Ridgefield is streaky, said officer Tanner Steward. The hot streak was in play as calls for service kept coming in during a Reflector ride-along with Steward of the Ridgefield Police Department on Wednesday, July 30.
The night shift in Ridgefield features two officers and sergeant — which is comparable to many agencies of similar size throughout the state — but each call provided reason for all three on patrol to respond. The ride-along lasted from roughly 5 p.m. to midnight and featured three calls for service, a phone call followup to a “cold theft” and two traffic stops.
“Ridgefield comes and goes,” Steward said. “You’ll have a night or two where not much happens. You might get one call of someone calling in some kind of disturbance or, ‘Hey, this car’s been parked here for a while.’ You can go a whole night with getting zero 911 calls, and so you’re out there looking for that traffic stuff and looking for the auto prowl in progress — just trying to be visible to people and deter crime.”
Recapping the busy night
The first call for service was a welfare check on an apartment generating an odor. Upon arrival, a second story unit was generating a strong odor, and flies were visible in the window. When officers made entry into the unit, the foul odor rushed out of the room as the resident was found deceased of presumed natural causes for at least two weeks based on the body’s state of decomposition. The indescribable smell of body decomposition was strong from outside the second story unit and at ground level. Flies continued to be visible in the window as well as more flocking to the area due to the disturbing odor. Steward described the body as having a large quantity of fly larvae in the orifices of the body, hence the quantity of visible flies.
At the death investigation, additional manpower was required to assist the medical examiner in moving the body down the stairs, providing the first look at both officers and the sergeant on a single scene. Officers were on scene for over two hours. During that time, the secondary unit on scene was available for calls for service if needed.
The routine death investigation provided insight into one of many disturbing instances officers and other first responders face in their career.
Not long after the death investigation concluded and the medical examiner left with the body, the Beaverton Police Department requested assistance as a man associated with a Ridgefield address made threats via text messages to a church pastor. When Steward ran the name in the system, the man had two local, bookable warrants and due to the nature of the threats, to search the subject’s possible residence, all three on patrol were on scene yet again. However, the subject has not been associated with the Ridgefield residence on his Washington driver’s license in quite some time and, through a check via a different system, appears to reside now on the East Coast.
While on patrol in the Union Ridge Parkway area, Steward observed a driver on their cellphone, warranting a traffic stop. After the traffic stop, a call came out for an assault in progress in a domestic violence situation where the reporting party was actively being bit, following with the aggressor making entry into the house.
Shortly upon arrival to the domestic violence assault, the female subject came out of the house through the garage and was arrested. The reporting party had visible bite wounds that drew blood on his arm. The reporting party stated that the woman was also under the influence of alcohol.
The female subject, Brittany Sannes, would ultimately be booked into Clark County jail on two counts of fourth-degree assault, domestic violence, and one count of resisting arrest. Medical personnel with Clark-Cowlitz Fire and Rescue cleared Sannes on the scene after an evaluation following her request for medical while detained.
Once fire personnel left the scene, Sannes then became verbally aggressive and noncompliant with being put in the back of a patrol car. Sannes was continuously uncooperative in being enclosed in the back of the patrol car by utilizing her feet and legs to prevent the door being shut. Officers had to utilize physical effort to contain her in the back of the patrol vehicle in order to avoid Sannes from moving her legs back out of the vehicle. Sannes ultimately complied in a different patrol vehicle with a full backseat.
Both officers and the sergeant were on that scene for over an hour.
The ride-along concluded with a traffic stop for someone driving 40-miles-per-hour in a 25 speed zone and with patrolling various streets and neighborhoods.
With each call for service being better served with full manpower, the night highlighted the possible struggle for law enforcement in a smaller department if numerous calls occurred at the same time.
Policing in Ridgefield
Steward highlighted the city’s growth in population, which has generated some growing pains that the police department addresses, he said.
Steward explained that often residents are complaining about speeding and e-bikes on pedestrian pathways that are more along the lines of being an electric motorcycle, among other traffic and quality of life issues.
