A trio of Grays Harbor County cities whose police departments formed a SWAT-like “critical response unit” will pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of an emotionally disturbed Montesano man who was shot and killed apparently while trying to surrender to dozens of officers who had surrounded his home.
Patrick Easton West, 43, was on the phone with a negotiator who had announced that West was calming down when a team of heavily armed officers, wearing camouflaged combat gear, forced their way into his house on April 16, 2019, according to police reports and evidence obtained by the family’s Seattle attorneys.
One of the officers, armed with a handgun and carrying a bulletproof ballistic shield, fired seven shots at West, who was struck three times. He died the next day.
West, who had no criminal history but suffered from mental health issues according to his family, had barricaded himself in a small manufacturing shop in the basement of his home. He did not have a firearm, but had been seen carrying a metal bar with tape on one end, which police later described as a “makeshift sword.”
Officers said West was ordered to drop the bar and had thrown it out a door onto the lawn when the shots were fired, according to the lawsuit.
After the shooting, police said the metal bar struck an officer, although there was no evidence anyone was injured, according to the lawsuit and police documents.
Evidence also showed that statements made by officers — recorded by a nearby Washington State Patrol cruiser’s dash-camera audio — stating that West had exited his workshop at one point and struck a fence with the metal bar was later construed by Montesano police Chief Brett Vance to justify the callout of the Aberdeen Regional Critical Response Unit (ARCRU), concluding the incident amounted to assault on a police officer.
During the entire incident, West’s wife and parents were nearby, said the family’s lawyer, Tim Ford, and begged law enforcement to leave West alone and let the situation calm down. They heard the shots and saw police pull a bleeding West from the workshop. The lawsuit states West was the father of a 9-year-old daughter.
“Instead of focusing on de-escalation and responding appropriately to Pat’s symptoms, the defendants in charge of ARCRU steadily escalated their militarized response,” Ford wrote in the lawsuit, filed last year in U.S. District Court. “They seized Pat’s home and property, surrounding it with armed officers, positioning snipers on nearby rooftops and driving an armored vehicle into Pat’s front yard.”
“And finally — despite hearing from their own negotiators that Pat was ‘coming down’ from his agitated state — they approached the house with a heavily armed team to breach the door to Pat’s basement workshop with a battering ram,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claims once officers were in the basement, they yelled conflicting commands, ordering West to drop the metal bar. When he threw it out the door, the lawsuit claims Hoquiam Officer David Peterson fired seven rounds with his pistol, striking West in the chest and back.
Montesano Mayor Vini Samuel, in a statement issued through the city’s attorney in the matter, Thomas Nedderman, said that “Anytime a person dies and law enforcement is involved, it’s a tragedy.
“Our condolences to the family and to the officers involved,” the mayor said. “We work hard to keep Montesano a safe place to live, and it has been almost 30 years since our community suffered any form of violent death absent suicide.
“Our goal is always to protect all members of the public by focusing on preventing such incidents and we will continue working toward that goal through training, accountability, transparency and community policing,” Samuel said.
The lawsuit alleges that while the ARCRU — which consists of officers from Aberdeen, Montesano and Hoquiam — “engages in paramilitary tactical operations, including deployment of officers in camouflage uniforms and tactical gear, special weaponry, snipers and an armored vehicle, it is not called a ‘SWAT’ team because it does not meet recognized ‘SWAT’ training or operational standards.”
Indeed, according to reports published by the city of Aberdeen, the lawsuit states, “the ARCRU rarely trains as an entire team, and the crisis negotiators train even less than the tactical officers. The ARCRU training ‘places an emphasis on shooting.’”
Court documents allege that when Chief Vance initially requested an ARCRU response, the commander of the unit declined, alleging the circumstances didn’t warrant a callout. The commander, identified in documents as Aberdeen police Officer Dale Green, offered to send a crisis negotiator instead.
“Shortly thereafter, Chief Vance requested ARCRU activation again, now reporting that Pat had hit his cedar fence with a steel billet while a Montesano officer was on the opposite side,” the lawsuit allege. While the officer wasn’t injured, Vance reportedly stated the incident amounted to assault on an officer “and we’re calling it a felony,” which allowed for the heavily armed unit to be activated and respond to the home, court documents state.
Over the next several hours, heavily armed officers, snipers and tactical teams surrounded West in the home, taking up positions on the property “without a warrant or exigent circumstances,” according to pleadings in the case. All the while, West’s family members repeatedly told officers that West was not a danger, did not have access to firearms and that officers’ actions were only serving to aggravate the circumstances, said Ford, the family’s attorney.
“He had a history of emotional and mental problems, but he had never harmed anyone and had never been arrested before,” Ford said. “His parents and wife told them to just leave him alone.” Ford said the family was assured that police had no intentions of using force or even taking firearms into the home.
Meantime, Montesano officers had gone to a Grays Harbor County District Court judge and used the incident involving the fence to obtain a warrant to “extricate” West from the home and take him into custody. Ford said the warrant was a “pretext” and that the judge did not have the authority to issue it without criminal charges, which had not been filed.
While this was taking place, the lawsuit alleged that West had talked several times to a crisis negotiator and his wife and by 6 p.m., just before the team breached the home and shot West, they both reported a change in West’s demeanor, noting that he was less agitated and “seemed to be ‘coming down.’”
