Editorial: Bill would limit police in protecting community

Sometimes, all it takes to stay the menacing hand of a lawbreaker is the presence of a uniform, a badge or a clearly marked police car.

But sometimes, effective law enforcement requires getting close to the bad guys without being detected.

In the interests of public order, both deterrence and stealth have their place.

Yet two Spokane County lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit an officer from driving an unmarked patrol car onto private property to do routine administrative work.

Spokane County sheriff’s Deputy Brian Hirzel was in an unmarked car one night in late August when a citizen reported that her son was being hassled by other youngsters. Among other tasks that shift, Hirzel was checking it out. In the course of his duties, he pulled into the parking lot of The Plant Farm and was filling out paperwork from an earlier traffic accident.

Except for the fatal confrontation he was about to have with the armed owner of the commercial greenhouse, it was a typical evening, for a cop – a request from a resident, an auto accident, reports, plus the constant need to be alert to any irregularities while patrolling the community he is asked to protect. Juggling such a mix of duties hardly leaves time for swapping vehicles in between.

But state Reps. Matt Shea and Larry Crouse say that if Hirzel hadn’t been parked in the nursery lot in an unmarked car, property owner Wayne Scott Creach would not have taken his gun to go investigate and therefore would not have been shot to death. Perhaps, but the same would be true if Creach had called 911 in the first place and relied on trained law enforcement officers to check out the mysterious vehicle. Or if he had laid his gun on the ground as directed by Hirzel, who was in uniform and identified himself as a deputy.

It’s true that sometimes law enforcement officers abuse society’s trust. That’s a serious issue that must be dealt with firmly and diligently – as has happened several times in this community – but in this case Hirzel has been cleared by the prosecuting attorney’s office and the Sheriff’s Citizen Advisory Board.

So is the proper response now to constrain law enforcement’s use of a common practice that helps protect citizens? Shea, Crouse and the Creach family think so. But the bill will be popular in anti-government circles that cast police officers and sheriff’s deputies as adversaries. It’s backed energetically by the Freedom Restoration Project, a Western Washington organization that favors allowing teachers to carry concealed firearms in the classroom and urges repeal of the state ban on switchblade knives.

Police are not the enemy. When misconduct happens, it should be dealt with, but the law-abiding public benefits when authorities have the means to do their job professionally and efficiently. Shea and Crouse’s bill is a needless overreaction that will score political points at the expense of effective police work.