- Police officer Christopher Backus explains why summer shifts the kind of calls small Washington departments see, and why that shift deserves more attention than it gets.
A Season That Changes the Call Log
Olympia, Washington, November 13, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE, Christopher Backus has worked for departments across Washington, including Shelton, Tukwila, Tenino, and Grand Coulee. He has also worked as a guard for the Washington Department of Corrections and a jailer for Mason County. Across those roles, he has noticed a pattern that repeats every year: the call volume does not just rise in summer, it changes shape.
Winter calls in a small town tend to follow a familiar rhythm. Summer brings more people outdoors, more vehicles on back roads, more boats on the water, and more visitors who do not know the terrain. For an officer, that means more calls that do not look like the ones from January.
“The type of call changes as much as the number,” Backus says. “A welfare check near a lake in July is a different situation than the same call in a neighborhood in December. You’re often working farther from help, with less information about who you’re dealing with.”
Small Departments Feel It First
Grand Coulee and Tenino are not large cities. Departments that size often run lean, with officers covering wide areas alone. Backus says that reality becomes more visible in summer, when outdoor recreation brings in people who do not live in the area and are not easy to reach quickly if something goes wrong.
“You might get a call about someone overdue from a hike, or a disturbance at a campground, somewhere outside the area you patrol every day,” he says. “You don’t have the same local knowledge you’d have on a normal residential call. That’s where training on how to assess a scene matters more than people realize.”
He is careful not to frame this as something departments are failing to handle. It is simply a feature of the season that smaller agencies plan around.
Where Personal Experience Helps
Backus spends his own time off camping, hiking, and fly fishing in Montana. He says that time outdoors has shaped how he thinks about the calls that come in during the warmer months.
“When you’ve spent a night in a tent or hiked a trail yourself, you understand what can go wrong out there,” he says. “You know how fast weather changes, how easy it is to lose track of time, how different a trail looks after dark. That helps you read a call differently than if you’d only ever seen the area from a patrol car.”
He says this kind of familiarity does not replace training, but it adds context that makes training easier to apply. An officer who already understands the terrain, the gear, and the habits of people who camp or fish is better positioned to figure out what a call actually needs.
What He Tells Newer Officers
Backus is direct with newer officers about the seasonal shift. He tells them not to assume a summer call will look like the version they trained for in a classroom.
“A lot of training scenarios are built around a town, a building, a street,” he says. “Summer calls are more likely to happen somewhere without an address. You have to be comfortable working without the usual landmarks.”
He also points out that summer often means fewer officers available at once, since vacation schedules overlap with the busiest months. That combination, more unpredictable calls and a thinner shift, is part of why he treats seasonal planning as something worth taking seriously rather than something to react to after it starts.
“It’s not a complicated idea,” Backus says. “The job doesn’t stay the same all year. If you plan like it does, you’ll be caught off guard every June.”
About Christopher Backus
Christopher Backus is a police officer based in Olympia, Washington. His law enforcement career includes work with the Washington Department of Corrections, Shelton Police Department, Mason County Jail, Tukwila Police Department, Tenino Police Department, and Grand Coulee Police Department. He holds an AA from South Puget Sound Community College and a BA in Criminal Justice with a minor in psychology from Saint Martin’s University. Outside of work, he spends his time camping, hiking, playing softball, and fly fishing in Montana.
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