“Traffic complaints are obviously probably our biggest thing. You get a lot of crimes of opportunity, you know, auto prowls, people just walking around at night checking door handles,” he said. “They know Ridgefield is kind of a higher-end city, and so we’ve seen outside actors coming in from Portland and just the freeways and just quickly hitting a couple corridors along some neighborhoods seeing what they can find thinking that there’s probably some good stuff, so you deal with that. Then you deal with the DUIs coming out of the casino, but it’s not just the casino. The casino hasn’t done anything. We love them. But it just brings traffic as people have a big place to go drink, spend money — sometimes they get agitated they lost money, and so you get the DUI stuff.”
Steward said a lot of the issues the Ridgefield Police Department deals with are just like any other city, with its own nuances. The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Crime in Washington 2024 annual report was recently released, and for agencies in Clark County serving a population of over 10,000 people, Ridgefield landed lower in total offenses committed. The Ridgefield Police Department also handled a low level of violent crimes. The category with the most offenses committed was larceny theft offenses with 161 total in 2024, which was an 11.8% increase compared to 2023. Ridgefield experienced 420 Group A offenses, down just four total from 2023, and a total of 66 Group B arrests, which included 33 DUIs.
“We’re not immune to anything, but we just don’t see the violence on the level that you see elsewhere, which is really nice,” Steward said.
Steward also said that he encourages citizens to ask questions and have conversations with the police officers they see in the community to learn more about what goes on in the city that they may not be aware of.
Steward’s journey into law enforcement
Steward has been in law enforcement for six years and with Ridgefield for just a year. His journey to moving back to his home area and patroling the streets of Ridgefield began with being a commercial vehicle enforcement officer for the Washington State Patrol at the weigh station along Interstate 90 near Cle Elum. He later served as a police officer at the Central Washington University campus in Ellensburg.
But before reaching a career in law enforcement, Steward dreamed of being a pilot in the Coast Guard, which did not pan out after high school, so he opted to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage for air traffic control.
“The FAA just never hired me. I sent application after application in and they just denied, denied, because it’s just a giant USA jobs portal,” he said. “So it’s actually a blessing in disguise, because now looking at everything that they’re going through, it’s six days a week, 12-hour-plus days. Like, you can’t have a family. So I’m glad that didn’t work out.”
While still under the age of 21, Steward was first inspired toward a career in law enforcement, but in the wake of the Dallas, Texas, shooting of five police officers, he didn’t feel that he would be emotionally mature enough to handle that end of life scenario. He later finished his bachelor’s degree in business and project management and worked for hospital administration for three to four years. He looked at his career trajectory and work-life in a cubicle and decided to enter the law enforcement career after obtaining more years of life experience.
While Steward enjoyed working at the Central Washington University campus as a police officer, he said it was just time to come home.
“My brother got married, had a kid. Her (Steward’s wife’s) family was all here, and it was like, we want our kids to grow up together and have cousins and stuff, and when you don’t have outside support, it’s hard to find babysitters,” Steward said, adding that it was especially difficult in a law enforcement career when he would be called in and his wife was unavailable to be at home.
After moving back to Clark County, Steward initially applied with the City of Battle Ground but found Ridgefield to be a better fit for him.
“I really liked my meeting with Chief Doriot and Lieutenant Andrew and the fact that we have a take-home car,” he said, adding that his experience in teaching female self-defense classes to students at the university provided the ability to become a field training officer.
Steward says he loves having the teaching mentality and the activities through the Police Activities League, Kindness 911 and National Night Out, which is on Tuesday, Aug. 5.
Steward also recommended that anyone interested in a career in law enforcement go on ride-alongs and to learn the nuances of different agencies from the state patrol, a county sheriff’s office to a city agency to find the best fit.
“We all have the same mission, you know, to serve and protect and to help our communities, but the day-to-day aspect of the job is different just because of the town you’re in,” Steward said. “So do a ride-along and ask questions.”
