Fire district urges restraint in lending hoses to spray suspects

CLEARVIEW — It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it creates a bit of a stir.

If someone is trying to elude arrest, and if that someone happens to have climbed a tree, some Snohomish County police and fire departments are allowed to use the cold rain of a fire hose to encourage that person to come down.

It’s a dousing meant to make someone wet and uncomfortable, not a direct blast of high-powered water. The technique was used in Snohomish on May 19 and in Clearview in spring 2013. In those cases, it produced the desired result.

It doesn’t always. During a lengthy standoff on May 7 north of Lake Stevens, police were confronting an armed, reportedly suicidal man, who was in a truck. The man was sprayed but, according to investigators, later moved for his gun and was shot and killed.

In most cases county-wide, a police officer would physically spray the water, but he or she needs permission to use the fire department’s hose or water cannon. Spraying someone with water is considered by some agencies to be a use of force, and firefighters aren’t trained to use force. Police departments that allow the tactic say it can be a tool to reach a peaceful outcome before a conflict escalates into potentially fatal violence.

Around here, the practice dates back to at least the 1970s, but a couple of local fire departments are rethinking how they might handle such requests in the future.

Snohomish County Fire District 7, based in Clearview, issued a policy memo to all personnel on May 26. The memo acknowledged the two spraying incidents that month in the county. The memo also was sent to Monroe firefighters, because their district is merging into Clearview’s.

“While we want to support law enforcement, we must also weigh the liability and public image that such actions would produce should things go wrong,” Assistant Fire Chief Eric Andrews wrote. “… If at any time the request from law enforcement is questionable please contact one of the on-duty (fire department supervisors) to communicate the request and determine what level of support we can offer.”

Most local fire departments don’t have formal policies on the issue. It just doesn’t come up enough, they say. Some fire chiefs, including in Stanwood and Granite Falls, say they’ve never heard of someone being sprayed in their communities. They also note that it can be difficult to apply blanket rules to the unpredictable variety of emergencies they encounter.

For the Clearview district, “we have to think about repercussions if something bad were to happen,” spokeswoman Heather Chadwick said.

Fire District 8 in Lake Stevens also is reconsidering how crews might respond to a future spray request, “given recent events in our community and Snohomish County,” Fire Chief Kevin O’Brien said. The fire department wants to help police but also must remember its mission of serving and protecting people and property, he said.

The Lake Stevens department likely would allow police to use its spraying equipment “in certain circumstances where lives are at stake and public safety may be at risk,” he said.

Among some fire folks, there is a concern about “the need for the fire service to remain in a non-combatant role,” Sultan Fire Chief Merlin Halverson said.

To make a decision whether to grant a spray request, the ranking firefighter at the scene must consider someone’s physical and mental condition, plus any safety risks to the person, the first responders and passersby, and the height of the tree, Snohomish Fire Chief Ron Simmons said.

The idea is to “make an individual uncomfortable and essentially make them want to give up to police,” he said. “… In our specific case, the chief (fire) officer on the scene made a decision based on the circumstances. That’s what it is. It’s circumstantial.”

In that May incident on 13th Street, arrangements were made to prevent serious injuries from a potential fall before the man was sprayed, Simmons said. The man was accused of trying to avoid arrest after an assault on his ex-girlfriend. He was sprayed several hours after he climbed the tree, according to the sheriff’s office.

Before going to jail, he was treated at the hospital for hypothermia.

The Everett Police Department does not have a written policy on the issue, “but I don’t know of any circumstances where we have used this technique,” officer Aaron Snell said.

However, the Everett department and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office share a SWAT team. A water spray is among SWAT’s available strategies for less-than-lethal force, in particular for cases where someone is suicidal or combative. The sheriff’s office has a similar stance.

The man-in-tree situation isn’t unique to Snohomish County.

In March, a man who climbed a tree in downtown Seattle and refused to come down made national headlines. He was not sprayed with a hose. A flurry of jokes about him on social media came to a halt when it became clear that he needed psychiatric care.

In the Clearview case from May 2013, a man police referred to as “armed and dangerous” climbed about 40 feet into a tree. He was wanted on felony warrants for weapons charges. The manhunt put several schools into lockdown, and neighbors within a one-mile radius were asked to stay inside.

Fire personnel manned the hose in that spraying incident, Chadwick said.

A sheriff’s office news release from the time says the suspect became compliant after “a few blasts of water.”

“They did not hit the person directly, but they sprayed above to make him uncomfortable, to make him want to come down,” Chadwick said.

“Our stance is that we would still not let the police department utilize the equipment, going back to the same initial issues as to why we are moving away from that tactic.”

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com; @rikkiking.

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