Some details missed from new law

The investigation into the fatal shooting of an alleged robbery suspect Feb. 28 by Moses Lake police officer Nick Stewart is nearing completion, said Quincy Police Captain and Central Basin Investigation Team (CBIT) Commander Ryan Green in an interview Monday.

The team, made up of 18 members of law enforcement from agencies across the basin and one Moses Lake civilian, spent the majority of last week contacting neighbors in the area of the shooting, interviewing witness officers and gathering body camera footage and radio traffic, Green said.

That portion of the investigation was completed Friday, Green added, and awaits the submission of final reports from the detectives involved. That case file will be reviewed by the lead detective, a member of the Washington State Patrol district that covers Grant County and neighboring counties.

From there, Green said, the investigation team will brief the Moses Lake Police Department command team and the Grant County Prosecutor’s Office on its findings. It will then hand the case file over to prosecutors, who will determine what if any charges will be filed.

For over a decade, CBIT has been in charge of investigating the killing of suspects by law enforcement in Grant and Adams counties, gathering evidence that helps prosecutors determine whether the killing was justified. The team is composed of investigators from Quincy, Ephrata, Othello, and Moses Lake police departments, as well as the Grant and Adams county sheriff’s offices, the Washington State Patrol and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

But the implementation of a 2018 initiative to the legislature to reform investigatory practices for when officers shoot suspects, some of which only came into effect at the start of 2020, has forced CBIT to conform to a number of new regulations. While local law enforcement works to come into compliance, there are some details that Green acknowledged may have been missed.

Under the new law, the Moses Lake Police Department is barred from having any role in the investigation into the shooting and, except for general updates to MLPD Chief Kevin Fuhr, is cut out from any information gathered. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office was also called out to the incident, but none of its deputies were involved in the shooting, Green said, allowing them to play a supplemental but not lead role.

The law also requires that “two non-law enforcement community representatives” should be directly involved in the vetting, interviewing and selecting of investigators, as well as reviewing any potential conflict of interest they might have with the suspect or the officer. They are also expected to review the case file when it is completed and review press releases, among other duties.

Only one civilian representative was assigned, however, Green said Monday.

He added that the law was only implemented at the beginning of the year, and this is the first case to which it applied in CBIT’s territory, stating that it was unclear whether two civilians actually needed to be actively involved.

Green said he would review the new state code and make adjustments for future investigations, noting that there is no fee or penalty for non-compliance with the law.

The process of selecting the civilian members of the task force is not explained under the new codes, and CBIT currently asks law enforcement agencies to create their own lists of local community members willing to volunteer for the task, Green said. Freddy Prado, was selected by Fuhr, Green added.

In an interview, Fuhr reiterated that the law was new and required further adjustments by agencies, and that Prado had been selected more or less by chance. Fuhr reached out to the agency’s lead chaplain and asked if any members of his church would be willing to volunteer. Fuhr said that the department will be working to build on that list before any future investigations.

In the case of the current investigation, Prado was given 72 hours to review a list of investigators, Green said. But while civilian members of the team are involved in the selection of detectives, they have little power to say no to a law enforcement officer they think should not be involved, Green said. Instead, those decisions are largely self-regulated.

“The decision is up to me as commander,” Green said. “Of course, we live in an area where law enforcement relies on each other, we have limited resources and we’re in a small county.”

To mitigate issues, a detective from the state patrol was chosen to lead the investigation, which Green said was the agency that had the least amount of possible conflict of interest with Moses Lake officers.