State Questions Day-Care Raid Agency Asks Why Deputies Acted While Children Were Present

A top state official is questioning the prudence of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department’s televised drug raid at a Valley day-care center last month.

“What if this guy would have come out shooting and a kid had gotten shot?” asked Tim Nelson, regional manager for the state’s office of child care policy.

Nelson said the children would have been safer if police hadn’t been so secretive about their three-month undercover investigation that led to the Dec. 21 raid of the methamphetamine lab/in-home day care.

Nelson sent a letter to Sheriff John Goldman last week saying the state could have found an easy way to get the kids out of the house long ago if police had shared their suspicions about drug dealing.

Instead, Jack and Jill Day Care, 1205 N. Adams Road., was still in business - tending to five young children between the ages of 2 and 6 - when detectives knocked on the door at 10:30 a.m.

After arresting Ronald Acre, who was sleeping next to his loaded handgun and brass knuckles, detectives put on ski masks for the TV news crews, which had been invited to the bust.

Police say there was nothing unusual about what they described as a low-key raid.

The Sheriff’s Department doesn’t usually share investigative details with other agencies, explained Lt. Lorin Sperry, coordinator for the Spokane Regional Drug Task Force.

“The problem is when investigating something of that nature, the more people you tell the more chance there is of leaks,” he said. “We don’t tell anybody who absolutely doesn’t need to know.”

In his letter to Goldman, Nelson noted police ignored the state’s request that the raid be conducted when the children were not there. He also asked why the media was invited.

Shannon Selland, a day-care provider and officer of the Eastern Washington Day Care Association, was more direct.

“Why was the media called before the parents?” Selland said, accusing the Sheriff’s Department of caring more about a high-profile bust than the welfare of the children. “What if he would have taken someone hostage?

“If I was one of those parents, I’d be very angry,” she said. “I would have been one flipped-out woman. They would have been hearing from me non-stop.”

Lt. David Wiyrick, the Sheriff’s Department’s spokesman, said the media was contacted because “the public has a right to know what’s going on in the community. This is very newsworthy. A meth lab in a day-care center is something the public has a right to know about.”

Wiyrick said such a bust also builds public faith in the abilities of police. “It gives them confidence that their government is actually doing something.”

Wiyrick also said officers donned ski masks to protect their undercover identities.

Lt. Sperry said the raid was conducted during day-care hours because it’s safer for officers in the daylight, and morning hours are usually the safest to confront a methamphetamine user.

Sperry described the raid as gentle compared to the more common, door-busting affair. “It was a bland, mild kind of thing,” he said.

Nelson said the first he heard about drug suspicions at Jack and Jill was back in late November. He said his office contacted the Sheriff’s Department to let them know.

The detectives said they already knew about it and urged the state not to do anything that could interfere with their investigation, Nelson said. They also assured him the children were not in danger.

Nelson didn’t know at the time that undercover officers had been watching Acre and trying to buy drugs from him since August.

The next communication from the Sheriff’s Department came the day before the raid, Nelson said. He and his assistant urged the Sheriff’s Department to conduct the raid when the children weren’t there.

The detectives found a meth lab in the garage adjoining the house.

Nelson said the state has investigated allegations that Acre had been driving drunk during day care-hours, that he had hit children and that too many children were being cared for at the center. The complaints were never substantiated.

But Nelson said the state received a dirty day-care complaint this fall, which he could have used as an excuse to shut the place down - if he’d known of the suspected drug activities.

“If we’d known about the investigation we would have shut it down,” he said.

In his letter to Goldman, Nelson asked to meet with him to discuss ways to improve inter-agency communications.

Nelson’s letter was obtained by The Spokesman-Review through a public records request.

The Spokane County Health District determined that the children at the day care were not exposed to hazardous chemicals.

, DataTimes