Unanswered questions

COEUR d'ALENE - Coeur d'Alene police released information Friday detailing some of the missteps officers made in shooting Arfee in the parking lot of Java on Sherman, but what they didn't release raises more questions.

Police admitted the shooting did not comply with the department's use of force policy, but information that could explain why the police cleared the scene of the shooting without contacting the dog's owner was not released.

According to reports filed by David Kelley, the officer who shot the dog, he asked the dispatcher to contact the dog's owner, Craig Jones, by telephone.

Kelley's report said the dispatcher left Jones a voicemail, but the dog's owner had not responded to the message 35 minutes later when the officers were ready to clear the scene.

Kelley also stated that he was contacted after the shooting by Dave Patterson, the owner of Java, who told him the van had been at the restaurant when he arrived to work that morning.

Patterson reported the vehicle as suspicious earlier that morning and reportedly told Kelley that he had not seen anybody around the van all morning.

"It should be noted this incident was not recorded on my body camera, as my attention was on the nature of the call," he wrote in his report on July 9.

However, 22 days later, Kelley filed a supplemental report which said he had found the video interview of Patterson after the shooting.

"While interviewing Patterson, I remember turning on the Vievu (camera), and after the interview I remember turning it off," Kelley wrote in a July 31 report, adding when he initially tried to upload the video on July 9, the camera indicated "no videos were found."

Kelley, who was reportedly on desk duty during the investigation, was uploading another video from an unrelated interview he was involved in on July 31, and discovered the footage of his interview with Patterson.

"I do not know why the video did not appear the first time I tried to upload it," he reported. "Upon this discovery, I immediately notified Sgt. Alleman that the above mentioned video was found."

In an earlier interview, Captain Ron Clark, who was interim police chief at the time, said the video shows Patterson insisting that the owner of the van was not in his restaurant, and asking for the van to be towed.

That video was not released Friday.

Chief Lee White said there was an issue with Patterson's personal information on the video, but that could be redacted and the video released, but that was the city attorney's call.

City Attorney Mike Gridley said the attorney who was dealing with the investigation was not available Friday afternoon, but the video will be released Monday, as long as it did not interfere with an ongoing personnel investigation.

Three other reports, from the patrol supervisor on the day of the shooting, were part of the investigation, but they were not released either.

The supervisor, Sgt. Jeff Walther, was the officer who signed the original press release that identified the 2-year-old Labrador as a "vicious pit bull."

"That is not something that has been released yet," Gridley said, adding he will check with the other attorney who helped with the investigation to find out why.

"We will release that too if we can," he said. "It may be something that is still part of the personnel investigation."