Locke Calls Session On Warrant Checks Lawmakers Will Make Four-Word Change In Law

Gov. Gary Locke, acting quickly to restore a key police authority struck down by the state Supreme Court, on Monday called lawmakers into emergency session next week.

The one-day minisession, endorsed by lawmakers from both parties, is for the sole purpose of a four-word change in state law to specifically authorize state troopers and city and county police to run warrant checks on people they stop for traffic infractions.

Locke, for the first time invoking his authority to call a special session, directed lawmakers to report at 3:30 p.m. next Wednesday.

By law, Locke can’t limit the subject matter and the session conceivably could drag on for 30 days. But House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, and Senate Minority Leader Sid Snyder, D-Long Beach, said lawmakers agreed to a one-issue session and that business can be wrapped up in just a few hours.

On Aug. 28, the state high court stunned law enforcement agencies by holding that the traditional police practice of running warrant checks on traffic offenders is illegal because state law doesn’t include it on the laundry list of what an officer is allowed to do.

The solution is legislation that includes a one-paragraph preamble and a four-word addition to the traffic code: “check for outstanding warrants.”

“We really think officer safety and the safety of the public demand that this check be run,” the governor told reporters Monday. “I don’t think the public would support having police officers let a violent criminal go simply because they didn’t have the authority to double-check and see if that person was wanted.”

The State Patrol and most local authorities are continuing the warrant checks while they wait for the special session.

Locke insisted that the patrol isn’t violating the court ruling, which he reads more narrowly than some government lawyers. The 7-2 court opinion came in a case involving a Seattle hitchhiker who was halted by police for jaywalking, taken into custody when two old warrants popped up, and later convicted of drug possession when heroin was found when he was frisked at the police station.

Locke and Patrol Chief Annette Sandberg said troopers do a license check and criminal-warrants check simultaneously, and that a motorist isn’t detained while a background check is being made, as in the Seattle case.

But both said the fix is needed, both to clarify the situation and to make sure local authorities can do the warrant checks.

“The Supreme Court said that right now the statute does not permit people to do the records check, so we will … provide that statutory authority,” the governor said. “I believe in upholding the law. We are not violating the state Supreme Court ruling.”

The American Civil Liberties Union calls the procedure “a fishing expedition in the government’s oceans of electronic databases just because the opportunity presents itself.”

Locke flatly disagreed. The process is reasonable and constitutional, he said.

Sandberg said convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh was apprehended on a traffic stop in Oklahoma and that a cop-killer in North Carolina could have been taken into custody if the trooper had run a background check.