The Metropolitan King County Council today, March 26, recognized King County Sheriff Sue Rahr and thanked her for her three decades of service to the people of King County as she begins her final week in the Sheriff’s Office.

On March 31, Rahr is leaving the Sheriff’s Office after 32 years. She’s leaving King County to become director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission where she will be responsible for the agency that trains all police in the state except state troopers.

Rahr‘s intention was to pay for law school by working in law enforcement. That “interim” job became a career that spanned from being one of the first women to work as a regular patrol officer when she was assigned a single-officer patrol car in 1979. Rahr worked undercover narcotics, directed the Internal Investigations, Special Investigations and Gang Units and was Chief of the Sheriff Department’s Field Operations Division.   Appointed Sheriff in 2005, Rahr has been a champion of using 21st Century technology in law enforcement, partnering with Microsoft and other companies in the use of electronic communication in the creation of community networks to “connect” neighborhoods with law enforcement.

Rahr has appointed Chief Deputy Steve Strachan as the interim Sheriff starting on April 1.