Staffing is PO police department’s primary concern in 2026

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 13, 2026

“Staffing is our number one priority,” Port Orchard police chief Matt Brown said, heading into the new year. “As we continue to get busier, we don’t want to fall behind.”

Other key projects for the police department in 2026 include creating traffic and proactive units and developing a dashboard for its website to highlight crime hotspots in the city, the chief noted.

Currently, the Port Orchard Police Department has funding for 28 full-time commissioned officers but has four open positions, per Brown.

“We want to get our staffing numbers up,” Brown said. “Staffing has been a big deal for the last few years.”

The department lost a significant number of officers via retirement in recent years. “We had a large cadre of officers that had started in the late ’90s, early 2000s, and it was just their time to retire,” he said. The exodus resulted in a mass of new hires.

“About 60% of our staff have been hired in the last five years,” Brown reported.

To beef up the force, the department faces the same obstacles as other Kitsap County police agencies.

“We have got to continue to work on our applicant pool. Officers on our recruitment team go to job fairs. We also try to pump a lot of stuff out on social media, so when people look at it, they’re like, ‘Hey, that’s a place I want to work.’”

POPD faces competition to attract new recruits, Brown said.

“It’s a little difficult here in Kitsap. Along the I-5 corridor, police departments in King, Snohomish and Pierce Counties pay a lot more. Also, all of (the police agencies) in Kitsap County are competing for the same applicant pool. We all work really, really well in this region, but honestly, we all have open positions and compete for applicants,” he said.

Asked about his confidence level to be able to fill the open positions, chief Brown replied, “I’m hopeful. It’s always a challenge. You know, we made a commitment years ago that we would only bring the right people on. We aren’t just looking to fill slots. Our goal is to hire people that stay with us.”

Traffic, proactive enforcement

Once the department can increase its workforce, Brown plans to form two new units – one to deal with traffic and another to do proactive policing.

The two-person traffic unit will focus on speed enforcement, DUIs and collisions, Brown said. It will free up those on patrol to focus on responding to 911 calls, he explained.

Officers in the traffic unit will undergo special training to deal with serious accidents.

“All officers are trained for basic collision investigation. But if there’s a fatality or significant injury, that involves a lot more training to address. You have got to map things out. There’s a lot of math and additional training. It starts becoming more specialized,” Brown said.

The traffic unit will complement major accident investigation work done by the Kitsap Interagency Traffic Team (KITT).

The proactive police unit will also be a two-person team and will be assigned to deal with specific public safety problems around the city.

“If we’re having a lot of commercial burglaries and theft, they can focus on that. If we have an area where we notice a lot of stolen vehicles being dumped, they can focus on that area and identify the people that are dropping off stolen cars. During the summertime, we have an increase in the unhoused downtown. (The team) and work to identify those people that want services so that we aren’t having people sleep around downtown,” Brown said.

Unlike cops on routine patrol, members of the two special units will work on their special assignments, rather than having to drop what they are doing to respond to 911 calls.

Brown could not say when the two units will form, as that depends on when the department will be able to hire additional officers.

Dashboard

The department plans to post a dashboard on its website to allow residents to see where criminal activity is taking place. The dashboard will display information, such as frequency of shoplifts or stolen vehicles. Data from Kitsap 911 and POPD’s records will be used to create the visual.

“This will help us identify trends. It will also be able to provide the public with an ongoing update of what’s happening,” Brown said.

The data dashboard is expected to roll out during the first quarter of the year.

The department also plans to expand the “Coffee with a Cop” program, where officers meet with members of the public in an informal setting to discuss their concerns. This year, a new session titled “Coffee with the Chief” will be added.

Officer wellness will continue to be emphasized during 2026, he noted.

Officers are provided six sessions per year with a psychologist who works specifically with first responders. Last year, the administration installed a gym for officers to use following their shift. “We are really trying to focus on keeping people healthy. This work can be very difficult. We want people to be healthy for the long term,” Brown said.

Finally, a long-term goal of Brown is to have the city council fund a staffing study of the department. This would involve having an outside expert review local crime trends and expected population changes, then forecast personnel needs of the force for the next five to 10 years. The chief believes the study will assist city officials in planning for the expected growth of the police department.