100 years ago in Spokane: Sheriff’s deputy, city detective injured in friendly fire during raid gone wrong

A raid on a liquor still in Spokane went wrong when city police and county deputies arrived on the scene – and proceeded to shoot at each other.

One deputy sheriff and one city detective suffered bullet wounds, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported, but neither of them were seriously injured.

Afterward, J.H. Tilsley, the city’s Commissioner of Public Safety, was livid. He blamed County Sheriff George Reid for the debacle, because he failed to notify city police that he was planning a raid.

“Our men were there first, had no knowledge that the men from the sheriff’s office were coming, and had every right to believe them (to be) bootleggers when they refused to hold up their hands,” said Tilsley.

Reid said it was a simple mistake. A landowner had told Reid about a still he found on his property, and Reid told a pair of deputies to check it out. The two deputies arrived at the house in the dark and knocked on the door. Two city detectives were already inside, mistook them for the bootleggers and gunshots rang out.

“It seems to me that the police officers should have known that anybody knocking on the door would not be a bootlegger,” Reid said. “They should have found out who was there before shooting.”

Reid did not address the issue of why his deputies were raiding a house in the city without alerting police. Tilsley said his department never conducts a raid in the county without first notifying the sheriff.

Tilsley said a more serious result was avoided only because of “cool-headed work on the part of all four officers involved.”