An Alco-Sensor Field Sobriety tester is seen at the Centralia Police Department.
While the Centralia Police Department has previously touted the unprecedented success of its 24/7 Sobriety program, Chief Carl Nielsen announced Tuesday the department would opt out of the state pilot program at the end of the month.
“We all… truly believe it’s a great program,” he said.
The department just can’t afford it, Nielsen told The Chronicle.
The pilot program was organized by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs and was written into the Revised Code of Washington by the state Legislature.
Participants in the program, all of whom have been arrested for drunken driving, must check in at the police department to test their blood-alcohol level each day. Participants can test positive for alcohol use five times before facing a mandatory one-year sentence in jail.
Increased scrutiny of Centralia’s program revealed that if all 25 participants failed at the same time, the police department could be on the hook for $500,000 in jail costs — 10 percent of its annual budget, Nielsen said.
However, Nielsen said the department plans to introduce a nearly identical “Safe and Sober” program.
The new program will mirror the 24/7 program, without the strict sentencing requirements. In addition to saving the department money, it will allow judges more flexibility, he said.
If the new program is successful, the police department and WASPC hope to use it to convince legislators to remove the mandatory sentencing requirements from the statutes governing 24/7, and to eventually rejoin the program.
“We’re trying to help the Legislature see what a different blueprint would look like,” said Sgt. Stacy Denham, 24/7 program administrator for the Centralia Police Department. “The whole idea is to change their life … not warehouse them in a jail.”
At first, Centralia’s 24/7 program seemed to be phenomenally successful. The department began working with WASPC in 2013 and launched it’s 24/7 Sobriety program in March 2014.
While other jurisdictions had trouble sustaining it, Centralia built a program with about 25 participants and support from other branches of the judicial system.
“In other jurisdictions, they didn’t have the buy-in across the board,” said Jamie Yoder, member outreach and programs manager for WASPC.
Nielsen said he was thrilled with the reported 98 percent to 99 percent success rate of the program when he took over as chief in June, but said those numbers didn’t hold up to closer inspection.
“Once I started digging in … it didn’t appear like we were following the statutes,” he said.
Participants in the program are required to check in at the police station and have their blood-alcohol levels checked twice daily. They also must pay fees to remain enrolled. The program is a condition of release from jail, both pre- and post-conviction, imposed on qualifying DUI offenders in Centralia Municipal Court.
For a first violation, they get a written warning. A second violation will result in a two-day jail sentence. A third violation results in a five-day sentence, and a fourth a 10-day jail stay. Pre-conviction participants are remanded to jail until their case is resolved after a fifth violation, and post-conviction participants serve the remainder of their sentence — a full year in jail.
“We’re trying to break that cycle of chemical dependency,” Nielsen said. “If they come in and blow hot — they have alcohol in their system — there’s a swift action that happens.”
Nielsen said he found that some of the fees associated with the program were not being collected and that some people enrolled in the program were being improperly excused from testing.
“There were certain allowances being made that the court didn’t know about,” Nielsen said.
The department brought the program back to compliance with state law and put it under the Denham’s management this summer.
Commander James Rich, who is now a sergeant, was formerly in charge of the program. The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office assisted the Centralia Police Department in investigating the alleged violations of the statutes under Rich’s management. The results of that investigation have not yet been released.
After bringing the program into compliance, the department got another shock — this time to its budget.
Four people have failed the program in the past year and are in custody at the jail. A fifth failure has an arrest warrant, Nielsen said.
The Centralia Police Department has to pay the jail costs of those inmates, at a cost of about $20,000 per inmate per year, which instantly put a $100,000 dent in the department’s budget, Nielsen said.
He soon realized that if every participant failed, the department would be liable for $500,000 in jail costs. Nielsen said the department simply cannot afford that liability.
The city will opt out of the pilot program effective at the end of November and will schedule a special court date for participants and their attorneys to meet with a judge and discuss their next steps.
They will have the option to transition into the new “Safe and Sober” program, which will have the same structure as the 24/7 program, but without the mandatory sentencing requirement for fifth-time violators.
“It’s going to give the judges a lot more discretion on how long that person could stay in jail,” Denham said. “This is a program that is designed to changes lives. We see the lives that it’s changing and changing for the better.”
