On Dec. 19, the Kirkland Police Department and the Eastside Narcotics Task Force (ENTF) raided a home on the 8200 block of NE 142nd Street. The Kirkland Code Enforcement later posted Do Not Occupy signs on the doors, and the city is now seeking an abatement on the property.

For the Finn Hill residents who lived in the neighborhood, this meant an end to three years of making phone calls reporting 147 suspicious incidents. The Dec. 19 raid was the second time a SWAT raid had taken place at the residence, the first being in April 2013 to apprehend suspects as part of a burglary investigation that also involved the U.S. Secret Service.

Dozens of police documents obtained by the Reporter through a public records request offer a glimpse into the situation. By the time KPD took over the area after the annexation of Finn Hill in June 2011, the four bedroom house had already become well known as a source of alleged criminal activity and believed to have had between 8-20 people living there.

For police, it was an easy place to find people wanted for outstanding warrants or suspected in drug dealing, vehicle thefts, property theft, traffic offenses and bank robberies. Here are some examples of the police visits.

Almost got ‘em

In January 2013, two KPD officers on patrol observed a vehicle parked outside of the house for 15 minutes. A man left the house and approached the vehicle, where he took something out of his pocket and offered it to the driver, and then went back into the house.

It was a scene residents had reported to police dozens of times while complaining about suspicious drug activity.

Police also knew two of the residents were wanted on extraditable warrants.

After the interaction, a third officer pulled over the vehicle and found three people inside. While looking at the 22-year-old male driver, one of the officers noticed tinfoil lying on the driver-side floor boards. In the back, the vehicle was covered with random items and backpacks. When the officer asked a 40-year-old woman passenger why there was tinfoil on the ground, she replied that it had come from inside of their box of pizza sitting in the back of the vehicle. When she opened the box, however, no tinfoil interior was found.

Meanwhile, the male driver was questioned. He insisted he hadn’t gone to the house to make a drug transaction.

Or, that is, a drug transaction at that particular moment in time. He claimed he had just gotten out of Snohomish County Jail stemming from an unrelated drug arrest and had gone there to pay one of the residents $60 for a past drug sale.

When the police doubted his story – the part about the payment being a past drug sale, that is – the man said they were welcome to search the vehicle.

Instead, they questioned the other woman passenger, a 23-year-old, whose story was somewhat different. She promptly admitted she and the two other individuals were heroin addicts and that they had come to the house to purchase heroin, because the man was going to “get her high” with money he had gotten from his father. As for the heroin itself, she didn’t know where it was because the man started “freaking out” as soon as he saw the police vehicle.

The 40-year-old female and registered owner of the vehicle, however, denied there were any illegal drugs and allowed police to search the vehicle, even after they told her she wasn’t required to and she could stop the search at any time.

As the cops went to get a permission to search form for the 40-year-old female to sign, the man’s recollection suddenly changed.

They had in fact gone to the house to carry out a drug transaction, he said. And, he added, there were drugs in the glove compartment. Inside the compartment, the officer found an electronic weight scale and a plastic cover with a brown tar substance that resembled heroin. There was also a plastic bag sitting in the compartment next to the scale which contained pieces of tinfoil that had “tracks,” meaning they had been used to heat up heroin so it could be smoked.

Shown the brown tar substance, the man admitted it was heroin and that the $60 was used to pay for it.

The 40-year-old woman was released, but told not to drive her vehicle. The 23-year-old woman asked the cops for a ride back to the police station but not before writing a statement admitting they had gone to the residence to buy heroin.

The man was arrested, but despite being informed of his Miranda rights, he was still willing to talk to the officers. During his interview he provided a written statement in which he admitted he had bought heroin and provided the name of the dealer at the house. He also listed the drugs the 40-year-old used and didn’t use.

The drug evidence was sent to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. In February 2014, the police received the results.

Negative.

In the end, none of the occupants were ever charged for drugs.

