Crime, drugs take center stage at Moses Lake council meeting

MOSES LAKE — Crime and drugs were a hot topic at Tuesday evening’s Moses Lake City Council meeting, as two citizens made appeals to the council to take action. However, city officials said the issue is as much with Olympia as Moses Lake.

“We are not sitting here on our hands,” Deputy Mayor Deanna Martinez said. “We would do more if the state allowed us to do more. And so my recommendation would be that you also contact the legislators, and not just our legislators here in the 13th district … I suggest that you reach across to the other side, the majority, and start hammering them with what you have to say and start telling them about those patients that you've seen in the ER.”

Complaints about crime were somewhat in response to recent incidents in Moses Lake, including a Sunday shooting, which one speaker had addressed directly in his comments.

“It seems to me that this leadership has taken the position of being enablers to rampant drug abuse across our town, and in the last three years, it's had a very detrimental effect,” said Jason Burnham, a respiratory therapist at Samaritan Hospital. “I had a meth addict patient not too long ago who was in for an OD. Talking to him, I asked where he was from, and he said Portland. I asked why he was here. He said ‘Moses Lake has the best meth in the Pacific Northwest.’”

The popularity of Moses Lake as a source for drugs has contributed to violent crime, Burnham said. He cited several recent shooting incidents from this year, including the incident Sunday near Montlake Park in which two people were wounded and one killed.

“They were just blasting away at each other,” Burnham said. “One person was killed, and two more were transported to our hospital. The most critical was my patient. I'm the one who helped put in the breathing tube, the one who put him on the ventilator. And I'm the one who stood there for hours, suctioning copious amounts of blood, trying to keep this guy alive … Ten years ago, the biggest crime was Mrs. Johnson's garage being graffitied. Today we have weekly raging gun battles on our streets. Your enabling attitude is draining city and hospital resources.

“I've been trying to get a billboard near Stratford and Broadway,” Burnham added. “When I get it I’m putting up a big old mug shot of a toothless meth addict up there, and it will say ‘Welcome to Moses Lake. Best meth in the Pacific Northwest. Thank your city council and Grant County Sheriff's Department today.’”

Mayor Don Myers said he shared Burnham’s frustration.

“We're doing everything we can to put this to rest,” Myers said. “I'm tired of hearing of the drive-by shootings and all the gang activity. And I know our police department is doing everything they can to stop that with the handcuffs that have been placed on (them) by the state.”

“In response to doing nothing, I would like to give an attaboy to the cameras that have been put up in Moses Lake,” said Council Member David Skaug. “Within a matter of minutes of that shooting, the car was identified and located and pulled over. And that would not have happened without cameras.”

Martinez expressed her appreciation for Burnham’s work in the emergency room, and recommended he take his concerns beyond the city level.

Moses Lake resident Rod Richeson also took the microphone to talk about crime.

“I live on Beaumont Drive,” Richeson said. “I got a call from my wife saying there's a dead guy in front of our house Sunday afternoon. Shots were fired, she walked out and saw lights and sirens, to see a dead body laying in the street and a car shot all to heck. This, by our count, is the fifth person in five years that's been shot on Beaumont Drive or Boardwalk, which is the road down below the train tracks.”

A good step would be to close Montlake Park in the wintertime, Richeson said.

“When boating season is not going on, it is just a mess down there,” he said. “People come down Linden (Avenue) 70-plus miles an hour. We've had people almost hit on that road … So I'd like to see that park closed when it's not boating season, because it really isn't that great of a park outside of the summer months. We've had way more than our share of homicide and suicide in Montlake Park, and in that one-block radius there.”

City Manager and former Police Chief Kevin Fuhr addressed both speakers’ concerns.

“I'm assuming the council knows this, but the drug laws changed a couple of years ago,” Fuhr said. “It's no longer a felony to use any drug, period. It's misdemeanor charges. And so it's writing a ticket is what it is. And in Grant County, unless it's a Class A or Class B felony, you don't go to jail and haven't for probably four years now. So we write the ticket and they end up with a misdemeanor warrant that does nothing.”

“I would like to know what's being done,” Council Member Dustin Swartz said. “I know there are gang task forces at work in Grant County, but are some of these cases being solved?”

“We have solved them,” Moses Lake Police Chief Dave Sands responded. “And as to the law, that means certainly our ability to be as proactive as we once were is greatly inhibited. And quite frankly, we're seeing violent crime across the nation. So it's not new to us.”

The presence of juvenile offenders makes law enforcement’s job more difficult, Sands said.

“If you look at our last few homicides, they've greatly involved juveniles,” he said. “They've been the shooters, they've been drivers. We can't even talk to them. Even when we catch them, you can't talk to them.”

Complicating the situation with juvenile offenders are Washington’s laws regarding the age of culpability, or how old an offender must be to be charged with a crime. State law currently holds that a child under the age of 8 is incapable of committing a crime, and those 8-12 years old may or may not be. A bill introduced last year in the state Legislature would raise the minimum age of culpability to 14, Sands said, except for homicide.

“So apparently, people know that homicide is bad,” Sands said. “But robbery and some of the other crimes, juveniles couldn't be prosecuted for. These are the things that we're up against … So we are solving them. Unfortunately, we're in a catch-up game.”

“I want to add one thing,” Fuhr said. “Not this latest homicide, but the one we had on Loop (Drive, in August), I believe the shooters were identified within a 24-hour period, maybe two days. Because they were juveniles and we're not allowed to talk to them, we had to wait until we gathered more evidence before we got to pick them up, which took three weeks or so.”

Under state law, once it’s determined that the juvenile should be tried in adult court, the prosecution has 10 days from the time of the arrest to get a full case ready.

“In Moses Lake PD … (we’re) solving crimes in the 40%-50% range, which is way above the state average, which I believe is upper 20s  or low 30s,” Fuhr said. “So we're solving almost 50% of the crime. The unfortunate thing is we're solving it because it's happening.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.