The Metropolitan King County Council on Monday recognized King County Sheriff Sue Rahr and thanked her for three decades of service to the people of King County.
Rahr will leave the Sheriff’s Office on March 31 after 32 years. She’s leaving King County to become director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission where she will be responsible for the agency that trains all police in the state except state troopers.
“I thank and commend Sheriff Rahr for her unparalleled leadership in King County’s Sheriff’s Office for over three decades,” said Councilmember Julia Patterson, who represents District 5 that includes part of Kent. “Our loss is the state’s gain. The future of the state’s law enforcement agencies is in great hands with her at the helm. I wish her all the best.”
Rahr‘s intention was to pay for law school by working in law enforcement, according to a County Council media release. That “interim” job became a career that spanned from being one of the first women to work as a regular patrol officer when she was assigned a single-officer patrol car in 1979. Rahr worked undercover narcotics, directed the Internal Investigations, Special Investigations and Gang Units and was Chief of the Sheriff Department’s Field Operations Division.
Appointed Sheriff in 2005, Rahr has been a champion of using 21st Century technology in law enforcement, partnering with Microsoft and other companies in the use of electronic communication in the creation of community networks to “connect” neighborhoods with law enforcement.
Rahr has appointed Chief Deputy Steve Strachan as the interim Sheriff starting on April 1. Strachan is a former Kent Police chief.
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