County corrections chief receives vote of no confidence from guild. Sheriff stands by her
Pierce County’s chief of corrections overseeing the jail, Patti Jackson, has received a vote of no confidence from 150 members of the Corrections Bureau’s guild, according to its president. That is more than half of the bureau’s employees.
The vote was held March 1-8 by the Pierce County Corrections Guild, the members of which are correctional sergeants and deputies working in the jail. The tally was 150 to 14. The Corrections Bureau is budgeted for about 300 full-time employees, and according to Sheriff Ed Troyer, roughly 263 positions are filled.
Guild president Bryan Buckingham told The News Tribune that corrections deputies’ main concern is a lack of training.
All new hires undergo a 40-hour defensive-tactics class, among other training, but Buckingham said a yearly eight-hour refresher course on the topic has been replaced by a two-hour program that handles a wider range of skills. He said that means a number of deputies have gone five to six years without a defensive-tactics course.
“For our line of work, that’s pretty dangerous to be doing,” he said in a phone call Thursday. “Just like with anything, muscle memory is critical. So to be proficient in the moves, we need to keep practicing the moves.”
Guild members also are frustrated by cutbacks in the field training program, in which new hires are matched with more experienced officers to learn the job, going from shadowing veterans to working on their own over seven weeks. That program has been shortened to five weeks, Buckingham said. Other concerns include less time in firearms training, changes to hiring practices and insufficient visitation opportunities and religious services for inmates.
Jackson, who is running for Pierce County sheriff, has worked for the Sheriff’s Department since 1989. She was appointed chief of corrections by former Sheriff Paul Pastor eight years ago. Since January she’s been acting chief of patrol while Chief Micah Lundborg has been at the FBI academy.
The guild isn’t calling for Jackson’s resignation or termination. Buckingham said its members want to work through their problems with department leadership. He planned to meet with Undersheriff Brent Bomkamp on Friday afternoon to present the guild’s letter of no confidence and to talk over concerns.
If progress isn’t made, Buckingham said, the guild would take their concerns to the Pierce County Council.
“We feel that these issues are so serious and so concerning that eventually something’s going to happen,” Buckingham said. “And we just want to avoid that.”
Sheriff Troyer stood by Jackson’s leadership in a phone call with The News Tribune on Friday. He credited her with building the department’s training and self-defense room, and he said “a lot of people” have told him Jackson has always been their biggest advocate.
The sheriff said he found it ironic that the vote of no confidence came while Buckingham was president of the guild, and he was suspicious of the timing. Jackson’s campaign kick-off event is Tuesday. Buckingham is the third new guild president in two months, Troyer said, and he said Buckingham had never brought these issues to him or the undersheriff.
Buckingham has worked in Pierce County corrections for more than two decades. He said the process leading to the vote has been ongoing for at least the last year, and it was something the guild wanted to avoid.
“This isn’t something that we take lightly,” Buckingham said.
Jackson did not respond to a request for an interview.
An email Jackson sent to corrections deputies March 1 that Troyer shared with the newspaper showed that the chief told employees she and other command staff recognized the “critical need” for training and that they were thinking outside the box in the face of budget constraints and staffing limitations.
She said command staff are using the concept of “module blocks” to continue to develop a flexible training program because the direction of training is influenced by available resources and priorities.
Jackson said some had continued to insist on a traditional eight-hour block for training, but that research “proves” that quality matters more than quantity, citing the fact that participants at state law enforcement training academies attend shorter, focused classes to acquire new skills.
“My direction is and has been clear: prioritize meaningful content over arbitrary time constraints,” Jackson wrote to employees.
The chief assured correction deputies that she and other command staff are sensitive to their concerns, pointing out that a training room had been built despite roadblocks.
The Corrections Bureau has faced significant staffing shortages in recent years, a challenge that law enforcement agencies across the United States have struggled to address. In September 2022, the jail was down 95 corrections deputies in a facility budgeted for 262 employees. The result was hundreds of hours of mandatory overtime that was wearing out deputies. In April last year, Jackson gave an update to Pierce County Council showing there were 66 vacancies, and employees were still clocking extensive mandatory overtime.
The number of vacancies has now fallen to 38.
“That’s Patti,” Troyer said. “Patti’s the one that initiated, developed the new hiring process, which is working.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
