By Kendall Watson
Kirkland Reporter
Kirkland sometimes may take the quiet, family-friendly town atmosphere for granted, but Kirkland Police Corporal Deb McGuire is keeping a close watch to make sure things stay that way.
The Kirkland Reporter took an opportunity to ride along with McGuire, 50, in her police vehicle, a 2007 Ford Expedition on the evening of June 23. McGuire, an 11-year veteran of the department, was the supervising officer for that evening’s patrol shift. The following is a brief diary of what the Reporter saw and when. The Monday evening shift is hardly representative of an average night patrolling the city’s mean streets, but gave us several insights into how, when and why Kirkland’s Police protect and serve.
7:53 p.m. – Cpl. McGuire arrives at the police station entrance and greets me with a friendly, firm handshake. She’s tall, has sandy brown hair and wears tinted glasses. We walk over to her vehicle and I pepper her immediately with a bunch of questions, which she happily responds to.
The Ford truck contains an array of electronics equipment, a “Mobile Command System” capable of acting as remote communications hub, along with equipment and weapons she’s brought along. She’s running through a systems checklist to ensure everything’s in working order and she’s got all she needs for the 12 hours ahead.
“We have to present a good image to the public. That’s important,” she said.
8:02 p.m. We walk into the “Sally Port,” a large, secure garage on the side of City Hall that holds a police equipment and storage lockers. McGuire takes the AR-15 rifle off her shoulder at the gun cleaning station and points the barrel down into a safe “gun barrel” to ensure the chamber is safely cleared. Standing in front of her, I wonder if it’s safe where I’m standing. Kirkland Police don’t use shotguns, so the M-16 look alike is the department’s high-powered weapon of choice.
8:07 p.m. Answering a question about her broad criminal justice background, McGuire notes she worked for several years as a detective before she started patrolling the streets last year. She earned a master’s degree at Seattle U. and was working on her Ph.D. when she started working as a police officer full-time. Her focus on domestic violence and the department’s D.A.R.E. efforts led to her involvement the high-profile 2006 stalking case of divorced Kirkland mother Sherri Peak that made national news. The suspect, Robert Peak, was found guilty of programming a cell phone under the dashboard of her S.U.V. that allowed him to track and listen her every move while driving.
McGuire said her colleagues sometimes tease her “longevity.”
“One of the guys brought in a VCR tape and asked me,’How do you use this thing?,'” she said.
8:16 p.m. After grabbing some last minute equipment – which she’ll need later – Cpl. McGuire checks-in with dispatchers to begin her patrol with a hearty “Good Morning!” I check my watch. She explains it’s customary to greet their dispatchers that way, to keep the mood courteous and polite in what can be a stressful position. As a patrol supervisor, her job is to prioritize calls and help out with police work when needed.
8:20 p.m. After stopping briefly in police driveway, we drive out towards downtown Kirkland. Immediately, McGuire starts with an overview of her patrol area, pointing out the transit center on 3rd Street and “PK Park” as trouble spots especially during the summer months. As we drive by, a man in a buttoned short sleeve shirt absentmindedly taps his foot against the bus shelter, but little else seems to be happening. We drive around Marina Park and Lakeshore Plaza next.
“This is a very popular area. We get a fair amount of traffic, even from Seattle, at the bars down here.”
8:25 p.m. A pedestrian flags us down on Central Way. A middle-aged woman with brown hair and wearing a tan jacket appears to be lost. While I’m not allowed to exit the police vehicle without McGuire’s say-so, I can see the woman holding a piece of paper with an address written on it. As the two try to find the address, a group of three men walk by, amused, and say something that causes McGuire to laugh.
“You need some 20s on that,” they said. Twenty-inch chrome rims, that is.
8:37 p.m. Stopped at a red light at the intersection of 100th Avenue and 124th Street, she checks the license plate of Chevy Impala next to us. The registration checks out through the truck’s onboard computer, which gives an audio response, “Registration, OK” along with several other confirmations. The query takes her about five seconds. She’s also got a radio earpiece plugged into one of her ears.
“You’ll find police officers have a heightened sense of observation … It’s what you’re trained to do,” she said.
8:43 p.m. A call comes in for a “welfare check”. Only a block away from the Totem Lake motel location on 124th Street, McGuire takes the call. A look of familiarity passes over her face. The caller seems to think his wife has not taken her medication and could pose a danger to herself. We arrive at the location one minute later.
8:48 p.m. She waits for another officer, Patrol 7, to arrive before she approaches the room where the woman is supposedly staying. But before they reach the front office, a woman in a pink shirt approaches them, crying “God must have sent you here.”
8:53 p.m. No one answers the door, and McGuire doesn’t legally have enough cause to enter the room. But the woman in the pink shirt is an unrelated case and McGuire starts looking into her claims that she’s just been raped.
9:11 p.m. After pulling around to the other side of the building, the victim explains that she met the suspect online through the Web site Craigslist. Although the man had since left, he gave her an alias to identify him. The alias is known to police, as they pull up his address. Meanwhile, McGuire has put a call out for a nurse at Evergreen Hospital, a detective and an assisting officer. She’s concerned about evidence at the scene, as well as the getting the victim to the hospital.
9:51 p.m. With the victim now on her way to be checked by a specialized nurse, the detective calls back to confirm that no warrant is needed and they’ll rely on her experience in evidence collection to finish the investigation. She says this is the fourth or fifth sexual assault case in the past two weeks.
“We’re only getting a snapshot of these people – that doesn’t mean that something happened the way they say it did,” McGuire said. “People don’t realize we have quite a cross-section of crime in our community.”
10:04 p.m. Another policeman, Officer Hopkins, pulls into the parking lot, lights off. He’s brought additional evidence bags, which are essentially paper grocery bags.
“It’s really a matter of whether or not it was consensual,” McGuire said.
The empty motel room, with the TV still blaring, smells of stale cigarette smoke and shampoo. A half-melted Jolly Rancher candy sits in an ash tray with a dozen cigarette buts. With latex gloves on, McGuire reviews the crime scene with him and leaves him to process the bedspread, sheets and bath towels that could be used as evidence.
10:15 p.m. We leave the scene of the alleged rape. Cpl. McGuire drives while she calls the man who had asked police to check on his wife hours ago. The woman had reportedly left the motel hours ago, but had not yet returned to her home.
10:55 p.m. She returns to Kirkland Police Station to check on other officers on her patrol. As we concluded the ride-along interview, McGuire reflected on the last time she had a passenger in the front seat.
“One of my proudest moments was when my dad came along on a ride-along with me. Every one of the officers came up and shook my dad’s hand,” she said. “Not all in my family know what I cope with.”
