Contract talks get ugly between Pierce County, deputies. Public safety at risk?

Contract negotiations between Pierce County and the union that represents the rank-and-file of the county’s largest law enforcement agency, the Sheriff’s Office, are getting ugly.

Despite more than a year of bargaining, Shaun Darby, president of the Pierce County Deputy Sheriffs’ Independent Guild, says they are nowhere near reaching an agreement that includes fair compensation for deputies’ working conditions.

The guild wants a contract that puts deputies’ pay on par with other policing agencies in Pierce County to better recruit and retain deputies. Staffing levels at the Sheriff’s Office haven’t kept pace with the growth of the county’s population, census and county data shows. Without sufficiently competitive pay to attract more law enforcement officers to work for the Sheriff’s Office, Darby argues, deputies and Pierce County residents are less safe.

That’s not an uncommon conflict in law enforcement contract negotiations, but the tenor of talks between the guild and the county appear to be further chilling the relationship between the Sheriff’s Office and the county’s top elected leader, executive Ryan Mello.

Darby said the guild has specifically been dealing with Mello in bargaining and said the negotiations have been “difficult and disrespectful.” On Monday, Sheriff Keith Swank chimed in with his support of the guild while also calling out Mello.

“Mello does not respect the men and women of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office,” Swank wrote on his X account late Monday night. “He refuses to give them a fair contract. He thinks he can bully these warriors.”

Asked to respond to Swank’s statements, Mello told the News Tribune on Wednesday that the county’s labor-relations team would continue to focus its efforts on the bargaining process with its labor partners at the Deputy Sheriff’s Guild.

“I am disappointed that the Sheriff is making false and misleading statements about my position and bringing this collective bargaining out of the appropriate forum established by State law – which is the bargaining table,” Mello wrote in a statement to the News Tribune. “He could not be more wrong – as I have demonstrated in numerous ways and numerous times, I am relentlessly supportive of our men and women who serve in the Sheriff’s Department.”

A Pierce County spokesperson, Libby Catalinich, said Tuesday that public safety is one of Mello’s top priorities, and the current proposal to the guild includes significant pay increases – 10% over three years, according to Darby – and benefits that are competitive and sustainable.

Swank recently clashed with Mello over limits to law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, a restriction that is enshrined through the Keep Washington Working Act, a bipartisan state law passed in 2019 that determined a person’s immigration status isn’t a matter for police action.

Swank has called the law “unconstitutional.” In April he traveled to Washington, D.C. – at his own expense, according to the county – with other sheriffs from across Washington to draw attention to what he sees as a conflict between state and federal law.

“I want to apologize in advance if this contract negotiation issue is going on because the executive has a personal or political issue with me,” Swank said in a video he posted Monday. “I hope that’s not the case.”

In the video, Swank said he felt Mello was overstepping his authority by telling him what he can and can’t do. He roped in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, saying it, too, was mistaken “in their interpretation of what authority the executive has.”

Staffing levels at the Sheriff’s Office haven’t significantly increased in more than 20 years. In 2005, the office was budgeted for 228 full-time deputies among other staff, according to county budget documents. In the most recent budget, 229 deputy positions were funded.

Meanwhile, the county estimates that the Sheriff’s Office will need to respond to more than 200,000 calls for service in 2025, nearly double the amount the agency was getting in 2000. According to census data, the county’s population has grown by more than 220,000 people since that year.

“The math is right there,” Darby said. “We are underpaid, understaffed and overworked.”

Catalinich said hiring and compensating law enforcement was important to Mello, noting that he was in Olympia on Monday to attend Gov. Bob Ferguson signing a bill that increases state funding by $100 million for counties and cities to hire more officers. She said Mello spent a good amount of time in Olympia during the legislative session advocating for the bill.

“I have advocated fiercely for more and dedicated funding for law enforcement and the entire criminal justice system during the last state legislative session and will continue to do so and invite the Sheriff to do the same alongside me,” Mello told the News Tribune. “I invite him to be a partner in this work and to serve the people of Pierce County together. Not to cause division where it is completely unnecessary. I will always have the back of our law enforcement officers who serve with distinction.”

The next step in contract negotiations is a June 2 vote by the membership of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Independent Guild on the current proposal. The guild will have results June 7, and Darby said he’s expecting an overwhelming “no.”

Darby said the guild will then file for arbitration, where a third party would look at the facts and decide what will happen.

“(Residents) want their money to go toward public safety, and when they call 911, they want a deputy to show up,” Darby said.

He was referencing a survey of Pierce County residents conducted ahead of the county’s 2024-2025 budget process. It found that 73% of people who completed the survey ranked public safety and crime as the top priority for the budget, ahead of transportation and roads, homeless and housing.

Residents’ desire to prioritize putting public dollars toward public safety is reflected in the county’s most recent budget, which allocated more than $226 million to the Sheriff’s Office’s law enforcement work, a nearly 11% increase over the previous biennium and representing about a quarter of the county’s $896 million budget.

A supplemental budget approved in December included an additional $2.6 million for employment incentives for commissioned law enforcement officers and corrections officers.

Darby pointed to the Sheriff’s Office’s delayed response to a noise complaint earlier this year that preceded a shooting outside a house party in the Spanaway area as one potential consequence of not having enough deputies to respond to calls.

A noise complaint about the party was called in about 90 minutes before the shooting, but deputies in the area were responding to higher-priority calls and eventually arrived seconds before gunshots were fired. Two people were killed in the shooting, and four others were injured.

The deputies’ guild claims Pierce County has the money to approve bigger wage increases but is holding out on them.

An analysis of the county’s current and future financial outlook commissioned by the guild found that the county’s general fund revenues exceeded expenditures in four of the five most recent years, resulting in an annual operating surplus that was $14.8 million in fiscal year 2023. It also found the county had the highest possible credit rating from Moody’s, a major credit rating agency.

“The county is, they’re flush with money,” Darby said. “They have a lot of money, and they have a very good financial outlook. If they simply could prove that they didn’t have the money then I would listen to them, but we’ve just proven the argument.”

In response to questions from the News Tribune, a Pierce County spokesperson pointed out that the guild has received wage increases during previous rounds of negotiations, totaling a nearly 19% wage increase since 2022.

The county also said it was important to clarify that compensation comparisons to smaller cities such as Bonney Lake and Gig Harbor don’t accurately reflect the operational scale, staffing demands or financial realities of a countywide sheriff’s office.

Darby said the county is saying deputies are being paid just fine when compared to sheriff’s offices in Spokane, Snohomish and Skagit counties, as well as some sheriff’s offices in Florida.

But he argues that if you disregard the city and county divide and instead look at demographics, crime stats and staffing, the Sheriff’s Office is a mirror image of the Tacoma Police Department, with the exception of the much larger area the Sheriff’s Office is responsible for.

An entry-level deputy starting at the Sheriff’s Office in 2024 would receive net hourly pay of $59.45, according to the guild. In Tacoma, the same entry-level candidate would be getting $69.80.

The Tacoma police union’s collective bargaining agreement with the city, which covers 2024 to 2026, included a 13.5% base wage rate increase over the first two years and an additional raise in 2026 based on a market calculation.

“There is no reason to work for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office on the south side of 96th Street when you can make 30% more and have twice as many officers there to help you when you’re working on the north side of 96th Street, which is the Tacoma Police Department’s jurisdiction,” Darby said.