Robinson: Police use of deadly force justified

SANDPOINT - No criminal charges will be pursued against law officers who shot and killed a liquor store theft suspect who opened fire on them.

"What they did was absolutely by the book," Bonner County Prosecutor Phil Robinson said on Wednesday.

Robinson declined to identify the officers who were involved in the shooting death of Mark Eric Betts on July 7 north of Ponderay. Idaho State Police conducted an investigation into the incident, but reports were not immediately available on Wednesday.

The voluminous ISP investigation, which included footage from video cameras mounted in police vehicles, served as the basis for Robinson's determination that no criminal charges were warranted.

Betts, a 49-year-old from Hope, was accused of stealing two half-gallon bottles of Canadian whiskey and a bottle of liqueur from the state liquor store in the Bonner Mall and threatening a clerk with a small wooden club when he was followed out to the parking lot.

Betts fled north on U.S. Highway 95 with Ponderay Police and Bonner County Sheriff's deputies in pursuit. The chase ended on Colburn Culver Road, where he rammed a police vehicle with his Chevrolet Blazer.

After coming to a stop, Betts was ordered to surrender, according to Robinson's charging determination memo to state police. Betts, however, emerged from his sport utility vehicle and fired a round from a .380-caliber pistol at a uniformed law officer, the memo said.

Law officers returned fire and Betts was fatally shot.

"The use of firearms and force by the law enforcement officers was lawful and justified," Robinson said in the memo.

The memo does not identify the law officers or their affiliation, although authorities have previously confirmed that a Ponderay Police unit was rammed and the shot Betts fired passed through part of a deputy's uniform without injuring him.

The lethal confrontation coincidentally fell on the ninth anniversary of the last deadly officer-involved shooting in Bonner County. On July 7, 1999, a Sagle woman was shot to death after firing on deputies as she fled a methamphetamine lab.

Sheriff Elaine Savage said last month an administrative investigation into her deputies' actions was pending.

"We will do our administrative investigation after the prosecutor's made his resolution," she said.