communications officer

fire marshall

administrative assistant

forensic scientist

state trooper

Washington State Patrol

Leadership is focused on outdated goals, with state and federal mandates that have little to do with public safety.  The administration is lacking foresight and always behind in reacting to an ever changing political landscape, constantly putting their employees in harms way.  Leadership never takes responsibility or blame and will always shift that blame to employees at the lowest levels.  Support staff is paid abysmally and the private sector is the better solution to a lack of income.  Technology, equipment and facilities are woefully inadequate often decades old and in ill repair.  The legislature fails to fund the agency appropriately to both attract talent and innovative ways to better serve the public.  What you are left with is most employees grasping for retirement to escape years of inadequate pay, benefits, and miserable working conditions.  Hard work is often rewarded with administrative scrutiny and avoiding labor is encouraged in nearly every position.  The effort put towards actual public safety rests on the backs of newer employees who learn quickly how to avoid work or face scrutiny and/or heavy handed punishments from even minor faux pas of a 1000 page long regulation manual.  You are expected to be a perfect human by the administration and if you are imperfect in any way you are expelled in spite of years of excellent work without issue.

Controlled chaos.
A continuous learning process. You must keep current with policies, and procedures and there are so many in this agency. You are dealing with the lives of law enforcement, as well as, the public's safety. Therefore you must be able to perform the job at hand quickly and efficiently.
Management provides everything you need in order to succeed.
My co-workers never hesitate to help in any way possible. It is truly
a family.
The most difficult part of the job would be the schedule and the inability to plan outside activities. Our schedules constantly rotate, overtime is often necessary, and to keep abreast with current policies and procedure one must use personal time for study.
What I enjoy the most is that everyday presents its own set of challenges that you must work through. There is ever a dull moment with the State Patrol and I have been proud to serve.

I would recommend that someone looking into being a Trooper ensures that the WSP is where they want to be instead of a city or county agency. The training curriculum is outdated and does not adequately prepare cadets to be well-rounded police officers outside of traffic enforcement. The technology WSP uses is decades behind other departments. There does not seem to be any interest on the part of administration to learn from other agencies and improve, there is a misguided perception that WSP is "the best". For the most part, old school enforcement statistics drive many supervisors' perceptions of your performance; this is at the expense of quality investigations and adequately responding to the calls for service that do arise on the highways or assisting local agencies with calls. If you want to make traffic stops, investigate collisions, and pick up lots of DUIs (more so on night shift) this job might be a good fit. If you want to be a well-rounded police officer look elsewhere.  On the positive side, the pay and schedule were good, I liked the freedom of no roll call and having my take-home car, and I enjoyed working with my colleagues and supervisors. 

There are no quotas at WSP just "APA Goals" you are granted officer discretion, but they want you writing tickets. A very numbers oriented agency. Any criminal interdiction or collision investigation at night have very little meaning to the agency, they want DUI arrests, Speeding tickets and seatbelt tickets, even if it means ignoring other aspects of productive Law Enforcement. 99% of troopers are great people, the command staff on the other hand is a joke, they are disconnected to the field force and are in their position for personal or political gain. The WSP is not afraid to throw someone under the bus deserved or not, to make the agency "Appear" better in the media.  WSP is not a well paid agency. A lot of troopers are leaving for departments with better pay that have respect and care about for their people. Even when this gets brought to command staffs attention, The Chief's standard response is "thats the first i have heard of this, i will look into it" and the next district visit, if it gets brought up again same answer. Bottom line, avoid WSP go county or local for LE jobs.

The Washington State Patrol is a State Law Enforcement agency.  It's Troopers are engaged in law enforcement activities like traffic enforcement, collision investigations, criminal investigations, dignitary protection, aviation, detectives and SWAT to name a few.  Another great thing about the WSP is the freedom which comes from the job.  Troopers have the ability to transfer to any area of the State to do the job of a trooper.  There are many opportunities available to troopers to pursue any of the above mentioned jobs within the agency.  It provides great benefits but the pay compared to other agencies within the State of Washington falls well below the 50th percentile.   Seems as though there is hope for pay raises in the near future.  A great place to call your career and it becomes part of your family, and your identity.

WSP was a great organization to work for, WAS, great troopers, sergeants. But over the past 6 years it has progressively gotten worse. Command Staff is out of touch with the Troopers and actual line employees.  The command staff holds an Us Vs Them mentality with the Troopers and Sergeants. There is a huge emphasis on numbers, the command staff has "goals" which is a PC word for quota. If you are not meeting their "goals" you are punished by not attending training or your part time specialty position. Unfortunately the agency does not value actual police work, but treats the job like a factory job demanding numbers. The command staff facilitated raises for themselves, but the Troopers continue to be well below average in compensation and benefits.

I only worked here for a little bit. There is a bidding system for your shifts so you could end up working nights. It's based on seniority. Everyone was pretty nice. The building in Olympia is super nice. The workplace culture seemed very low-stress and everyone just keeps to themselves. Not a close-knit work environment. I learned a lot about fingerprints during my onboarding. The hardest part was the schedule because they had me on nights so I would never see my family until the night. The most enjoyable part was learning new things about the job. A typical day at work looks like sitting at your desk and finishing jobs on the queue.

I was a communications officer for this agency. Being a dispatcher is stressful enough. Unfortunately, at the location I worked at... being backstabbed and not being able to express creativity on the job was a HUGE issue. Not to mention, how other dispatcher would talk about other Troopers. They would act all nice when they entered the comm center. But the moment they left, the trash talking began. Some of the other dispatchers think that they’re Troopers. It was a joke!There was only one way or the high way. CAD is a computer program. There’s more than enough routes to take to get to the same destination. The managers refused to hire more people. And there was no job-life balance.

I only left the position due to my husbands promotion. I would still be employed there and enjoying every day. I was a Fingerprint Tech II and my job was to analyze and process fingerprints for various law enforcement agencies. All training was provided by the FBI which made it even more valuable. I learned about latent and ten print fingerprints. The workplace culture was somewhat relaxed and professional. The hardest part of the job was training. It was in-depth and satisfying. The most enjoyable part of the work was working with dedicated people and knowing that I had promotion potential.

Working at the Washington State Patrol Communications Center requires dedication, teamwork, and commitment to a high level of integrity.  The hardest part of the job can be the  necessity of multi-tasking, problem solving, and prioritizing tasks as new ones are added to an already long list of tasks to complete in a timely manner.  The most enjoyable part of the job is the satisfaction of helping people that are calling in need of help.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Communications officer 8 salaries reported	$74,859 per year
Fire marshall 7 salaries reported	$84,472 per year
Administrative assistant 6 salaries reported	$58,736 per year
Forensic scientist 4 salaries reported	$82,023 per year
State trooper 5 salaries reported	$70,404 per year

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