Lawsuit Contends Lynnwood Bungled Fatal Swat Raid

LYNNWOOD is asking a judge to throw out a lawsuit brought by the family of Robin Pratt, who was killed during a SWAT-team raid. Pratt's husband, Larry, settled with the county - it was a county deputy who fired the fatal bullet - but the family says Lynnwood police gave the deputy misleading information. ---------------------------------

Lynnwood police weren't even in the room the day Robin Pratt was shot to death, but her family believes they may as well have pulled the trigger.

Now Pratt's family must prove in court that Lynnwood police bear direct responsibility for the Everett mother's death - for allegedly planting inaccurate information and unfounded fears in the mind of the sheriff's deputy who did pull the trigger.

Thursday, attorneys for the city of Lynnwood will ask a federal appeals court to throw out the Pratt family's lawsuit, which alleges wrongful death, negligence and violation of Robin Pratt's constitutional rights.

Lynnwood's attorneys argue their officers had reason to believe the family was involved in the 1991 Loomis Armored car robbery outside the Lynnwood Fred Meyer store and had obtained valid arrest warrants signed by a Snohomish County judge, thus making them immune from being sued.

Pratt, 28, was shot during a March 28, 1992, arrest raid by Snohomish County sheriff's Deputy Anthony Aston as she ran to protect her 6-year-old daughter and 5-year-old niece.

Police believed her husband, Larry Pratt, was the gunman in the 1991 robbery in which one guard was killed and another injured.

But more information has come to light about Lynnwood's investigation of the family that family members hope will convince a jury Lynnwood police were a direct cause of Pratt's death. If the case goes to trial, some of the key witnesses that jurors likely will hear from include:

-- An FBI agent who worked with Lynnwood police to solve the armored-car robbery. He says he told investigators the informant who implicated the Pratt family in the heist was shaky and hadn't given them probable cause to arrest anyone. Lynnwood police went ahead anyway, only to learn later family members had iron-clad alibis and couldn't have been the robbers.

-- The informant, also a family member, who now claims he made up the whole story under pressure from Lynnwood police. "I told them . . . what they told me to tell them," he said during a deposition last January.

-- Two police training experts, one for the plaintiffs, one for the defendants, who will square off over Lynnwood's handling of the investigation and whether it led in some way to Pratt's death.

If the family prevails this week, a March 15 trial in U.S. District Court is expected, and it will be up to the family to show that Lynnwood set in motion a series of events that ended in Pratt's death. Lynnwood was reckless in its investigation and intentionally or negligently omitted key facts from the search warrant that might have affected the judge's decision to sign it, the family's attorneys claim.

The family is seeking $45.9 million in damages. Family members settled their lawsuit against Snohomish County this fall for $1.15 million.

Lynnwood's defense, in addition to claiming immunity from being sued, is to blame Snohomish County for the shooting, saying the SWAT team alone was responsible for the way the raid was planned and executed. Its officers could not have foreseen that the shooting would happen, the city's attorneys claim.

Attorneys for both sides have been warned by U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer not to try their case in the press, and neither John Muenster, one of the family's attorneys, nor Robert Christie, representing Lynnwood, would discuss their cases in depth.

But the family always has believed Lynnwood was more to blame for the shooting.

"They were just so gung-ho they ignored everything except what they wanted to see," said Debbie Hopkins, Larry Pratt's cousin and the unofficial family spokeswoman. "I think at some point it became irrelevant to Lynnwood whether the family did it or not."

Lynnwood Police Chief Larry Kalsbeek said he could not comment on the case on his attorney's orders until after it is concluded.

The two sides have met once to discuss a settlement, the same day in August when the family settled with Snohomish County. No settlement talks are under way now.

Larry Pratt decided to settle with Snohomish County after he was diagnosed with a congenital back problem that keeps him from working at jobs requiring physical labor. He needed financial security for himself and his daughter.

With money from the settlement, however, Hopkins said the family is eager to see the case against Lynnwood go to trial.

LYNNWOOD'S ROLE IN RAID

The heart of the Pratt family's case is to show that it was Lynnwood's hand guiding the actions of the Snohomish County sheriff's SWAT team.

In March 1992, two Lynnwood detectives investigating the armored-car robbery met with Samuel Blackburn and his girlfriend, Vanessa Wilson, who provided a detailed story about how Blackburn's cousin, Larry Pratt, was the gunman.

Based on the word of their informant, Lynnwood asked for help from Snohomish County and other jurisdictions in simultaneously arresting Larry Pratt and five other men in his extended family.

During questioning by the family's attorneys in a deposition last April, Kalsbeek conceded it was his decision to use SWAT teams for the simultaneous arrests at their homes rather than arresting them on the street or at their workplaces. He said he knew there was some risk to Robin Pratt and her daughter, but thought it was safer than putting passers-by at risk elsewhere.

