OFFICER ACCUSED OF SEARCHING WOMAN APPEALS FIRING

Veteran Cobb Police Officer Lance M. Warren was fired last month after his
bosses decided he improperly searched a female car passenger during a
traffic stop in March.

Two police officers who witnessed the stop complained to their supervisors
about Warren's "inappropriate actions," according to a police memo.

"Ninety-nine percent of our officers do the right thing, and they expect
the others to do the right thing," Police Chief Lee New said.

Warren, 37, was fired June 7 and has appealed his dismissal. He is
scheduled to appear before the Civil Service Board on July 16. In his
request for appeal, Warren wrote that he felt he did not violate
departmental policies and that his punishment was too extreme.

The traffic stop in question occurred around 5:30 a.m. March 20 on a cold,
windy, rainy day, according to a police internal affairs investigation.
Warren pulled over a 1995 green Ford Taurus because the passengers, a
husband and wife, weren't wearing seat belts and because the car had
drifted over the center line of South Cobb Drive in Smyrna near Pat Mell Road.

The driver, a 53-year-old man, was driving his wife to work, but he was
driving on a suspended license, the report says. After repeated questioning
by Warren, the man admitted that he was on probation for a drug charge, the
internal affairs report says.

When he was first pulled over, the man told Warren he was driving his wife
to the hospital because she was having an asthma attack. But emergency
medical workers were called to the scene and examined the 50-year-old
woman. They said she was not having an attack, the report says.

Warren then told the woman to get out of the car. She was wearing a light
sundress. He searched her purse and her hat and asked her if she was hiding
drugs, the report says. He then searched her upper body, the report says.
Then he asked permission to search her waist and pelvic area, the report
says. He told her that if she did not consent to the search, "We'll just go
ahead and stand out here," the report says.

"Officer Warren decided to keep (the woman) standing in the cold rain until
she consented to a search of her person. She was crying at the time and
very cold," the report says.

After the traffic stop, the two officers who witnessed it, K.E. Epps and
B.A. Danz, informed their supervisors that they felt the search had been
inappropriate.

"When he did that, it made me feel very uncomfortable with the situation
when that was going on," Danz says in the internal affairs report.

"The husband was in the back seat of the car without handcuffs on, beating
on the window saying, 'Why are you doing this to my wife,' " the report says.

The husband was arrested and charged with driving on a suspended license,
not using a seat belt, failure to maintain lane and failure to yield to an
emergency vehicle. The report states that Warren should not have charged
him with the last offense because the man did pull over for the traffic stop.

The wife was not arrested but was given a ticket for permitting a driver to
violate state law by driving with a suspended driver's license.

She went to police headquarters the same day to complain about her treatment.

The internal affairs report concluded that Warren should be dismissed for
violating the department's policies on arrest procedures, search and
seizure, code of conduct and performance of duty.

Throughout his 13 years with the department, Warren consistently received
positive evaluations, particularly for working hard, writing good reports,
putting in extra hours and maintaining excellent physical fitness,
evaluations show.

But another incident last year did appear on his evaluation.

During a traffic stop on Feb. 1, 2000, Warren pulled over a female driver
and found cocaine residue in a bag as well as two pills and several photos
of the female driver naked and one of her smoking marijuana.

Rather than pursuing a felony charge of possession of drugs and working
with other agencies to develop the female as an informant, the evaluation
says, Warren "chose to seize the photos of the naked woman in exchange for
future drug information."

"Although Officer Warren is a knowledgeable officer, he sometimes does not
balance that knowledge with reason," his supervisor wrote.

"The woman subsequently complained about the conduct of the investigation,
and the department's possession of the photos," the evaluation says.

County Commissioner Sam Olens said the commission learned of Warren's
dismissal but had nothing to do with the decision.

"It's excellent that our officers do the right thing even if it's at the
expense of another officer," Olens said.

"I'm proud our officers took the initiative to right the wrong."