Sheriff’s Office Short-staffed Amid Steady Retirements
The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office currently has five vacancies out of its 65 total deputy positions as veteran law enforcement officers retire
By Maggie Dresser
In 2003 when Sheriff Brian Heino was starting his law enforcement career at the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO), he was hired in a cluster of new deputies, some of whom have remained with the office throughout that time. But two decades later, those groups of hires that continued stacking up during the early 2000s are now reaching their 20-year pensions, prompting a steady queue of retirements.
This year, three veteran law enforcement officers are retiring while two other deputies have left the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) when they moved out of the state.
“We’re all hitting that 20-plus year mark around the same time,” Heino said.
The FCSO currently has 65 total deputy positions with five vacancies, which includes an extra position the county commissioners added in the fiscal year 2026 budget.
Hiring and recruitment has remained a challenge in recent years, Heino said, after the pandemic triggered negative sentiment toward law enforcement and the tight housing market has created a barrier for potential deputies to relocate to the Flathead Valley.
While Heino is seeing roughly 30 applications per vacancy — the volume of which has grown in recent years — it’s still a far cry from the 90 applications the office would receive two decades ago.
“We definitely have seen a lot of good, qualified individuals applying,” Heino said.
Wages also pose a challenge for recruitment, with the base salary for deputies starting at $32.24 per hour compared to a $37.11 per hour at the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office.
As the sheriff’s office works to fill its staff, calls for service have remained somewhat steady of roughly 40,000 per year following a surge in 2021, which Heino shared with Flathead County commissioners Randy Brodehl, Pam Holmquist and Brad Abell during an Oct. 9 public meeting.
Right now, the sheriff’s office responds to about 109 calls per day, 32 of which were proactive, 52 that are reactive and 24 calls to dispatch. Calls have dipped since 2021, when FCSO teams responded to an average of 92 reactive calls and 36 proactive calls per day.
The detective divisions have also remained steady this year with monthly averages including three adult sex cases, six child sex cases, five crimes against people, 10 property crimes, one missing person and two financial crimes.
Heino said there was an uptick in calls to Glacier National Park this year, which becomes resource-intensive for the department’s two coroners, who have so far responded to 306 calls in 2025.
For example, an Iowa woman in August fell to her death after tripping and falling off the Highline Trail, which required a recovery from Two Bear Air, and a Utah man in July fell while descending a climbing route on Mount Gould.
“The park was busy this year,” Heino said. “We had a lot of those types of scenarios, and we have determined it takes a long time to get into the park and deal with a coroner call. We lose the coroner for an entire day.”