Discontinuing the sheriff’s log is a mistake | Letter

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Sheriff Eric Peters has made a terrible mistake by pulling the weekly sheriff reports. I can think of no better tool of community engagement and support than these weekly reports. His ill-thought-out change will lead to a dramatic decrease in citizen trust and erodes support of his department by removing the very transparency required for such trust. In its place will beg the question surely forming in citizens’ minds, “What are you hiding?”

The sheriff’s obvious AI-authored statement claims two causal linkages for this decision. 1) That their publication leads to increased public records requests; and 2) this then results in an undue financial burden on the department to comply in the current budget-challenged County environment. Such assertions are questionable at best and specious at worst. They are a solution searching for a problem, which then again raises the question, “What is the REAL reason for this change?”

There is an obvious solution. You can easily submit an online public records request at https://www.sanjuancountywa.gov/349/Public-Records. I urge every SJC citizen to each and every week make such a request for the digital call logs upon which the “Sheriff’s Reports” is (was) sourced. If Sheriff Peters is to be taken at his word that the issue is volume/budget based, then it will quickly become apparent that the only responsible budgetary response is to renew the voluntary distribution of those records without need of a formal public records request

Don Burkhart

Blakely Island