By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Bob Udell is sheriff in one of Washington State’s largest, but decidedly “rural” counties, where currently 51 commissioned deputies patrol an area of more than 4,300 square miles, gangs are a problem, and he recognizes the biggest crime threat is drugs such as fentanyl, not firearms.
During an appearance at a public event west of Yakima, the hub city in Yakima County, Udell told a small crowd that guns take a back seat to hard drugs when it comes to lives lost. Last year, the county had 37 homicides, while this year, he expects to see possibly 150 drug-related fatalities from fentanyl.
Yet, the Democrat-controlled legislature seems far more interested in banning guns—this year they passed a law, already in effect, banning so-called “assault weapons”—than in getting serious about drugs.
“What fascinates me,” Udell said, “our liberal friends are so focused on semiautomatic firearms, especially long guns of all types.”
However, check with the FBI Uniform Crime Report in any given year and the number of people slain in the U.S. with rifles of any kind are typically less than 500. Contrast that with tens of thousands of drug overdose fatalities and it’s not hard to see where priorities may be misplaced.
Udell has spent 34 years in law enforcement. He was first elected sheriff in 2018 and earned a second term last fall when he ran unopposed for the position.
He told TGM how gun tracing has been able to determine that criminals circulate guns back and forth, and they may be involved in crimes all over the Evergreen State map. He has also found that drug gangs based in eastern Washington go west across the mountain passes and cause all sorts of trouble in the state’s most populous counties: King, Pierce and Snohomish, which are predominantly Democrat.
Where guns are concerned, Udell chuckles.
“We like taking guns away from people who shouldn’t have them,” he said with a grin, “and we enjoy people who should have guns, have them.”
Yakima County is a magnet for hunters and sport shooters in the fall. It has one of the state’s largest elk herds, although the deer population is trying to rebuild. But people own guns; lots of them. So, at any given time of the year, Yakima may also be one of the better armed counties in the state, if not the country.
The sheriff acknowledges his county has “lots of gun-related crime,” but it’s not the fault of legally-armed, law-abiding citizens. Data from the state Department of Licensing on June 1 shows Yakima County has 26,036 of the state’s active 690,763 concealed pistol licenses.
He says cooperation with smaller local agencies is good, including the Yakima Tribal Police. Every little bit helps in a county where a deputy might drive 300 miles in a single shift. One thing about a rural, large U.S. county is that it is, well, rural and large. It takes time to cover all that territory.
It takes no time at all for a lawman like Udell to figure out the difference between the good guys and bad guys, or that the crime problem is drugs and lax policies, not firearms.
