IT WOULDN'T HURT TO FIX POLICE STOPS

Careful observers of the Washington Supreme Court, including law
enforcement officials, should not be overly surprised by last week's
decision outlawing traffic stops as a way to investigate more serious
crimes.

Although the justices were divided, as evidenced by the 5-4 vote, they
have held that citizens' privacy rights trumped the needs of police
investigations in several cases involving Article 1, Section 7 of the
state Constitution.

That provision says: "No person shall be disturbed in his private
affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law." Accordingly,
there can be "no government trespass without a warrant." Exceptions
exist but they are few.

As in the decisions outlawing sobriety roadblocks and the use of
arrests as a pretext to search for evidence, the court pointed out
there are "unique and substantially greater protections" in the state
Constitution than in the equivalent Fourth Amendment on the federal
level.

Certainly, law enforcement is barred from using the ruse of a traffic
stop to search for evidence of a more serious crime. But what's in
plain view -- a bag of marijuana lying on the back seat, for example
- -- is still fair game for an arrest.

The U.S. Supreme Court has supported the use of so-called pretextual
stops as recently as 1996. Washington state, though, "forbids use of
pretext as a justification for a warrantless search or seizure because
our constitution requires we look beyond the formal justification for
the stop to the actual one," Justice Richard Sanders wrote for the
majority.

"In the case of pretext, the actual reason for the stop is inherently
unreasonable, otherwise the use of pretext would be unnecessary,"
Sanders said.

The facts presented in the case handed down July 1 were typical of the
pretext practice, which is routinely used by the King County Sheriff's
Department but not by its City of Seattle counterpart. The passenger
of a driver pulled over in Thurston County for expired car tags was
found to possess marijuana and a stolen firearm.

The court agreed that the evidence should be suppressed because,
Sanders said, "when unconditional search or seizure occurs, all
subsequently uncovered evidence becomes fruit of the poisonous tree .
. ."

If police agencies react responsibly to this decision, they will
develop different investigatory techniques. And, though the court
makes no mention of racial profiling, it may well curb the
discriminatory practice in which some officers use race as a basis to
waylay and search drivers.

It is not, as Mike Patrick, the head of the Washington Council of
Police and Sheriffs, said, "a nutty decision."

In our increasingly hectic lives, cars can function essentially as
mobile homes. As the state's high court has just affirmed, the
expectation of privacy extends beyond the traditional domicile and
usually can be breached only, as in the case of the home, with a
search warrant.