August 26, 2025

Greetings, Kitsap County citizens,

I am honored to serve as your Kitsap County Sheriff and proud to work with the talented and dedicated men and women of the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office.   We work hard to build strong relationships with our various communities and strive to be both transparent and accountable.  

As we come to the end of the summer of 2025, we have certainly had a very dynamic year with a great number of accomplishments and challenges.   Our members model our agency's values of teamwork, integrity, and professionalism, and their daily work demonstrates this.  They go above and beyond and try to provide the level of services you would expect from your Sheriff's Office.  Feedback from our community and community partners is positive, and we are very lucky to have such a supportive community.  

The last few years have been very dynamic and challenging.   The pandemic had major and ongoing impacts.   We have also had historic staffing turnover occurring over the last four years.   We have also absorbed the significant police reform efforts that have occurred and are still coming.  We have gone through profound changes and challenges. Our members stay dedicated to adapting and moving forward. They are committed to our community and ask that they be given the proper tools to do their jobs.

Crime rates have been in flux in the last several years as well.   Crime numbers increased substantially in 2022 and 2023, but many have moderated slightly in 2024.  Our website provides ongoing crime statistics.    Areas of concern include the number of violent crimes we are seeing in serious assaults, robberies, and domestic violence, and we have seen youth and young adults committing crimes with weapons in higher numbers.  Additionally, the high number of impaired driving cases, together with more reports of reckless and negligent driving, has led to a higher number of collisions, serious collisions, and fatal collisions recently.

In addition to our efforts in our core business of providing 9-1-1 response and addressing crime through our patrol and detectives' efforts, we continue to provide outreach and education, and those have been significant in 2024 and 2025 as we have attended more community meetings.  We held outreach and education events and have partnered with many different groups to build connections, share information, and work closely with our community. Our social media efforts are strong and informative, and building connections.

Looking forward, staffing and resources are a major concern.   Currently, Washington State ranks 50 out of 50 states for officers per 1,000 population.   The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office ranks near the bottom of Washington State agencies when considering the same ratio.  The national average is 2.5 officers per 1,000, the Washington State average is 1.5, and Kitsap County measures 0.67.   We struggle now in providing services in the areas of drug, human, and sex trafficking, with our multi-agency drug task force now disbanded due to a lack of staffing.  Our patrol deputies respond to well over 1,000 calls for service a year, and our detectives carry a high case load and are not given enough time to work cases in some situations.  Kitsap County is growing, and the expectation for services has been high. Growth will have an impact on the calls for service and demand for services going forward.  Additionally, our county government faces a budget shortfall in 2026 and 2027, which could mean reducing the number of deputies and corrections officers we have now.  This means maintaining current services will be challenging, and there is no plan to expand our agency as our community grows. 

I look forward to providing our citizens with a level of service to meet their expectations and working with them to reach our shared goals and address our challenges.  

Thank you for your support of the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff John Gese