Mercer Island Joins Regional Team to Investigate Police Shootings

This post was originally written by Venice Buhain

Mercer Island will join several other Eastside police agencies in a new county-wide law enforcement team that will be available to investigate officer-involved shootings and other major incidents.

The King County Investigative Response Team was announced last Thursday, after two years of development among local police departments and agencies.

The creation of the team is based on the best practices suggested by the Washington Association of Sheriff's and Police Chiefs, Mercer Island Police Chief Ed Holmes said. 

"One of the key tenets in any police relationship with the community is that public confidence," Holmes said. "So instilling public confidence and having that transparency in these types of situations, the association, and now King County police chiefs and the Sheriff moved to this model where we have a team coming in doing the investigation."

Holmes currently serves on the Association of Sheriff's and Police Chiefs board as Past President.

Bellevue Police Department Maj. Mike Johnson, who will be the commander of the team, told reporters that the team was created to maintain public trust during the investigation of a major incident involving a police officer.

"The law enforcement leaders standing before you today believe that the investigation of a very serious and often complex incident, like an officer involved shooting, should be carried out in such a way that involves our profession's best practices, utilizes the best detectives and supervisors in the Seattle area and ensures the utmost objectivity and transparency, so at the end of the day we maintain the trust that our communities have placed in us," Johnson told reporters.

Johnson said that many police departments already have a protocol to call upon another police department to investigate such incidents to remove the appearance of bias. The new team would be available in lieu of calling another police agency, he said.

"Nothing is broken," he told Patch. "But we want to remove any questions about whether the agency is covering anything up or protecting one of their own."

The local agencies that are part of the team and sit on its board of directors include the cities of Bellevue, Bothell, Mercer Island, Issaquah, Kirkland, Snoqualmie, Black Diamond and Redmond, and the King County Sheriff's Office and the Washington State Patrol. Bellevue Police Chief Linda Pillo has been the chairwoman of the board.

The police agencies on the team will provide their staff and resources to investigate major incidents involving police officers.

Calling on an outside agency to investigate police incidents is a common practice among many police departments when one of their officers are involved in a major incident involving the public, such as when a police officer injures or kills someone when responding to an incident.

The county's inquest process will remain the same, with a citizen panel and the public airing of the facts of the case, and the new team would bring another layer of transparency to inquests. said Mark Larson, chief deputy of the King County Prosecuting Attorney.

"It brings yet another layer of professionalism and thoroughness to an important part of law enforcement's activities," he said.

Larson told Patch after his remarks that some of the smaller police departments also would benefit by being able to help in such investigations.

The participating agencies contribute their investigators when a major incident involves police officers, the most obvious of which would be an officer-involved shooting. However, agencies could call upon the team to investigate other major incidents, such as a police pursuit that results in a serious injury or fatality or after the death of someone in custody, Johnson said.

Johnson said they can't predict exactly how many times the team will be called upon to investigate, but, just limiting the investigations to officer-involved shootings, the team could be called to respond to between 10 to 20 incidents in King County per year.

While there are King County cities that are not part of the team, such as Seattle, the team will be available to any King County agency that requests it.

According to a chart compiled by Johnson, between 2008 and 2010, there were between 13 and 15 such incidents a year, only counting shootings, people who died or were injured in custody and pursuits that resulted in an injury. When injuries with other weapons were included, that total went up to between 23 and 29 incidents a year. The most common jurisdiction where such incidents took place was Seattle, according to the tally.

However, there have been several recent shooting incidents involving Eastside agencies — notably the Bellevue Police Department:

Earlier this year, Russell Smith, 51, was shot and killed by the Bellevue SWAT officers in Seattle as investigators were attempted to serve warrants on Smith and another man in a string of robberies in Bellevue. The Seattle Police Department's investigation of that incident is ongoing.

In 2011, Andrew M. Fox, 25, was shot by Bellevue police the early morning of Jan 6 at a Chevron station when he reportedly threatened to hold people inside the gas station hostage and then held the knife in a threatening manner towards the responding officers.

In 2009, the Seattle Times reported that a man identified as John Pebles was killed outside a Bellevue strip mall after reportedly charging an officer with a knife.