Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Team work

Staff writer

The 65-year-old woman watches drug deals go down near her home almost daily. From a window in a darkened room, she diligently records what she sees. The retired cook and caregiver writes down license plate numbers and the state they’re from, if she can see them. Her handwritten notes also include dates, times, descriptions of the drivers, colors of the cars, and how many people were in it.

The woman lives in one of Spokane Valley’s westside drug infested areas. She’s been trying to make a difference in her neighborhood since 1999.

“I’m a one-man army trying to clean it up,” said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “Sometimes I just sit here and cry.”

Law enforcement officials say it takes concerned community members like her to help them make a difference in areas of drug problems. The more specific the information, the better. License plates, dates, times and frequency of visits are good specifics.

But residents reporting illegal activity need to be patient. Uncovering a drug operation takes time and careful investigative work.

Months after that first call, neighbors might still be waiting to see a SWAT team raid a home where they’re sure drugs are being dealt.

“People say they see drug traffic and think we can just go bust down a door,” said Lt. Rick VanLeuven, who heads the Spokane County sheriff’s office’s 12-member drug team. “We have to have enough information to go before a judge with a probable-cause affidavit to get a warrant. Most of the time we get a warrant, but only if a judge thinks it can withstand the court system. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize an investigation.”

For example, law enforcement wouldn’t go before a judge with information such as someone seeing a lot of cars coming and going from a location.

Often such a tip is where a drug investigation begins.

“When the information comes in, we enter it into our drug database,” VanLeuven said. “We start our investigation by finding out who lives there, and see for ourselves if there’s a lot of drug traffic at the home.

Spokane Police Department’s drug unit commander Lt. Darrell Toombs said he’s had people call him angry because they are unaware there was an investigation.

“I had a situation one night. I had a SWAT team ready to go, and the citizen called me, yelling and screaming, because we hadn’t done anything yet,” Toombs said. “We were there busting the door down in 20 minutes, but I couldn’t tell them that.

“And sometimes we aren’t doing anything,” Toombs said. “Unfortunately we don’t have enough information.”

The Sheriff’s Office drug team receives 20 calls on drug tips a week. Out of those calls three to five may result in an arrest.

Spokane police receive about eight calls a day.

“Each tip may not be enough alone, but we may accumulate enough information from several tips,” Toombs said. “Normally what we do, if we see an address that comes up a lot, we’ll see if we have someone to go in and buy drugs. If that happens, then we can get a warrant to go in.”

But typically drug busts don’t happen that quickly or easily.

“The majority of drug tips don’t provide sufficient information,” VanLeuven said. “They are vague. We also get tips from patrol officers and informants, and those have a higher ratio of getting results.”

A recent discovery of an indoor marijuana grow at 7921 E. Nora Ave., stemmed from a Spokane Valley patrol officer’s tip. The officer is a former member of the Sheriff’s Office drug team.

Despite the reliable source, the investigation still took awhile. The detectives spent four months gathering information before obtaining a search warrant. Inside they found 59 marijuana plants. Across the street police seized another 42 plants.

“Normally an investigation will take a few months,” Toombs said. “I’ve had some cases where it took five to six months before we could get into the house. I’ve had others where the tip was all we needed and we got in within a couple days.”

The retired Spokane Valley woman doesn’t know which, if any, drug tips she has given to the Sheriff’s Office have resulted in arrests.

Detectives have done a lot of work in her neighborhood, officials said. And some of the information she’s forwarded to them has been helpful.

“If we do our job right, no one will even know we are investigating,” VanLeuven said. If anyone knew, it could ruin hours of work the detectives had put in working a case.

During the last six months, the Sheriff’s Office has had 578 drug reports throughout Spokane County with 356 cases assigned. They’ve closed 507 drug cases so far this year.

Spokane Police Department’s drug unit includes eight detectives and two sergeants. The drug unit currently sends about 1,100 felony drug cases to a county prosecutor each year.

The type of drug busts for each agency breaks down about the same. Nearly 60 percent are methamphetamine. The remaining 40 percent are a combination of prescription drugs, crack cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

But it’s not just the type of drugs being found in the area that concerns law enforcement, it’s a change in the drug trade for Spokane County, VanLeuven said. Spokane is not a drug destination spot anymore. It’s a distribution point.

“It’s not just a city where drugs are consumed,” VanLeuven said. “It’s become a place where large quantities of drugs are brought in and distributed to other states, and cities in the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re swamped,” VanLeuven said. “There’s no down time. We are constantly going. We do several operations a day. We don’t have the manpower to follow up on every call, but we certainly evaluate every single one.”

VanLeuven and Toombs said they need the community members’ eyes in order to help make a dent in the areas drug problems.

“I encourage people to continue to call in. Even if I know a house is a drug house, unless I have enough to put it in writing for a judge, there’s nothing I can do,” Toombs said. “You never know. If you make that one more phone call and it could make the difference. I tell people to be the squeaky wheel.”