Thurston County extends recruitment incentives program for sheriff’s office after successful start

After a successful start to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office’s (TCSO) pilot recruitment incentive program, the Thurston County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday voted to extend the program for lateral deputy sheriffs and corrections deputies.

The extension of the program, which will now run through Oct. 31, includes an amendment that discontinues a hiring bonus component and continues the ability for the agency to award 40 hours of vacation and 40 hours of sick leave to new lateral candidates upon hire. It also will award TCSO employees 40 hours of incentive leave if they refer, and the agency subsequently hires, a lateral candidate.

Sheriff Derek Sanders told the commissioners during their Tuesday business meeting that the program creates cost savings in hiring laterals because new hires don’t have to attend the police academy and they have a condensed training phase compared to entry-level hires.
“Patrol is a little bit longer, but for a patrol deputy, it’s about 14 months before they start contributing to being a totally solo patrol deputy. For a lateral, it’s about four weeks,” Sanders said. “A lateral basically saved about $63,000 in a rolling 12-month period when you account for overtime, training, benefits, and all those types of things that we’re paying to keep the agency up and running.”

From 2021 to 2024, TCSO did not hire a single lateral applicant, according to Sanders. Since the implementation of the incentive program, the agency has received 59 lateral applications on the patrol side with 22 hires. In 2023, TCSO hired 15 entry-level patrol deputies without a lateral before bringing on 11 lateral patrol deputies in 2024 and seven nearly halfway through 2025. The corrections side, which still has about 20 vacancies, has hired two lateral deputies out of 25 qualified applicants.

Sanders said the program has helped make Thurston County Sheriff’s Office a desirable agency to work and to apply for.

“It was indicative of the successes we’ve had as an agency that other officers and deputies across the country, reaching as far as Boston and Alaska, are now applying with our office,” he said.

Maria Aponte, county human resources director, told the commissioners during a June 10 agenda-setting meeting that since Jan. 2-24, 14 patrol referrals, resulting in eight employees being eligible for leave incentive hours, and one corrections referral have occurred.

Sanders explained the decision to remove the cash bonus from the incentive program during the June 10 meeting. He said the recruitment incentives for employees are rare in government.

“What we’re asking for now is to get rid of the cash bonus that was helpful for the time being and keep the things that aren’t costing us the actual cash bonus money. So these are just normal leave incentives,” he said.

Commissioner Emily Clouse asked Aponte and Sanders about the possibility of bringing in similar incentive programs, particularly with rewarding recruiting, to other county departments. Due to the onboarding process and training involved with the sheriff’s office compared to other offices, Commissioners Tye Menser and Wayne Fournier explained, the sheriff’s office and the costs it accrues stand alone.

“There were specific reasons why we granted this to the sheriff’s office. One was because of all the training. The financial benefit of getting a lateral in the sheriff’s context versus any other context was really significant,” Menser said. “And there was a shortage to the extent that the state legislature is creating grant programs and monetary programs. There’s been significant shortages. There are shortages in a lot of different departments. I get that. But there were some special reasons why we did something [for the sheriff’s office] that I think are more valid.”

Sanders added that, while he believes incentive programs for other departments is a good idea, there is “no agency probably within Thurston County that’s more expensive to run that kind of program” than TCSO because of the nature of its 24/7 minimum staffing levels.