RULING ON TRAFFIC STOPS TO AFFECT KING COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE

A state Supreme Court ruling yesterday that bars officers from making a
traffic stop for a minor infraction in order to check out the driver for
suspected criminal activity may affect the King County Sheriff's Office.

"We do it all the time," said King County sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart.
"It's a legal stop. The fact that there may be an alternative motive doesn't
mean it's not a good stop."

The Seattle Police Department says it doesn't regularly engage in the
practice and the ruling won't affect the way its officers do their jobs.

Some minority advocacy groups and the American Civil Liberties Union say the
ruling was necessary since the practice closely resembles "profiling," where
someone is targeted because of his or her race. Profiling was not mentioned
in the court's ruling.

The court said "pretextual" traffic stops amount to warrantless searches or
seizures in violation of the state constitution's Article 1, Section 7.

The 5-4 majority acknowledged the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld pretext
traffic stops, but said the state constitution offers citizens more
protection and takes precedence.

"This is a great ruling," said Oscar Eason Jr., executive director of the
Seattle chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP). "I think law-enforcement officers all over the country
should follow suit."

Doug Honig, spokesman for the ACLU of Washington, said pretext stops are
similar to profile stops because in both cases an officer's stereotypical
assumptions about a person are directly linked to whether that person will
be stopped.

"Police are looking for opportunities to make a pretextual stop in order to
see if that person is committing a crime, and unfortunately, this is being
applied mostly to African Americans and Latinos," Honig said.

Sheriff's spokesman Urquhart said the Sheriff's Office does not profile
motorists. "Profiling because of race is wrong, and the department has
always been against that."

He said officers may be hurt by the new ruling because defense attorneys
will be inclined to accuse officers of a pretext stop even if it is not.

"Under the new ruling, if they (attorneys) claim the officer made a pretext
stop, how are you going to prove it's not?" Urquhart said. "It's going to
really muddy the waters."

Urquhart said the vice, narcotics and gangs units commonly engage in pretext
stops.

However, Sgt. Dianne Newsom of the Seattle Police Department gang unit said
the unit doesn't regularly make pretext stops because the gang population is
small enough for officers to recognize gang members. She said that in eight
years, she has never made a pretext stop.

Still, Lt. Andrew Tooke, who oversees the gang unit, said stopping the
pretext stop will have an impact.

"It's taking away a tool that we can use to address the mission of this
department," Tooke said.

Seattle's traffic division does not make pretext stops because it has no
reason to do so, said Sgt. Clay Monson. "Our job is dealing with traffic
infractions, and all our officers care about is traffic infractions. This
law shouldn't affect us at all."

The department's narcotics unit will also be unaffected, said Lt. Joe
Kessler. "We don't generally make traffic stops," he said. However, Honig
said pretext stops happen all the time. "The police department will say that
it's bad and they don't do it, but there are a large number of people who
say that it's happened to them."

Yesterday's ruling stems from a 1995 stop made by a Lacey police officer and
a Thurston County sheriff's detective using routine traffic stops to detect
gang activity.

They tailed for a time and then stopped and cited Richard Fogle, whom they
suspected of drug dealing, for expired license-plate tabs. He was carrying a
passenger, Thomas Ladson, who was searched and charged with unlawful
possession of marijuana with intent to deliver while armed with a deadly
weapon, and possession of a stolen firearm.

Ladson filed a motion to suppress the evidence against him on grounds it
was, as police admitted, a pretext traffic stop.