And this State Senator is a democrat
Sheldon to Criminals: Mason County Residents Have Guns, Will Use Them
By Josh Farley (Contact)
Friday, April 10, 2009
With more budget cuts to the local sheriff's office looming, one Mason County commissioner is reminding his constituents that when crime strikes, you should pick up your phone — and your gun.
Commissioner Tim Sheldon, tasked with trimming the county budget as sales-tax revenue plummets, said he wanted to send a message this week to criminals as he prepares to possibly send a handful of deputies home with pink slips.
"You're on notice: if you attempt a home-invasion robbery, you may be met with armed resistance," he said Friday, "and could receive a Mason County hot lead enema."
Sheldon, who is also a state senator, says he's not advocating for "roving bands of vigilantes," just issuing a reminder that his friends and neighbors in Mason County are "very well-armed, self-reliant and very comfortable with firearms."
Sheldon speculates that about half of Mason's residents own guns, and many of them are well-trained marksmen.
His comments came in response to a statement from Mason County Sheriff Casey Salisbury, whose office has been frank with residents: "Crime can be expected to increase as officers are laid off," he said in a release last week.
Sheldon called that "fear mongering."
Not all of Sheldon's constituents believe self-armament is the answer.
"It's against the law for us to take matters into our own hands," said Margie Benson, a 20-year Tahuya Peninsula resident who participates in a crime-watch group. "He's asking us to do the work of the sheriff's office."
Deputies perform a wide range of duties for a diverse population, 40-year Belfair resident Jackie Higgins said.
"We've got multimillionaires, and we've got people living up in the woods with no indoor plumbing," Higgins said. Both need deputies, he said, not just guns.
Crime is common in Benson's neck of the woods. She said she's heard there have been 18 break-ins on the south shore of the Hood Canal this year.
In south Mason County, several police agencies can respond to incidents — in addition to the Sheriff's Office, Shelton Police, two tribal police departments and the Washington State Patrol, which has a major facility in Shelton. North Mason has only the Sheriff's Office, she said.
Sheldon and his fellow commissioners, tasked with trimming the county budget by $1.1 million, will likely ask the Sheriff's Office on Tuesday to cut about $382,000. Those cuts would force the department to lay off five of its 50 commissioned officers, Salisbury has said.
The crunch is being felt everywhere. The Kitsap County commissioners are asking for its Sheriff's Office to make cuts of about four percent of its budget, or about $683,000. That will likely mean seven deputy positions will be eliminated.
The two sheriff's offices will receive some federal help, likely this fall. About $2 billion in federal stimulus money is being distributed to local police agencies. The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office is in line to receive about $367,000; Mason's office could get about $77,000.
Kitsap Sheriff Steve Boyer worries that the grant money, which may not be available until later in the year, will come after cuts are made.
Mason's sheriff's office brass, meanwhile, feel as if the new cuts are a step backward from recent progress.
Since he was elected Mason County sheriff in 2006, Salisbury has added to the force a drug-sniffing police dog, a special operations narcotics unit and a traffic unit. The traffic unit was added when the State Patrol stopped conducting collision investigations on county roads.
"Casey came in, and we got a whole bunch of stuff we'd never had before," Benson said.
Mason Sheriff's Office leaders also wonder what will happen on a reduced budget when out-of-towners come to their summer homes, a yearly phenomenon that increases the county's population to about 100,000 people in the spring and summer.
Belfair, in particular, bulges.
"We have our population like this nine months out of the year," Higgins said. "When the summer comes, we're like four times that."
This year, an added challenge will be the approximately six-week closure of the Hood Canal bridge, which deputies say will nearly double the county's traffic volume, leading to more collisions.
Higgins worries most that less police means more response time, whether to a burglary or a traffic crash.
"It's going to be a problem," she said.
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