Since April 1, the King County Sheriff’s Office has been handling police services in North Bend, and Chief Ed Hall has been busy ever since. Nearly 1,600 calls for service, a growing list of community connections, and a team starting to take shape.
We caught up with Hall to find out how things are really going, what those cars with different city names on them are all about, and what residents can expect in the months ahead.
The transition to KCSO occurred earlier than originally anticipated. What led to the accelerated timeline, and did the earlier start create any staffing, training, equipment, records, operational, or resource challenges?
There were specific decisions made throughout the summer as they negotiated to figure out when we end and when we start. My understanding of it was that the original contract was to run through November of this year, 2026. So it was cut short by April 2026. One thing I knew when I got interested in interviewing for the spot was that North Bend had a resource that literally laid out the process, by date, by meeting, by document.
Everything I was able to access told me the date a decision was made, the documents related to that decision, links to the meetings and public forums, and that everything available was out there. There was no question in my mind about how it went down and what the process was.
We were also given sufficient time to come up with a game plan for April 1st for the changeover. Between the King County Sheriff’s Office and the city, we came up with an interlocal agreement, an ILA, on how we would proceed between April, December, and January of 2027.
I knew the annex was being built out and that we would need to work on the outlet mall lease. So there’s nothing operationally that has been a hurdle, because I already knew what it was coming into it. So some of that stuff would not have been finished, but that doesn’t matter operationally. They already made accommodations for that gap.
How many deputies are currently assigned to North Bend, and how many will there be?
Right now, it’s just me, but there will be ten officers and one full-time detective. I already have my detective picked, and he’ll be coming over first of the year. Hopefully, after FIFA and all the staffing requirements the county has for that, we’ll start getting people. That’s not a guarantee, but I’m hoping. But we are staffed at the agreed-upon level.
We call it the flex model between now and January. Deputies from unincorporated King County and officers from other King County contracts are filling overtime shifts in North Bend. Which was expected and planned.
Can you explain that a little bit? So some of the social media posts I’ve been seeing are from people saying, “Well, I’m seeing them, but they’re not from here.” So they see a Sammamish officer, and they ask, “Oh, is Sammamish paying for that?” or “Are we paying for that?”
It’s overtime. For instance, the Sammamish officer who was here a couple of weeks ago was invited because that’s the new detective who’s coming to work for North Bend. So he was out to meet the community, the people he would be serving for the next several years.
It’s Chad Ridout. He was a Snoqualmie police officer. He’s a really good person. His wife is a business owner in the valley; they are a local family.
I’m hoping to get him early, but January 1st or possibly soon. Probably, but no guarantees. That’s why he was here: to meet the people at my invitation. He wasn’t working on Sammamish’s dime, so to speak. He’s a Sammamish officer who came up here for a couple of hours to have coffee, and then he had to go back to work at Sammamish.
So, the other ones we see with different city names on their cars are the same?
They’re overtime. Correct. So right now, I’m the only one with a North Bend police car and a North Bend police uniform. You’ll see a Metro car, a Sound Transit car, Kenmore, Sammamish, Shoreline, SeaTac, any of those cities. I think a lot of the confusion is that there’s one dedicated car in North Bend 24-7, but the district cars, like the Charlie One cars, will come in here and just hang out, run traffic or come to calls and help us out. So you’ll see two or three or sometimes four King County cars in North Bend.
Then the unincorporated cars will get a call, like up at Wilderness Rim or have to go up to Snoqualmie Pass or something like that, and then they leave town. And I think the perception is that the North Bend dedicated deputy is leaving town, and that’s not the case.
It’s the unincorporated car that is already assigned to the district leaving.
The only time a North Bend car will leave is if it’s a priority call, or we will often times go to things that are right on the border, like if it’s across the street from North Bend city limits. We’re not going to just ignore it. We’re going to go to that. But we’re not driving out of district 15, 20 miles to back up to Charlie unincorporated cars, like low-level stuff.
Does North Bend pay additional costs when deputies from other cities are used? So, we are paying them overtime, and is it more than we normally would?
No, the ILA for the flex model was already factored into the costs for the budget year. The only time North Bend would pay extra overtime is if one of them had to stay late, if I had to stay late, or if we went out to a special community event that required extra staffing. But the 24-7 officer in North Bend is a flat rate that will not change.
