Mock raid tests city building-map program

Spokane police detectives Mark Porter and Jan Pogachar watched football and normal morning programming Monday in a room at the Davenport Hotel as SWAT team members surrounded and watched them.

They were the play targets for police and Fire Department officials who staged the mock raid to test software from a company called Prepared Response that provides instant information about everything they need to know about the building where suspects are hiding.

Prepared Response has mapped some 250 buildings in Spokane. Most are schools, but they also include the Davenport Hotel, the Thomas S. Foley Federal Courthouse, the Ag Trade Center and the Convention Center.

The latter buildings were added at the request of the U.S. Marshals Office because of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judicial Conference in July, Deputy Chief Al Odenthal said.

“The software told us everything we needed to know,” he said.

With budget cuts, the department needs to turn to technology to make it as efficient as possible, Odenthal said.

Porter and Pogachar were given a script of things to do, including mixing white and brown powder and spreading it around the room as if Porter had some sort of biological weapon. They periodically banged on the walls to make it sound like they were fighting.

“I kept looking through the peephole thinking I was going to get a broken nose,” Pogachar joked.

Using the software, police shut down the room’s phone and ventilation systems and eventually shut off the cable before swarming the room.

Lt. Scott Stephens, who supervises the SWAT team, said the computer system also provided information such as the location of closets, which way doors open and the location of similar rooms where the SWAT team could practice before they busted into the suspects’ room.

As it turned out, the SWAT team didn’t need to break down the door; they used a master key card. But the first officer still had trouble making it work.

“We were not going to damage or break things,” Stephens explained later, saying that officers would have kicked the door down in a real raid. “If we get a facility like this to use, we try not to trash it.”