On a chilly spring morning, police officers from around the state met in Federal Way to serve a search warrant on a home located in a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood. As families all over the city ate breakfast and got ready for school and work, a SWAT team clung to the side of an armored vehicle as it rolled up to the front of the white, two-story house with children's toys in the yard and an American flag covering an upstairs window. Police fanned across the yard and charged up the stairs, pounding on the door and shouting at the occupants to open up. [continues 1210 words]
Infants swaddled in pink or blue cotton blankets slept peacefully in their cribs at the Pediatric Interim Care Center in Kent as volunteers and nurses moved around them deftly, speaking in hushed voices. Soft light filtered through the windows and filled the nursery rooms where the babies ---- 14 in all ---- slept in their blanket cocoons. In a crib near the wall, a girl slept hooked to a respiratory monitor. She was given a small dose of morphine, a respiratory depressant, to ease her through withdrawals from heroin. [continues 1081 words]
On a sunny Friday morning, two Washington State Patrol cruisers sat side by side near an overpass on Interstate 90. The trooper in one car aimed a radar gun at drivers cresting a hill almost 2,000 meters away. The trooper in the other car tore out of the median after speeders or vehicles missing front plates. But while they work traffic, these troopers aren't really traffic cops, per se. They don't get called out to respond to incidents unless they're very serious, and they don't work a beat. [continues 953 words]
Federal Way Police chief Anne Kirkpatrick is doing some departmental shuffling to put more police on the streets without asking the city for a lot of money. To that end, the department is prepared to lay off some administrative staff to free up the money for more officers. By converting three administrative positions and a lieutenant to patrol positions, Kirkpatrick said she could put four more officers on patrol to respond to ever-increasing calls without asking for new money from the city. [continues 646 words]
It used to be that people wanting to cook methamphetamine had to go deep into the woods where no one would smell the caustic chemicals. But now that there are methods to mask the smell, cookers are moving into urban areas faster than police can keep up with them. Coordinated effort In an effort to stem the encroachment, the King County Sheriff's Office is holding a methamphetamine summit in Bellevue on Monday and Tuesday with the goal of coordinating many agencies into one concentrated effort. [continues 362 words]
