Woman vandalizes 16 high-end vehicles at Spokane dealership with damages estimated to be at least $100,000

Just before midnight Friday, officers from the Spokane Police Department responded to a call from a high-end car dealership on West Third Avenue.

As two people were arguing outside of the dealership, one of them began chucking rocks at vehicles in the parking lot. Sixteen vehicles were damaged. According to the police report, the initial estimate to repair the vehicles was $100,000, but the actual cost could be much higher.

After watching security footage that captured the vandalism, Spokane police officers arrested the suspect, 34-year-old Katie Sims, in downtown Spokane the next day not far from the dealership. Sims was booked into the Spokane County Jail on suspicion of 1st Degree Malicious Mischief. As of Tuesday afternoon, she was in jail with a bond of $10,250.

This is not the first instance of a Spokane car dealership being vandalized or even robbed.

In October 2023, one thief in a fur coat and one in a cowboy hat rappelled down from the office ceiling of Northtown Auto Sales and stole eight cars.

Last September, the general manager of Findlay Lexus of Spokane, Riley Donaldson, had only lived in the city for two weeks before stating that Spokane wasn’t exactly what he expected it to be like when he first moved here. The Lexus dealership Donaldson managed is close to the high-end dealership that was vandalized on Friday.

Donaldson called the drug use and homelessness that surrounded his dealership severe. Paying for full-time, overnight security, new fencing and new cameras were all measures the he had to take to ensure further vandalism did not occur.

“There’s been many windows broken,” Donaldson said. “There’s been all sorts of human excrement on sidewalks.”

The Spokane Police Department didn’t name the high-end dealership where the crime occurred on Friday, but photos show it appears to be Land Rover Spokane. Employees said Tuesday they could not comment on the situation. Instead, they referred The Spokesman-Review to their public relations people in Fort Myers, Florida.

Michael Cathcart, a city councilmember for District 1, where the crime occurred on Friday, said his perception is that the city has had a fairly permissive attitude towards crime committed by homeless people in Spokane.

“It establishes sort of this situation where we’re either inviting more of it, or we’re sort of telling individuals that there isn’t going to be any sort of penalty or anything like that if they do these acts,” Cathcart said. “I think that is not the right attitude that we should have as a city.”

It’s not known if the 34-year-old Sims is homeless.

Cathcart also believes that more people need to report crimes when they happen so law enforcement can understand what is going on and where it’s occurring. Whether an individual is homeless is irrelevant, Cathcart said, if they are committing a crime.

Cathcart mentioned that many offenders end up in community courts. He doesn’t think they’ve done a great job of proving the city is actually reducing recidivism through the process.

Cathcart also wants to see significant investment into more drug and mental health treatment. He believes an investment in the right tools of behavioral health, mental health and drug treatment coupled with the enforcement of laws revolving around drug use and camping would help alleviate rampant homelessness in Spokane.

For businesses in the area, Cathcart said that apart from constructing fences to physically keep people out, there’s limited options available without partnering with the city.

He said there’s been a long desire to establish the Downtown Business Improvement District in that stretch of town. Businesses in the area, including dealerships, could bind together and establish ambassadors, a clean team and security individuals to proactively walk around. It’s not police, but it is more eyes on the situation.

The problem is, Cathcart said, that there are many nonprofits in the area that only have to pay in to the BID if they want to. This means that a good portion of the money required to expand a BID to that part of town would rest on the shoulders of businesses, mostly dealerships in that area.

“I think we have opportunities to do a lot more investment in the right services, and I think we need to do a better job of tracking data with providers to make sure that they are effectively helping to move individuals out of homelessness,” Cathcart said.