sanders, too, though he admits his free time is limited. Sanders is married to current Tacoma Police Department Officer Kimberly Sanders, and is now a stepfather.
The couple met on a felony stop when she was with the Olympia Police Department.
Early years
Now that the sheriff’s office has addressed its staffing woes, the 32-year-old sheriff hopes to establish stability and consistency within the department.
It’s something he’s craved since he was a child. After experiencing domestic violence while living in California, Sanders spent time in various shelters, and at one point lived in a van.
Sanders said his upbringing led him to view the world in shades of gray, rather than black and white, or simply right or wrong. He called his stepfather one of the most brutal individuals he’s encountered. But sometimes — like during hunting trips — his stepfather could be fun.
“I think for those of us who have lots of lived experience with abuse and things like that, there’s a lot more gray area, right?” Sanders said. “Like someone who I thought I loved hurt me when I was young. And that changes your perspective.”
Sanders said his first experience with police was seeing them take his stepfather to jail.
“It’s confusing, right? Because, even at that age, you know that they’re doing bad things, but then that’s still part of your family,” Sanders said.
Then, while living in a domestic violence shelter in Colorado, Sanders was selected to participate in a Shop With a Cop program for Christmas.
He said he still remembers the officer to this day.
Sanders, along with his mother and sister, eventually moved to Washington to be with his grandparents. Prior to enrolling at George Bush Middle School in Tumwater, Sanders had been to 14 different schools. He went on to graduate from Tumwater High School in 2011.
These formative experiences shaped how Sanders views the role of a sheriff. As a non-partisan elected official, Sanders said he approaches issues on a topic-by-topic basis.
“I think if you look at the core principles of procedural justice, which is explaining the process to people and giving people the why — that isn’t a black-and-white process,” Sanders said. “And people really do crave kind of the gray area, the ability to say their part.”
Social media for transparency
That desire for context is one reason Sanders is so active on social media.
“When you look at criminal investigations, I can usually tell you what happened, where, how it happened, who was there,” Sanders said. “It’s really hard sometimes to say why. Motive and intent is sometimes the piece that we just never get to learn, never get to truly know. And so providing the why, I think, is important too… We’ll post some body cam footage, and someone will be like, ‘Why did that deputy do that?’ Well, I can answer that for you. I can tell you why. Because I talked to them or I read the report.”
Transparency is another critical aspect of the job, Sanders said.
Sheriff about town
Sanders’ regular social media posts have allowed him to reach greater portions of the county’s population. But it hasn’t stopped him from attending local events, from charity mushball games and town hall meetings in Yelm to auctions in Rainier to annual parades in Olympia.
“It’s really hard to please communities that you don’t know or understand,” Sanders said. “So how can I possibly know what’s important to the citizens of Rainier if I’m never around them? Or Bucoda or downtown Olympia? Or north Lacey? … Those are not the same groups of people, quite frankly. They have different political beliefs. They have different outlooks on life. They have different living styles.”
That means a traffic stop in Olympia will often differ in some way to a stop in rural Bucoda.
“I’m a big proponent that we have to spend time in the community so that we understand the people we are policing. And that comes from a sentiment that we are doing this with the consent of our people. This is not something we’ve taken. This is not something that we own. It is borrowed power. It is borrowed authority that we will give back at some point in time when our careers are over.”
Patrol deputy at heart
Sanders has a reputation for being a so-called crime magnet. And he still shows up for patrol duty, something that’s been criticised by colleagues such as Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank.
“Patrol is where my heart is,” Sanders said. “It’s the best job in the world. I absolutely love being a patrol deputy, and I would still be a patrol deputy today if I thought I could have effected the changes I thought needed to change at that level.”
Before Sanders ran for sheriff, he dreamed of doing things he didn’t see other sheriffs do, like show up to graveyard shifts or check in with the jail. Now he can.
Sanders knows working patrol as the sheriff comes with increased risk — and the body camera is always rolling. But it allows him to stay connected to the evolving demands of his deputies.
“I think it’s important for me, especially because I am a little bit younger and I’m still in that mindset, like, I can still handle a collision report,” Sanders said. “I can still do a basic (domestic violence) investigation. There’s just some processes that I need to be up to date on. I can still categorize my body cam footage… And a lot of police chiefs and sheriffs could not do those things.”
Improving technology and morale
As he sat at a conference table inside what will soon become the new sheriff’s office building in Tumwater, Sanders highlighted ways in which the department has modernized under his leadership, including the replacement of old body cameras and tasers.
“Our detectives have all of the latest equipment when it comes to forensic examination for digital evidence and Cellebrite and all these different technologies that help them solve these major crimes,” Sanders added.
The patrol division now has about 17 grappler devices installed on its vehicles, Sanders said. The department also acquired a military OH-58 helicopter that is being stripped and fitted with the necessary police equipment to be used for investigation, search and rescue.
Morale is up, too, Sanders said, thanks to record-breaking pay increases across the department’s bargaining units, including patrol, corrections, support staff, detectives, and more.
The department has also changed policies that improve work-life balance, Sanders said, such as allowing deputies to work out while on duty, so long as their call volume is handled.
“There was a point in time when I took over where we were hurting really bad for staffing. So deputies are working 15, 16-hour shifts. And when are we expecting them to take care of their physical fitness? If you do that all week long, you’ve just skipped an entire week of exercise. And we know the impacts that exercise has on our bodies and our mental capacity and how we show up every day to our personal lives and our work lives.”
The sheriff said the overall culture around the office has changed, too. Deputies are more excited to go out on patrol, serve warrants or stop speeding cars.
That said, he knows it’s hard to impress fellow cops, if not impossible.
“And the only way that I can even remotely say that I might be on the right track is that they’re not leaving,” Sanders said. “There’s all these places that are offering more pay, more benefits, bonuses, and yet we lose like one or two deputies a year maybe, and it’s usually more of a, ‘I love it here, I just live too far away, or something along those lines.’”
The next test
Sanders said he’s looking forward to the upcoming election, because it’s the only real way to know if he’s doing the job he was voted to do.
“I actually get excited about reelection because I do have to wonder, am I only popular on social media,” he questioned. “Is it all just like a facade? Is it people who don’t live here? Is it just something where the support is fickle and it won’t show up when it counts?”
Sanders said there’s no report card when you serve as sheriff, other than the vote itself.
“And so there’s a part of me, too, that’s like, I just want to do the job,” he said. “I want to do the work. I want to show my work. It’s very important to show your work and show people what you’ve done. And then I’m just really excited to turn it over to voters.”
Sanders acknowledged that he has, in his words, a big ego, but said he thinks the public, in some ways, actually expects that out of the position.
If he didn’t have an ego, Sanders thinks he wouldn’t have been as effective at that county commissioners meeting last September, when his department faced the largest cut in its history.
Instead, Sanders said he showed up and told the board and the citizens of Thurston County that the department was delivering the results people wanted.
Just look around the room.
“That’s what people want to hear,” Sanders said. “They want that assertiveness and they want that sense of like, I have direction and I know where we’re going.”
The caveat, he said, is that he genuinely wants to know what people think.
“The way that I’ve made myself look good is by showcasing the work that my staff do,” Sanders said. “And I try to give them as much credit as I can, because I am just one person. I’m the cheerleader in a big organization. And I’ve got some of the best staff in the country. I truly do.”
