During the Mossyrock City Council’s regular monthly meeting on May 21, Morton Police Chief Cole Cournyer provided a law enforcement update and touched on a number of issues, the main one being an ongoing staffing shortage.
He also introduced the Morton Police Department’s newest officer, Jessica Stevens.
“She is our new hire. Graduated from the academy last week and began in-the-car training … with me yesterday,” Cournyer said.
Cournyer added his department is in the process of hiring a lateral transfer from the Lakewood Police Department, with the officer undergoing polygraph tests and psychological evaluations. Cournyer expected the lateral transfer to start in Morton by the first week of June.
Until the lateral transfer actually is sworn in, Cournyer and Stevens are two of only three officers currently serving in the Morton Police Department. The third is Morton Police Officer Johnny Gonzales, who came out of retirement to help Cournyer after already serving for 24 years.
The City of Mossyrock has contracted with the Morton Police Department to provide emergency response services ever since the Mossyrock Police Department was merged with Morton’s in 2014. Mossyrock could no longer afford to fund its own police department.
According to Cournyer, Morton’s budget provides enough funding to pay salaries for two officers. Mossyrock provides funding for a third. This means the Morton Police Department is considered fully staffed at only three officers, including the chief.
Cournyer has been talking with the Morton City Council about possibly increasing funding to hire an additional officer, as providing 24-hour police response between both East Lewis County cities separated by 11 miles of forests and foothills is stretching the department thin.
“I’m working with the Morton council. We’re going to be addressing this come our next budget,” Cournyer said. “We’re going to try to find a fourth (officer), some way, somehow.”
Typically, the department calls on a reserve officer to help ensure 24-hour police response is guaranteed. But their former reserve officer was Gonzales, who is now working full time again and preparing to retire once more.
With no reserve officer, the only other option is for the remaining officers to be on call even when off duty.
“We have no choice but to forfeit our weekends and be on call. If a call comes out, we will respond and take care of the call if it is a priority call,” Cournyer said. “If it is not a priority call, we do not respond, because we also have to keep in mind our budgets between the two cities of Morton and Mossyrock.”
Non-priority calls are placed on timers to be handled by the next available unit. While asking for assistance from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office is an option, it’s an expensive one. According to Cournyer, the City of Morton was recently billed $4,000 for seven call responses.
“The county is more expensive. I have talked to the sheriff. Pe Ell’s going through that right now. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think for Pe Ell, the sheriff quoted them maybe like $275,000 (per year),” Cournyer said.
Staffing shortages in departments like Morton are compounded by the fact that being a small police department means it can’t offer competitive hiring bonuses or salaries matching those officers can get in departments in bigger cities.
“There’s officers at a bigger agency, Chehalis, they’re officers, and they make more than I do as the chief,” Cournyer added. “... The only reason we might be getting one coming from Lakewood is she’s looking to get married to an individual who’s from here and lives here, which made me very happy, because we need people.”
During the law enforcement update, Cournyer also touched on response statistics for Mossyrock from April 1 to April 30. During that time, Morton police officers patrolled Mossyrock for 127 hours, with an additional eight volunteer hours reported.
A total of 44 calls were responded to over the month, with the most being general response or informational calls at 10. Suspicious circumstances or persons calls were next, with six, followed by four calls reporting theft and three involving harassment.
There were two calls each involving reports of assault, a vicious dog, a 911 hang up, trespassing, a burglar alarm response and an attempt to contact.
A single call response was made to dispatch calls of a reported dispute, an animal response, a tagged vehicle, animal abuse, DUI, accident info, littering, child rape and an agency assist.
Cournyer added that aside from looking for new recruits, he is also looking for more volunteers to assist his department. Anyone interested in volunteering with the Morton Police Department can call 360-496-6636 for more information.
