SPOKANE, Wash. – The RAVEN Task Force in Spokane County is seeking additional funding to combat complex criminal activities, including human trafficking, drug-related crimes and gang operations.
“Those illegal activities tend to be intertwined with each other,” Sheriff John Nowels said. “And generally the same kind of people are doing all of those things.”
Over the past few years, financial cutbacks and early buyouts by partner agencies have reduced the number of full-time staff members from fourteen to 6, with one additional part time employee.
Sheriff Nowels highlighted the challenges RAVEN investigators already face.
“As these traffickers get more and more access to technology and figure out ways to operate, (it’s) not on telephones anymore, everything’s done on secure apps,” Sheriff Nowels said.
Because these crimes are more sophisticated, Nowels said investigations become more complicated.
Additionally, the RAVEN Task Force, trained for undercover work, faces difficulties due to its size.
“It was very hard for them to function independently and do the work that they do with only 6 people,” Nowels said.
To address this, Sheriff Nowels said that some staff gets reallocated to help the task force.
“But the problem is as we do that, we’re drawing them away from doing the work that they’re dedicated to do,” Nowels said.
One potential solution is to add more full-time employees to the task force.
“We felt the mission of what RAVEN does fits nicely with what the opioid settlement funds were supposed to be used for,” Nowels said. “And that’s why we approached the county commissioners yesterday about funding another detective to add in there.”
During a county commissioners meeting, using opioid settlement funds to fund another investigator was discussed. According to the Spokane County Website, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office settled litigation against three opioid distributors in 2022, resulting in $518 million settlement for the state. Spokane County is expected to receive more than $17 million, with payments continuing through 2038.
But those funds have some conditions.
“I’ve heard of other municipalities throughout the United States using the funds in this way, ” Spokane County Community Services Director Justin Johnson said during the meeting.
Currently, only 67 percent of the funds are allocated.
Sheriff Nowels and county commissioners are exploring whether some of the unallocated funds could support a new Raven position to counteract the “lack of capacity” due to limited staff.
“You know, our drug problem has just grown over the last 10 years,” Nowels said. “You know, it used to be that we didn’t have large scale drug trafficking going on, inside the county. You know for heaven’s sakes we saw the first commercial pill press in the United States out in Spokane Valley a year ago. And that was a RAVEN Task Force case. So the problem is definitely here.”
During the meeting Sheriff Nowels explained the potential role that RAVEN can have in the community.
“They are the ones having the real impact on putting the people who were selling these drugs in our community, not just in prison, but hopefully in federal prison if we do the cases correctly,” Nowels said.
It will ultimately be up to the Spokane County Commissioners to decide whether to grant that funding and from what source. NonStop Local will have updates once that decision is made.
