Couple's persistence shuts down drug house

Tom and Florence Pruitt didn't sleep for nearly an entire year of their lives.

They took turns logging activity at the duplex across the street. What they saw scared them: Pit bulls running loose around the property; cars coming and going at all hours; people stumbling, clearly under the influence of something.

Fearing that half of the duplex was a drug house, the Pruitts called the King County Sheriff's Office for help. They got little. For a short-staffed department, calls like these aren't a priority.

But the Pruitts wouldn't let up. They kept calling the Sheriff's Office. They conducted their own surveillance. They took pictures and wrote down the license plate of every car that drove into the driveway across the street.

Their persistence finally caught deputies' attention. And with the Pruitts' help, they eventually uncovered the drug house and evicted the renters.

With staffing shortages squeezing out deputies in Southeast King County, Sheriff's officials say partnerships like these show that residents and police can work together to improve public safety. Until the Sheriff's Office has enough deputies to do the kind of proactive policing they want to do, this is one way to get things done.

"This neighborhood did a great job," said Deputy Jeff Harmon, who worked with the Pruitts. "My part wasn't nearly as big as theirs."

When they first called the Sheriff's Office, the Pruitts were frustrated at the response. "We really felt that they weren't listening to us," Tom Pruitt said. "They didn't believe us."

Small-scale drug houses in neighborhoods are one of the toughest problems to solve because it's not as simple as residents calling the police and reporting suspicious activity, said Sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart. Police have to witness the criminal activity before they can take action.

But the Pruitts found help in Harmon, who works out of the Four Creeks substation near Renton. "He listened to us," Florence Pruitt said.

The Pruitts said Harmon put a face to the Sheriff's Office and kept them up-to-date on the investigation.

Ideally, the Sheriff's Office would like to be able to immediately assign deputies to cases like the Pruitts', but it doesn't have enough staff to do that, Urquhart said.

Sometimes people need to be pesky to be heard, Urquhart said: Bugging the police is exactly the right thing to do.

The Pruitts noticed right away when something wasn't quite right at the duplex on their quiet street in unincorporated King County near Renton. They saw up to 40 different cars coming and going from the house every day. Once they saw a woman passed out in a car, hanging halfway out the driver's side door, while an unleashed pit bull sniffed through the contents of her purse.

In a 10-month period, they recorded 242 license plates of cars that had come and gone from the house.

Florence Pruitt said she felt unsafe in her home.

The Pruitts were right to be suspicious about the duplex. Undercover sheriff's detectives later made numerous arrests for drug possession and confiscated guns from the duplex. They believe that the people living in the duplex were using and selling methamphetamine and other drugs, Urquhart said.

The renters moved out in June, just before deputies enforced an eviction notice.

Lauren Vane: 253-234-8604 or lvane@seattletimes.com