Oregon Public Broadcasting

Record high gas prices aren’t just hurting commuters and businesses. Northwest police agencies say they too are feeling the pain at the pump.

The cost of fuel is busting budgets. In one rural county in Washington, the situation is so dire, sheriff’s deputies may soon have to park their cars. Correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

At a Department of Transportation fueling station, Washington State Patrol Sergeant Freddy Williams tops off his tank.

He says because of the price of gas, troopers are being urged to use these state gas pumps – with discounted prices – whenever possible.

Freddy Williams: “Your average road troop out there during the course of an eight or a ten hour shift will fill up at least once.”

The Washington State Patrol uses on average more than a 100,000 gallons of gasoline a month. And Sgt. Williams says there’s not a lot a whole lot troopers can do to reduce their mileage.

Freddy Williams: “We can’t do foot patrols. We have to be out driving.”

Costs have gone up so much, the Patrol had to ask the legislature this year for an additional $700,000 to cover fuel costs. And even that may not be enough.

It’s a similar story across the Northwest as police agencies – big and small – struggle to pay for the skyrocketing price of fuel.

The situation is especially bad in Ferry County in Northeastern Washington. That’s where Sheriff Pete Warner is worried his gas fund will soon be running on empty.

Pete Warner: “$25,000 is what we have left for fuel for the rest of the year.”

Warner says if the cost of gasoline goes up another ten cents this summer – to $3.80 a gallon - he’s prepared to tell his deputies to stop patrolling and just respond to calls.

Pete Warner: “Basically we’re going to park the rigs and they will respond to emergencies only and basically hope that the State Patrol will be able to pick up some of the slack.”

Gas prices are also cause for concern in Caribou County, Idaho – near the Wyoming line.

There Sheriff Ray VanVleet has eight deputies patrolling an area nearly the size of Delaware. VanVleet says his fuel bill is up $20,000 over last year. He says he won’t take deputies off the road, but he will have to make some tough decisions.

Ray VanVleet: “We didn’t get a pay raise for two years here, now we’re trying to get two or three percent a year but we may not see those increases and everybody suffers on these. Our vehicles are getting more miles on them.”

Adding to his budget woes, Sheriff VanVleet says he now has to pay a fuel surcharge for food deliveries to his jail.

In Malheur County in Eastern Oregon Sheriff Andy Bentz says he was complaining about the price of gas five years ago.

Bentz says he’s cut costs and delayed and defrayed spending as much as he can. Now gas prices and other budget challenges may force him to cut positions in the next year or two.

Andy Bentz: “The only way in law enforcement - which is a people business - to reduce costs is to lay-off positions, is to reduce personal, 80 some percent of your total costs is people.”

As tough as the situation is, it’s not like the oil crises of the 1970s. In those days Northwest police agencies took drastic action to reduce miles driven.

Some officers were ordered to park their cars for 10 minutes every hour.

Lt. Greg Hastings is a spokesman for the Oregon State Police. He was a young trooper in those days.

Greg Hastings: “We hope that we just don’t get to the point where we’re parking patrol cars, we’re limiting the amount of miles that we’re driving. We have to still keep that in mind though in the back of our head when we’re out there working that do I really need to go thirty, forty, fifty miles away just to drive through that area if I was there yesterday.”

In lieu of drastic measures, Oregon troopers and police throughout the region are being asked to take smaller steps to conserve fuel and save money: like carpooling to training classes and turning off their cars at accident scenes if it’s safe.