He also admitted Snohomish County couldn't have changed the basic elements of the plan - the time, location and simultaneous nature of the raids.

But Lynnwood's attorneys say those decisions are the kind made thousands of times every day by police agencies. "It would be outrageous to suggest that agency liability could be premised solely on such decisions," they wrote in a brief.

CITY SAYS COUNTY RESPONSIBLE

Despite Kalsbeek's role in setting the parameters for the raid, Lynnwood claims Snohomish County was responsible for its own actions and never relinquished control of its SWAT team to Lynnwood. Lynnwood detectives obtained the arrest warrants and gave the SWAT team information but left the decision about how to arrest the suspects up to the SWAT team, attorneys say.

While Aston and other SWAT members recall being told that the women in the family were as dangerous as the men, Lynnwood's investigators say they never had any information that the women were involved. Detective Paul Wunders said during a deposition that he had never heard a bad thing about Robin Pratt.

The family also claims Wunders ignored a last-minute opportunity to avert the tragedy. According to his deposition, about 15 minutes before the raid, Wunders observed Deputy Aston sitting alone in a chair in a hall at the Walter Hall Memorial Golf Course, the staging area for the raid.

Wunders said that as he watched, Aston stood up and sat down twice, then said something out loud that Wunders couldn't understand, apparently to no one in particular. Then Aston reached down and slapped his weapon, Wunders said.

He became concerned that Aston was "hyped" and might cause an accident, so he went to talk to him.

"I asked him if he was aware . . . there was a woman and a child in the apartment. And he said, yes, that he was aware," Wunders said. Then Aston said: "Larry's a bad dude, and if Larry's got to go down, Larry's got to go down."

Wunders then told him: "I'm glad it's not me going in." The family contends Wunders should have prevented Aston from leading the raid.

Instead, Wunders said he walked away from the conversation feeling reassured. Minutes later, Robin Pratt lay dying in the hallway outside her bedroom.

INFORMANT RECANTS

Lynnwood based its case on the word of Blackburn, a 25-year-old occasionally employed laborer who passed one lie-detector test but gave inconclusive results on two others.

There were some holes in Blackburn's original story. According to police, Blackburn told them he learned of the family's supposed involvement in the robbery at a planning meeting several weeks before the heist.

But business records show Blackburn was working in Alaska for a seafood company during that time until a day after the robbery. Those records weren't checked until after the botched arrest raid.

Blackburn also claimed he had dumped a getaway car into the Snohomish River at the request of Pratt's brother. Despite numerous attempts, sheriff's divers never found the car.

Then last January, Blackburn surfaced again, this time claiming his girlfriend had come up with the story about his family being involved in the robbery, and Lynnwood police had coerced him into repeating it, threatening to jail him if he didn't cooperate.

Kalsbeek has called Blackburn's allegations ridiculous and said his tape-recorded statement speaks for itself.

FBI special agent Sean O'Brien had been working with Lynnwood police to solve the Loomis robbery and was asked to help them interview Blackburn two days after he came forward with his story.

FBI AGENT SKEPTICAL

After listening to him, O'Brien said he told Wunders he couldn't tell if Blackburn was lying or not, but he found Blackburn's description of dumping the car in the river "somewhat incredible."

He said he told them two things were critical in corroborating Blackburn's story: Finding the car and obtaining bank records Blackburn said would show a large deposit had been made about the time of the robbery. But Lynnwood police decided not to check bank records, which would have shown there had been no large deposits, according to court records.

Days before the raid, O'Brien said, he told Wunders that Blackburn's statements were not sufficient to obtain a search warrant, and his story hadn't been corroborated enough to proceed.

Lynnwood detectives said they believed they had established probable cause, the standard that must be met before a search can be authorized by a judge. They didn't believe they needed to check the bank account to make their case.

LYNNWOOD PROBE BLAMED

A police-training expert hired by the Pratt family concludes Lynnwood police were reckless in their failure to ascertain important facts before getting the search warrant.

Lou Reiter, a former deputy police chief for the Los Angeles Police Department who now does law-enforcement consulting, said Lynnwood's investigators seemed to have a fixation on the Pratts.

He cited Wunders' continuing efforts to "get" the family even after the shooting by investigating them in relation to matters other than the armored-car robbery.

Reiter also said Lynnwood did not use any of the normal control procedures used by police to test the reliability of new informants, such as investigating where Blackburn was on certain critical dates.

But Lynnwood has hired its own expert, Timothy Perry, a Seattle police officer and instructor at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Academy.

Perry is expected to testify that Lynnwood's methods of investigating Blackburn's tip, preparing the search warrant and deciding how the suspects should be arrested all were well within accepted standards for police conduct.