McCormick sums up over 30 years service

RITZVILLE - The city's recently retired police chief has reflected on his 32 years of service to the city, and it might have been something like having your hands tied.

He seems of the opinion recent changes in law have not done anyone a favor.

"Crimes are fueled by drugs," McCormick said, "whether it's theft, the assaults, any type of crime is, in my opinion, multiplied several times by the need for drugs and the money that the drugs chase."

He said fentanyl seems to be the present drug of choice.

"The reason is because it's available and it's a lot more affordable," McCormick said. "It started if you caught somebody with a couple joints of marijuana, you wrote them a ticket and you booked them into jail.

"Now, you're not going to jail for possession of marijuana, misdemeanor-wise, because it isn't even a crime anymore. In the state of Washington, you can get a medical certificate and grow it.

"There wasn't any of that when I started. The changes in the law that the legislature and the governor have pushed through hinder the law enforcement's ability to do their job.

"The police reforms that took place in 2022 seriously hindered the law enforcement officer, but the pendulum is slowly turning back the other way."

McCormick said when marijuana was decriminalized, "then the legislature made changes for possession of methamphetamine, opioids and heroin, to the point where, if you had small amounts, you were exempt from prosecution."

He said counties had to enact their own laws to charge those crimes under misdemeanor statutes," because the states changed those laws so they were no longer felonies unless it was a larger amount."

McCormick said that change signaled people, "It's okay to go out and have meth and use it, and fentanyl and opioids, and the cops can't do anything about it because the legislature and the governor chose to decriminalize it." He could see how those changes affected morale of law officers.

"It's the legislature that did it," McCormick said. "And the morale is, it sinks you because, like in my case, for years, the majority of my entire career, they were crimes, and they were prosecuted and the jails would accept them. But then it's like they are no longer crimes. What does that do to your morale? All the things you work for all those years to put bad people doing bad things in prison as narcotics were concerned, it's no longer illegal and nobody's going to prosecute them."

As frustrating as the experience was for officers, McCormick said he knows of only one case where an officer became disillusioned enough to quit the force.

"Law enforcement officers used to be held in high regard," McCormick said, "and then a few years ago, a few stupid police officers did really stupid things, and it gave all law enforcement officers a bad name, and then they changed the laws as a reaction to what a few officers did. With the State Patrol, I think it was 300 or 350 troopers quit. A lot of officers that had time in could retire,"

McCormick is one of more than a few spokesmen in Adams County who regret the county jail is closed.

"This limits our ability and hinders us in doing our jobs," he said. "We're working in a different way, dealing with investigations with what's on paper, writing reports and writing tickets and sending them off to the prosecutor. We've not been able to arrest people and put them in jail, only for felony cases, domestic violence assaults or crimes, which are mandatory arrests in the state, and sometimes a misdemeanor assault, if it's severe enough."

McCormick said there is a percentage of people who are, "out there committing these crimes, misdemeanor crimes, and when we used to tell people, when we dealt with them, 'You keep doing this, we're going to book you into jail.' You can't tell them that anymore, because they know it's not going to happen."