SWAT teams arrested three adults and recovered narcotics on Monday night after they raided a Kirkland home that police and neighbors have known as a “problem house.”
Kirkland detectives were prompted to search the home after they linked a cell phone dropped in a residential burglary in the area to someone who lived at the house, said Kirkland Lt. Mike Murray.
Murray said the house in the 8000 block of N.E. 142nd St. in the Finn Hill neighborhood has been a problem for police over at least the past year.
“Our patrol officers were getting complaints from neighbors about a lot of foot and vehicular traffic coming in and out of the house all day and especially at night,” he said, noting neighbors thought there might have been narcotics transactions going on. “So we’ve been watching the house for quite a while and made 10 or 13 arrests of known criminals coming in and out of the house over the last year or so.”
He said officers tried to do what they could to respond to suspicious activity through normal patrol tactics, “but we were limited on what we could do.”
The North Sound Metro SWAT Team, which includes the Kirkland SWAT Team, was able to obtain a search warrant after police recovered the phone that was dropped during a burglary.
Murray said he didn’t know if the search on Monday turned up any evidence of that burglary, but police did find evidence to other criminal activity, including some marijuana, heroin, forged documents and stolen mail.
During the raid, police also detained seven subjects and arrested three adults living at the house on outstanding warrants, identity theft and forgery charges. Murray said the homeowner doesn’t live at the house, but his son does and wasn’t one of the suspects arrested.
Kirkland detectives are handling the follow-up investigation of this case.