Bellevue Police Shooting: Neighborhood Suspicious of Police, Damaged by Fatal Shooting

Columbia City residents told Bellevue Police Chief Linda Pillo and other law enforcement officers that the March 22 fatal shooting of Russell Smith involving the Bellevue SWAT team had traumatized the neighborhood children and damaged community relationships with the police.

Pillo said after the meeting that the concerns raised over how the SWAT team carried out its operation will lead to changes in the department's procedures.

Neighbors held a public forum at the Columbia City Church of Hope in Seattle to air their concerns a month after Russell Smith, 51, was shot and killed by Bellevue SWAT officers at a home in the Columbia City neighborhood at 5 a.m.

Bellevue SWAT team members attempted to serve warrants on Smith and another man at a home in Seattle related to a string of robberies in Bellevue. Smith was outside the home, sitting in a Mercedes Benz.

Bellevue Police Department officers were in Seattle because the robberies being investigated took place in Bellevue. According to the Seattle Police Department's statement at the time of the shooting, the Bellevue SWAT officers feared for their lives and shot Smith after he put his car into gear.

The shooting, the raid on the home, and the subsequent shooting investigation blocked neighbors in the cul-de-sac in their homes for five hours, neighbors said.

Seattle interim chief Jim Pugel said to the crowd that some of the uncertainty was unnecessary, and that law enforcement did not adequately communicate when the danger had passed.

The , who are Bellevue Police SWAT officers, according to the Bellevue Police Department. Hiam was involved in a 2009 shooting on Northeast Eighth Street in Wilburton, which was ruled justified.

Smith's family attended the forum, and Smith's brother, Gregory Cook, said that they had not up to that point heard any apology from the Bellevue Police Department over Smith's death, regardless of who ultimately will be found at fault.

"Let's start with that," Cook asked the law enforcement officials who attended.

Pillo told Smith's family that she was sorry for their loss, but maintained that Smith's actions that day led officers to shoot him fatally, a statement that was met with jeers from the assembled crowd.

"That is not the way that our SWAT would have ever wanted that to happen," she said.

Besides Pillo and Pugel, attendees at the forum included Bellevue Police Maj. Mike Johnson, Seattle Police Department South Precinct Capt. Steven Paulsen, Lt. Steve Wilske of the Seattle Police's homicide division, Seattle Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith and Mark Larson of the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, which will lead the inquest of the incident.

Also speaking were neighbors, who described the morning of March 22 as one of confusion, fear of the commotion and violence in their front yards, and frustration at not being able to get answers at the scene from either the Bellevue Police Department or the Seattle Police Department or 9-1-1 dispatchers.

Kamisha Baseden, who lives across the street from the home where the raid took place, said that she was awoken that morning by what sounded like a video game in stereo, as gunshots and loud noises erupted through the neighborhood. She said she peeked outside and saw the SWAT team with guns drawn and yelling, "Search warrant!" at the house.

Neighbor Guy Davis said that his 8-year-old daughter is still skittish after the events of that morning and seeing some of the officers at the scene.

Other neighbors also questioned whether the level of firepower that was brought to the home was necessary to serve warrants for two men. Smith was meeting regularly with a parole officer, they said.

John Helmiere, who is the pastor of the nearby Valley and Mountain church, said that he didn't feel like the officials were hearing the neighborhood concerns.

"There's just this wall of defensiveness and an unwillingness to change," he said.

Deputy Mayor Smith at the forum, and on Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's blog, questioned whether a warrant served in a neighborhood in Bellevue would have been treated in the same way.

Pillo after the meeting said that it was important for her to hear the concerns of the neighborhood.

"The emotional piece is not always remembered, and to hear their stories, to understand the emotional aspect," she said.

Pillo also said that Smith's death was the first fatality in four decades of Bellevue SWAT operations.

"You know how many of them have gone exactly as planned. That's hundreds and hundreds of warrants," she said.

However, she said that the SWAT will create a community liaison position to help with communication with neighbors to help answer questions and help with evacuation, if necessary.

"I agree that the communication was woefully lacking in this incident," she said. 

Gregory Cook, Russell Smith's brother, said after the meeting that his family had attended the forum, hoping for an apology, "some kind of empathy from the police department."

"They literally have not called my mother," Cook said. "She's 76 years old."

Cook said right after the meeting ended, Johnson, from Bellevue's department, came up to him and apologized to him in person. However, Cook still felt that Bellevue needs to address the neighborhood's concerns publicly.

"It's bigger than just my brother," he said.