Mark Crider is Best Candidate for Sheriff

Dear Editor,

I’ll be the first to admit it. When Mark Crider first stepped into the Walla Walla County Sheriff’s Office last Fall to interview for the position of Chief Criminal Deputy, I was skeptical. Who was this FBI agent from the Spokane Field Office? Sure, he’d been involved with our Office over the last few years providing tactical and firearms training to some of our members, but what made him think he could come on down and help lead our agency forward? Well after Mark opened his mouth and spoke for about thirty seconds, I ate a big piece of humble pie and was hooked. Mark Crider wasn’t one of the D.C., good old boy agents. He had spent his career in the trenches of the field offices, first in Milwaukee then Spokane, working hand-in-hand with local law enforcement agencies. Check. He grew up in Ontario, Ohio, a town of about 4,500 people, and understood the issues that face any number of small towns across our country. Check. He served ten years in the U.S. Navy as an F-14 Tomcat pilot. He also served as an FBI agent in the War on Terror. As a Marine veteran of both the Iraq and Afghan campaigns, that had an enormous impact on me. When he laid out his experience with managing multi-million-dollar budgets, his training philosophy, his multitude of advanced training qualifications, and his views on leadership, I realized we had a man in front of us who could not only lead the operational side of the Walla Walla County Sheriff’s Office, but had all the qualifications, and then some, to lead the entire office forward. The very next day, several members of our Office went to Sheriff Turner and suggested that Mark Crider would be a perfect fit for the Undersheriff position.

In a short time, Mark Crider has demonstrated that he is THE perfect candidate for Sheriff and that he will continue the long and proud tradition of total professionalism demonstrated daily by the deputies and support staff of the Walla Walla County Sheriff’s Office.

Corporal Christopher Johnson

Deputy Sheriff

Walla Walla