WA: Police Officer Charged With Obstruction In Illegal Hunting Investigation

Police Officer Charged With Obstruction In Illegal Hunting Investigation

February 11, 2011

SPOKANE, Wash. -- A Spokane Police detective is on paid administrative leave after he was charged with obstructing an illegal hunting investigation. Detective Jeff Harvey, the vice president of the Spokane Police Guild, is suspected of obstructing a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officer when the officer was investigating a report of illegal duck hunting on the Peone Prairie. On January 22 Fish and Wildlife Officer Dave Spurbeck received a report of three boys shooting after legal hunting hours in the area of Peone Road near Deadman Creek.

A Spokane Police detective is on paid administrative leave after he was charged with obstructing an illegal hunting investigation. KXLY4's Jeff Humphrey reports.

The witness gave Spurbeck the license plate of a truck that had picked the boys up and the officer spotted the silver Dodge leaving the area. Spurbeck pulled the truck over at State Route 206 and Forker Roads and the driver, later identified as Detective Harvey, immediately denied doing any shooting. Spurbeck said Harvey refused his commands to allow the officer to interview the teens and that he was forced to put the detective into a goose-neck escort hold and call for backup. Harvey eventually calmed down, Spurbeck said, and when the wildlife officer talked to the teens in the truck they admitted shooting three mallard ducks five minutes after legal hunting hours expired. Spurbeck wrote in his affidavit that when he learned Harvey was a police officer he "was shocked that a police officer would treat another police officer the way he treated me." “I feel the way Harvey acted was completely out of line for any citizen let alone a fellow police officer,” Spurbeck wrote. Fish and Wildlife officials forwarded Spurbeck's report to the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office which charged Harvey with one count of obstructing a law enforcement officer.

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