Fearing and loathing

On April 18, 2013, an officer observed a 34-year-old man working under the hood of his vehicle parked in the driveway of the residence. A records check showed he was wanted by the KPD on suspicion of possessing stolen property. While he worked under the hood, a 41-year-old woman took four bags from the vehicle and placed them against the house, then paced around the front yard and back yard and then looked through the bags she had put against the house.

The officers left their vehicle and arrested the man, but not before they discovered the woman had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant out of Bellevue for theft. During her arrest, the woman claimed she was from another country and America’s laws didn’t apply to her. When officers informed her of her rights she refused to acknowledge she understood them or answer any questions.

Police examined a ceramic tray used for potted plans she had been holding when arrested, and it was found to contain methamphetamines. Yet she insisted she knew nothing of drugs and that she did not do drugs. She then began talking nonsensically and was unable to stay focused as they questioned her.

Police then realized she may not have known what methamphetamines are, but she knew how to use them.

The man seemed to have the same ignorance. When they told him they had found meth, he asked curiously, “What is that? Is that a drug?”

They then searched the woman’s bags, which included a brown corduroy “Hurley” purse as well as a reusable grocery bag with yellow and purple flowers and “Jesus” written on the side with black marker. Inside the purse the officers found a glass meth pipe.

Asked about the purse, the woman declared she was a man and did not carry a purse.

In response to questions about the bags, she said “I have stuff all over. I don’t know where all my bags are.”

Ultimately, the man was interviewed but released, while the woman was turned over to Bellevue police and cited through investigation. The police report ultimately listed her as a woman.

Wardrobe malfunction

On Dec. 16, 2013, a report came in about a vehicle parked outside the residence for 20 minutes after a girl had gotten out and entered the house. An officer contacted the 45-year-old man in the vehicle, who said he had been texting while his cousin’s ex-girlfriend had gone inside. He gave the officer her name and a records search showed she was an 18-year-old woman with an outstanding warrant out of Marysville and another from Everett.

While still conversing with the man, the officer saw the woman approaching the vehicle wearing a low-cut shirt. He told the driver to leave and then confronted the woman. Asking if she had anything on her, she just stared ahead and said nothing. When he asked again, she said she had clean needles in her purse.

But they weren’t for her, she insisted, just for her IV drug user friends.

As the officer patted her down, he noticed a syringe filled with a brown substance on the top of her breasts, held in place by her bra cups.

He asked her if the syringe was capped.

“It’s in my bra!” she answered. “Yeah, it’s capped!”

She then added that it wasn’t anything, just a cleansing solution she was bringing to a friend.

On top of the syringe, the officer found a bottle of iodine and a spoon in her pocket. In her purse, he found a green case containing a rubber elastic band used to help find a blood vein, clean syringes, hard plastic tubing with brown residue and alcohol swabs.

Not surprisingly, the “cleaning solution” in the syringe later tested positive for heroin/morphine.

Mommie Dearest

In April 2012, police arrested a man at the property on an outstanding $10,000 domestic violence warrant. He also had numerous theft-related convictions and a suspended license due to a felony involving a vehicle. At the time of his arrest, he was found with three knives and a pair of pliers, as well as a vehicle full of power tools and equipment commonly used for purchasing drugs.

His explanation: He was a mechanic.

The cops weren’t fully convinced.

They asked him which business. He said he was unemployed.

Why so many tools, then? He told them he was homeless.

The story might have stuck, except the police called the man’s mother, who was the vehicle’s registered owner. She said her son lived with her and that the vehicle had been empty the day before until a man had come and appeared to be exchanging the property for money from her son. She also said he had a drug addiction but didn’t know what drugs specifically he used.

After he was arrested and interviewed, the man told police said he wished to plead the fifth.

In another incident, officers came to arrest a man for an outstanding warrant and found him hiding underneath a blanket inside the backyard gazebo.