The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG – Walla Walla County Sheriff John Turner provided a quarterly service update to council members at their Aug. 16 council meeting.

Statistics for the first six months of the year show 356 calls for service for the first six months of 2017, which is a higher mid-year number than previous years, Turner said. In 2016, total calls for service for the entire year were 532, which was up significantly from 247 in 2015, 352 in 2014, and 502 in 2013.

A call for service is any call in to the department and they can run the gamut from welfare checks and paper service to narcotics calls and sex offenses. Turner said the good thing about the jump in numbers is that citizens feel comfortable calling in suspicious activity, which is what the department wants.

The number of actual reported crimes (as opposed to calls for service) for Jan. – June of 2017 is 60, which is much higher than last year’s full-year total of 40 crimes. However, Turner explained that a new tracking system now records everything from custody violations, to animal bites, to warrant service. Previously, only six types of crime were reported.

Turner said he was pleased with the drop in motor vehicle thefts, an area where the department has been putting forth significant effort. In the first half of 2017 there has only been one vehicle theft compared to a total of five in 2016.

He said he is especially concerned with narcotics and illicit drug usage in the county, which tends to go hand-in-hand with thievery.

“I’ve been sheriff since 2011, so in the last six years, the number of drug-related overdose deaths in our county have quadrupled. We have four times the number of people dying from drug overdoses in Walla Walla County than we had four short years ago. And with those problems, come crime,” Turner said.

When asked if overdose victims are mostly younger people, Turner said he believed the average age for overdoses in the county is 46 years of age. He said addiction hits across the board, regardless of income and ethnicity.

Turner also commented that narcotics police work takes place, but doesn’t generate statistical numbers. He stressed the need for some type of dedicated, proactive drug enforcement unit in the county.

“One of the reasons our narcotics statistics are so low is that we only have uniformed deputies in marked patrol cars and nobody is going to be walking up to a uniformed officer trying to sell drugs,” he said.