Do you know how many calls you’ve handled since April 1st?
As of me leaving my office 10 minutes ago (June 16, 2026, 1130 am), it was 1,597. I knew you were asking, so I checked. It was 1,596 until about 10 minutes ago.
Have you been able to meet the service levels and response time expectations?
The thing with response times is that there was never like a targeted time that I’m aware of. So one thing: when you’re checking records for, like, response times, there are disparities because of the way our system works in King County.
We have an option, which we call stacking calls. So if I’m at a shoplift and I’m taking a 50-minute statement from someone, and another call comes in that’s not a priority, like another theft or a suspicious person across town, I will tell the radio, stack that to me, meaning I’ll pick it up as soon as I’m done with this call.
So there might be a time delay from when it was dispatched to me, say it was dispatched at noon, but it took me 15 minutes to get my statement done, it took me another 15 minutes to reach the car and drive across town. That might show a half-hour response time.
Right, so if it’s like shoplifting but you’re at an assault call, you’re obviously going to handle the assault call first, then go to the shoplifting one.
Another thing it doesn’t show is whether someone calls up and says, “I want to talk to a police officer about my car being prowled.” We often will call them on the phone first.
The initial contact may be a minute or two, but they may say, “No, please come up to my house. I think I have some evidence.” It might be a 15-minute drive, and it’ll show a 25-minute response time because that’s when we arrive on scene. That doesn’t mean we haven’t made contact and already talked to the person who’s calling in.
Another example is that we had someone call up who wanted to report something serious. So we called them back immediately and said, “We’re on our way.” They said, “I don’t feel comfortable meeting at my home.”
So we met somewhere else within 40 minutes (at the caller’s request). Well, that will show that it took us 45 minutes to get to the call. When it didn’t, the initial call was maybe within a minute or two. “It took 45 minutes to get there!” No, we actually made contact within a minute, and 45 minutes was when they were available for us to come see them.
Before the transition, residents were told they could expect increased transparency and more trackable public safety data. What information is currently available to the public, and are there plans to release regular statistics (aka a police blotter) on calls for service, response times, traffic enforcement, and officer activity?
Right now, it’s tough for me to go in and look at the stats and farm all the data, but once I get people, that’s something I’d be happy to do.
If you go to the King County Sheriff’s Office webpage, there are links to every one of our contracts, and a hyperlink to all of our statistics for the month. You can go back more than a month, but the calls that are on there, there’s a heat map that will show you where the hotspots are, where all the calls are generating from. The only calls we don’t put in there are those that involve sensitive information or are still under investigation. But things like simple stuff, like car prowls or vehicle thefts, are there.
When a North Bend deputy responds outside the city, what procedures are in place to ensure coverage remains available within North Bend?
For instance, one of my deputies was going to get gas or something, but the Pacific Pride pump wasn’t working, so he had to go to Fall City instead. He arranged his absence with the two district cars, and they came in to cover North Bend while he was getting gas. So, you’re still getting your coverage, and one of the benefits of contracting with the sheriff’s office is that we can pull in other resources.
Say we need to transport someone to jail. If North Bend makes an arrest, they have to drive to the jail, whether it be Issaquah, Score, down in SeaTac, or all the way out to King County Jail, and we can pull in an unincorporated car to cover the city at the time.
How many of those are around, generally?
A minimum of two. That’s east of North Bend, and then we have the valley cars, we call them, that serve all the way from Fall City out towards Duvall. And if it were an extreme situation, we’d bring one of them up here.
So there are quite a few here in the Valley?
Yeah, there are five or six.
What is the status of the outlet mall office?
When one of the brilliant strokes of Snoqualmie. It was the mayor (Mary Miller) who actually pushed for that and got it there. The crime drop was about 36% over a month once that was in there. The status, as far as I know, is that we’re working on the lease. So it’s just a matter of getting it signed. And it’s all set up already.
What about the annex?
The annex is, I’m really excited about that because we finally got the contractors in there two weeks ago, and they’re moving at lightning speed. Like all the walls are up, all the infrastructure is in there. It’s just a matter of finishing off the paint and the finishing work. And then we’re waiting on our doors. We had to upgrade many of the doors to steel locks.
