GCSO candidates speak at Realtors association
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 1 month AGO
Grant County Sheriff candidates Joe Harris, left, and Joey Kriete address a meeting of the Moses Lake-Othello Association of Realtors Thursday.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | September 2, 2022 1:25 AM
MOSES LAKE — Grant County Sheriff candidates Joey Kriete and Joe Harris addressed a meeting of the Moses Lake-Othello Association of Realtors on Thursday, covering a range of topics including drugs and theft, as well as administrative and structural ideas for improving the function of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.
Realtor Tara Zerbo introduced the two candidates to an audience of 25 people over lunch at the Porterhouse in Moses Lake. Each candidate spoke for about 15 minutes, then the two fielded questions from the audience. Both discussed their history in law enforcement and agreed that more deputies are needed to cover Grant County as it continues to grow.
Kriete spoke first, introducing himself and running through his history with law enforcement and the Grant County Sheriff’s Office. He emphasized the county’s struggle with illicit drugs.
“The biggest problem is, right now, there's a lot of drugs, and they're easy to get by the cost,” Kriete said. “Years ago, if you wanted to buy a pound of methamphetamine, it was gonna cost you anywhere between probably $10,000 and $20,000. You can get it now for a thousand bucks. That's how much of it’s out there. Fentanyl pills - you've read about fentanyl - how deadly it is. 10 bucks a pop. Because there's so much out there, and that's the scary part for law enforcement is that we have so much of this stuff coming across the border. I just don't think that we're doing enough to deal with the problem.”
What local law enforcement has been doing so far isn’t working, he said, adding that many other crimes grow out of drug use.
“If we don't start coming up with a better plan, to deal with the core problem, it's never gonna go away,” he said. “We're always gonna have a problem with assaults, shootings, and all the stuff that's driven by this addiction that's out there.”
Along with a rundown of his own experience, Harris spoke about the logistics of policing a largely rural county, pointing out that in some areas a call for police can result in a wait of as much as two hours.
“The sheriff's office is based in Ephrata. That's where everything is at, and when I worked for the sheriff's office, I worked at the south district most of the time, but my main office was in Ephrata. So, if I went down to Mattawa to do something - take a burglary call and collect evidence or whatever - and drive all the way back to Ephrata to process that evidence and then drive all the way back down to Mattawa. And it never fails, you're pulling right into Ephrata I've just driven an hour up from Mattawa. Now I gotta call in Royal Camp, a priority call I can't just set off to the side. So now, I'm running from Ephrata to Mattawa, from Mattawa to Ephrata, and now I gotta go to Royal Camp.”
Harris suggested putting GCSO precincts in smaller towns like George and Coulee City for deputies to work from as a means of mitigating travel and response times.
One thing both candidates agreed on was the need for more deputies. One audience member asked about abandoned vehicles and the difficulty in getting them removed. Harris explained that the utility officers who handle such calls are stretched thin.
“If you call a utility officer, a utility officer shows up, you're now expecting something to happen that doesn't happen,” he said. “Now, that's not the fault of the utility officer, but because there's (only) two of them for the entire county.”
Kriete agreed.
“If we had about 100 extra deputies on the road, then we could be everywhere at once, but we can’t be everywhere at once, and we sure as heck can’t do it alone,” Kriete said.
Joel Martin may be reached at [email protected].
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
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MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
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