The King County Juvenile Detention Center does not hold kids suspected to be involved in property crimes. But when they are responsible for potentially millions of dollars in damage, should exceptions be made?

That’s the question a Federal Way business owner is asking after being the victim of attacks to his property on three consecutive nights last week. Michael Murphy told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that three middle-school-aged children were arrested for causing between $50,000 and $2 million worth of damage to the specialized equipment at his construction business.

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The three juveniles, who live in a nearby apartment complex, were caught on surveillance and arrested Friday afternoon, he said. They were taken to King County Juvenile Detention Facility, which refused to hold them, essentially releasing the youth back to their parents, Murphy said.

Federal Way Police Chief Andy Hwang explained the situation to Murphy via email, saying that the KJDC
policy does not allow for juvenile bookings for property crimes.

“It was clearly explained to them the unusual circumstances and the amount of damage and loss involved in this case,” Hwang wrote in the email. “We had high ranking police representative contact KCJDC and requested an exception to the policy without success. The juvenile suspects were released to their parents. It is unlikely that the suspects will return to your property since they no longer have the anonymity; however, I felt it was important to keep you updated and kept in the loop.”

Murphy said police indicated that they would ultimately push for charges to be filed, but that, until then, the kids will be free while awaiting potential prosecution. Murphy, who has four grown children, believes this is a flaw in the system.

“I learned fairly early on in my parenting career (that) connecting the consequence of a behavior to the actual behavior is important,” he said. “So, being detained over the holiday weekend, or whatever it would be, was important and at least some sort of message would be sent by doing that. As a parent I understand that. Taking whatever period of time it will be to the point when they are actually prosecuted, if they are prosecuted, you lose the effect.”

Murphy says he doesn’t want to simply whine that this needs to be fixed and that he’d like to be part of the solution, even if he’s not sure what that is. His initial response was to put up a handmade sign outside his business that reads, “Business’s [sic] stay out of Federal Way.”

“What I want to do is change that sign to ‘business come to Federal Way,'” he said. “But we need political pushback. Until the politicos feel the heat, nothing is gonna happen.”

Murphy noted that police mentioned the possibility of getting the families evicted from the apartment, but that is not what he wants.

“I don’t know anything of these parents: I don’t know if they’re good parents, bad parents or anything,” he said. “I’m not trying to put these people under a tarp; I don’t want that. But I just don’t want to be paying a disproportionate share of the program. So how do we as a society try to reach out and fix these problems?”