Sheriff's office, regional agencies describe multi‑incident Sept. 27 response that included officer‑involved shooting and a fatality

Medical Lake — Spokane County law‑enforcement officials and local fire chiefs outlined a multi‑agency response to a string of incidents on Sept. 27 that included a brush fire, a burglary on Idaho Street, a shooting at Eastern State Hospital and an officer‑involved shooting that investigators say is being handled under Washington State law.

A Spokane County Sheriff's Office representative told the city council the region uses a cooperative CER investigative team — made up of the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, Washington State Patrol and the Spokane Police Department — to investigate officer‑involved shootings. "With the current law, the way that that it operates, we in this region have what's known as the CER team," the representative said. He said the agency that responds to an officer‑involved shooting is effectively removed from investigating its own officers except for limited early disclosures.

Why it matters: the sequence of calls produced overlapping incidents that stretched patrol resources and required mutual aid, county and city officials said. The sheriff's‑office representative told the council that deputies initially responded to a burglary report on Idaho Street and then learned of separate shots fired at Eastern State Hospital. "We had multiple suspects. We really didn't know what we had," the spokesperson said, describing dispatches to at least three separate scenes and mutual‑aid support from Airway Heights, Cheney and the Washington State Patrol.

The sheriff's‑office representative said eight deputies initially were dispatched to the Idaho Street burglary, and that some deputies later redeployed to Eastern State Hospital after a call that someone had been shot there. Because the Eastern State…