Police honor exemplary officers
A Spokane police officer was honored this week for saving a suicidal man’s life, and several other officers received awards for exceptional service.
Officer Kevin Keller scrambled down a steep, 1,000-foot embankment last May to save a man who drove his vehicle down the cliff from the 3500 block of South High Drive. Keller approached the vehicle, perched precariously about 100 feet below the rim, and yelled for the man to jump out.
The man refused, saying he had violated his probation and didn’t want to go back to prison. But Keller assured the man that there was no warrant for his arrest.
Keller remained near the vehicle as it slid erratically down the slope in short spurts. He was alone until Officer Karl Thompson arrived to cover him with a rifle in case the suicidal man turned violent.
Police officials say the officers had trouble keeping their footing, but they proceeded down the cliff as the car continued sliding. Keller tenaciously gave the man reasons to live and persuaded him to turn his front wheels sharply while maintaining brake pressure.
The crosswise wheels began plowing into the ground and brought the vehicle under control. The vehicle was more than 700 feet below the rim when the driver finally jumped out.
Police administrators gave Keller a lifesaving award not only for rescuing the suicidal motorist but for protecting unsuspecting people on trails at the bottom of the cliff.
Other awards distributed Wednesday went to Officer Brad Moon for creating the department’s first commercial-vehicle enforcement unit, and to Detective Randy Lesser for organizing a search-warrant blitz and for “stellar” leadership of the department’s Special Weapons and Tactics team.
Moon was named “employee of the year” for working with city prosecutors to develop municipal regulations for commercial vehicles and creating a two-man enforcement unit. He obtained $110,000 in federal and state grants to buy and equip two Chevy Tahoe enforcement rigs and got the Washington State Patrol to train him and Officer Ken Applewhaite in commercial-vehicle enforcement.
Lesser received a “merit award” for organizing city and county officers to execute 20 federal warrants simultaneously in three apartment buildings. Police officials also cited Lesser’s coordination of the police and sheriff’s SWAT teams and other officers in safely resolving a crisis in which a gunman had threatened to shoot officers at a high school.