The King County Auditor’s Office is conducting two audits of the King County Sheriff’s Office—one of KCSO’s response to calls for service and the other more specifically focused on KCSO traffic enforcement. For the purposes of our work, a call for service is any time a KCSO officer or officers respond to a 9-1-1 call or initiate an interaction with the public. Examples can include area checks in local parks, visiting a business whose alarm is going off, or responding to a domestic violence call. Traffic enforcement stops are interactions that begin based on a person being stopped for an alleged traffic violation, such as speeding or reckless driving. For this work, we are conducting detailed analysis of KCSO data and gathering information from other jurisdictions about emerging practices and new models of service in these areas. We will use this information to develop a public report that will include the results of our analyses and recommendations for KCSO and King County.

Your input will be completely anonymous and will be used to help inform our data analysis and our exploration of other models for providing services.

KCSO serves all unincorporated areas of King County as well as twelve contract cities (Town of Beaux Arts Village, Burien, Carnation, Covington, Kenmore, Maple Valley, Newcastle, Sammamish, SeaTac, Shoreline, Town of Skykomish, and Woodinville). The KCSO also provides police departments for the Muckleshoot Tribe, Metro Transit, and the King County International Airport.

The King County Auditor’s Office is an independent agency within the legislative branch of King County. The King County Auditor’s Office at King County takes its commitment to equity and social justice seriously, developing and launching research questions that aim to improve the County’s efficacy and help dismantle systemic racism. In analysis we strive to ensure that communities referenced are seen, not erased. We promote aligning King County data collection, storage, and categorization with just practices.