Sheriff's Mountain Detachment moving closer to new HQ

The Pierce County Sheriff's Department's Mountain Detachment currently works out of the basement of Eatonville City Hall. That's despite serving the third-highest population among the law enforcement agency's divisions. The detachment patrols the sprawling 700 square miles of mostly rural southeastern Pierce County.

A previous county biennial budget allocated $4.8 million from real estate excise taxes for building a new Foothills Detachment precinct, although a location has yet to be determined.

Gus Garcia, construction project manager, told the Pierce County Public Safety Committee on Monday that county officials have “been on a journey to find what the overall needs are.”

He went on to say, “We quickly got to a point in which we realized that our dream facility was probably not within our financial grasp, and so we spent a fair amount of time [defining] what are must-haves for the Mountain Detachment."

Potential locations for the new facility include somewhere within the Town of Eatonville, just outside Eatonville along Highway 7, or along Highway State Route 161.

An executive session is planned to further discuss the potential locations for the new facility.

The Pierce County Sheriff's Department’s Mountain Detachment was budgeted approximately $9 million in the 2024-2025 biennial budget.

The Pierce County Sheriff Department’s Mountain Detachment consists of two sergeants with one assigned to a day shift and the other assigned to a night shift, 18 total deputies with a minimum of two on duty for each shift, and one investigator.

The detachment serves 46,421 people. However, the Mountain Detachment only has 0.49 officers per 1,000 resident, which is below state and national averages, according to a presentation to the Pierce County Public Safety Committee.

According to Lt. Frank Brown, the Mountain Detachment’s six most frequent calls in 2023 were welfare checks, citizen assists, domestic violence incidents, suspicious persons and vehicles, information contacts, and motor vehicle collisions.