Karin Riebe was murdered by her son. Did police let it happen?

At 1:30 on the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2021, 58-year-old Karin Riebe walked through the garage to enter her home in Auburn, Washington. From inside, Shawn Riebe, her 40-year-old son, fired a dozen rounds, killing his mother and her dog. He then held off officers for seven hours before he surrendered.

This horror was not unexpected and should have been prevented. According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the King County Sheriff’s Office by Karin Riebe’s six siblings, she had made two 911 calls about her son that morning, and after those two calls, neighbors had also called 911 to report a violent disturbance at her  home. The family says the law enforcement officers who responded to the Riebe home earlier that day didn’t arrest Shawn Riebe and take his weapons when they had a chance because they were protesting against a then-new Washington law governing the permissible uses of police force.

The King County Sheriff’s Office told a Seattle news station, “KCSO is unable to comment at this time due to pending litigation.”

“This law,” the suit contends, “became a rallying cry for law enforcement departments around the state to claim their hands were tied in dealing with suspects in mental crisis like Shawn. Law enforcement weaponized this law to fight against increases in police accountability.” A report from The Seattle Times, which wrote a story about the lawsuit, confirms that there were “statewide protests and claims of confusion from law enforcement” after Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill in May 2021 establishing new use-of-force standards for law enforcement.

We don’t know if a court will agree with the plaintiffs’ version of events. Some law enforcement officers in Washington claimed to be legitimately confused about the new law’s requirements. However, in response to reports of confusion, on Aug. 2, 2021, more than a month before Shawn Riebe killed his mother, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson released a memo explaining that the new law did not “prohibit a peace officer from responding to a call for assistance in a situation involving mental health crises” and that “Neither the statute’s plain language nor its expressed intent evidence any limitation on peace officers responding to community caretaking calls.”

Even so, according to the lawsuit filed by Karin Riebe’s siblings, deputies cited the new law and said they “weren’t going to make contact since he had a gun and this was a mental health situation.”

According to a news report published the day after Karin Riebe was killed, a probable cause statement from the King County Sheriff’s Office said the woman said her son had ordered her out of her house at gunpoint but deputies left without making an arrest because it wasn’t clear if a crime had been committed.

When laws are designed to increase accountability and decrease fatal interactions between law enforcement officials and the public, it is important that the leaders of law enforcement agencies and the officers they supervise make good-faith efforts to embrace those changes and not communicate to the public that such laws tie their hands. But in this case, an attorney representing Karin Riebe’s family members says, “Law enforcement weaponized this law to fight increases in police accountability.”

I hold a doctorate in clinical psychology, have practiced and have served in the department of psychiatry at the University of Rochester. As chief of the Rochester Police Department from 2002 to 2005, I created and administered training programs to equip officers with the skills to deal with people in mental crisis. I find the Washington state statute in question, HB 1310-2021-22, to be in the mainstream of use-of-force protocols. Indeed, the legislation makes clear that “a peace officer may use physical force” to “protect against an imminent threat of bodily injury to the peace officer, another person, or the person against whom force is being used.” This permission coincides with an officer’s overriding duty and obligation to serve and protect.

The lawsuit filed by Karin Riebe’s family says that Shawn Riebe loading his weapon and threatening his mother constituted a felony assault and that officers should have treated it as such and arrested him.

It is egregious and exceptionally tragic that law enforcement officers who, according to the lawsuit, were turned away from Karin Riebe’s home by a supervisor, appear to have refused to enforce domestic violence laws and or to intervene in what any reasonable officer would judge to be a clear and present danger.

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“My son is sick. He’s bipolar manic, and he just got his gun out and loaded it and told me I’m not welcome in my own home and told me to get out,” Karin Riebe told a 911 dispatcher at 8 a.m. the day she was killed. By that point, according to the lawsuit, medics had already come to her home and left after her son had refused treatment.  At 10:30 that morning, according to the family’s lawsuit, she told a deputy who’d responded to the neighbors’ 911 calls, that she wanted him to get her son help “even if that means taking him out of here kicking and screaming.”

After she was reportedly told by a deputy that they “weren’t going to make contact” with her son, the lawsuit says, Riebe followed that deputy’s advice to give her son time to cool off before returning home. According to the lawsuit, she stayed away until 1:30, at which time, her son shot her dead.

Officers must often make agonizing life or death decisions and do so in the heat of the moment. But the oath all peace officers take and the mission we all accept put protecting and preserving life ahead of all other concerns. If, as the lawsuit claims, officers refused to arrest Shawn Riebe to register their opposition to the new law, then they abdicated their duty.

Off the clock, police officers may act to bring about legislative change and should do so when they feel it necessary. And, indeed, Inslee signed legislation last year that modified HB 1310 in a way that some police groups had asked for, including spelling out the definition of the word “force.” When on the job, however, they are to enforce all laws, exercising their trained judgment in each enforcement action. Police officers have neither the right, the obligation nor the luxury of disputing the laws they enforce, especially when lives depend on the choices they make.