So just waiting on the doors, and I think it’s pretty much close to being finished.
What kinds of traffic concerns are residents bringing? Are they talking about the tourists/weekend hikers?
I would say one of the biggest impacts is construction on the state highways, which we don’t have control over. And we’re kind of victims of technology. All of the map systems are routing people through North Bend and through neighborhoods because they go by the quickest commute time.
I would say the second most is probably people who are coming up on traffic circles, pedestrians, and they’re just walking right out without taking a breath and kind of waiting to make sure they’re making eye contact and the cars can see them.
What other concerns do residents have?
Honestly, e-bikes are the one thing I hear about the most. Just educating parents, letting them know that they are not toys. For instance, an e-motorcycle still needs to be licensed, have lights, mirrors and license plates and be registered with the state. The kid needs to have a motorcycle endorsement, all that. You have to be 16 to operate a motorcycle.
So what were the 1,500+ calls?
Shoplifting, and a lot of that is just self-initiated activities. My deputies are out making contacts with people, welfare checks on people sleeping under the bridges, things like that. A lot of traffic stops. Some juvenile issues. We had some kids up on top of one of the bars last weekend who were yelling at people and urinating on the roof.
Did anything surprise you since you started? Or were you all prepared for it? Anything you didn’t expect?
Not really. No. I knew the area. I think the biggest surprise for me came from the other city contracts: the sense of community out here. So a lot of people move into a community, they call it a bedroom community because that’s where they sleep; they go to work all day, and they don’t even know their neighbors. In North Bend, it’s like everybody is involved and knows everybody.
It’s really neat that people who have only been here six months are already part of the community. They’re going to breweries, restaurants and live shows, getting to know people and becoming part of these groups.
I’m assuming people know you, too. Have you been in the area your whole life?
I lived in Sammamish for a few years.But pretty much my whole life. From when I was born to now. North Bend, and now I’m in Fall City.
Okay, looking back, April 1st was when you started, so it hasn’t been that long. What has gone well? Has there been anything challenging?
So the biggest challenge right now is staffing. That has nothing to do with the contract. It’s just we’re coming into summer, so we have a lot of vacations. We’re coming into the holidays.
The World Cup has been drawing significant resources, especially from law enforcement and first responders, as we prepare for the worst-case scenario. We have a lot of people out there working on that. So it’s hard to get people out here in overtime right now.
As far as what’s gone well is how quickly we’ve made those connections with the community and how many leaders throughout the community, business owners, city districts, everybody has reached out to me. Anything that I could think of, like if I were to make a checklist of people I need to get to know, they’ve already reached out to me. So it’s pretty neat. It hasn’t taken much effort on my part. It’s just been a lot of time.
I think it’s probably a product of before it kind of felt like it was Snoqualmie, and they were here, but it was Snoqualmie.
Exactly. And so now it’s their own, and they feel more connected to them. I have three, four or five deputies on my list of people who will come here, and they know they’re coming here, so they’re already building those relationships, doing the good work and getting to know people.
Is Gomez coming? I saw the social media post about him. Helping the little girl on the bike? It was so cute.
That’s the work he’s doing. He’s doing really good work with the kids. He’s gotten many call-outs recently. He’s meeting all the business owners. He’s going to Trail Youth and meeting the kids. And he’s a tough-love kind of guy, so he’s doing things with the kids on the e-bikes where he’s like, “I can write you a ticket, or you can write me an essay.” And the kids are writing essays about seeing him.
But we were at coffee this morning, and some kid walked in, came running over to them, and he’s like, “Officer Gomez,” and gave them a big high-five and stuff. So people are getting to know us. It’s pretty cool.
What would you like residents to know about the transition?
How thankful I am. The Interim Chief, Gary, over at Snoqualmie really laid the groundwork for me. The relationship with the police department was already really strong, and I think that legacy is something I want to continue in my connection with the community.
The big thing is just how much the community has welcomed me and made my life easier by being willing participants. Instead of pushing back and being negative about everything or looking for fault in everything we’re doing.
Thank you Chief Hall for taking the time to answer questions and provide an update on where things stand today!
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos courtesy of the City of North Bend]
