Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
DAVENPORT – 12 new laws changing the way law enforcement conducts its job that passed state legislature in May and went into effect Sunday, July 25 are causing concern and an adjustment period for local officers, sergeants, deputies, chiefs and sheriffs.
The laws, which vary from restrictions on pursuing vehicles to banning chokeholds to requiring mental health calls to be responded to by mental health professionals or EMS workers instead of law enforcement will change the way many emergency calls and situations are handled.
“Overall, there’s significant concern. A lot of this has to do with deputies wanting to do the right thing. We want to go to these mental health calls, and when necessary take them into protective custody to make sure that they get the help they need,” Lincoln County Sheriff Wade Magers said. “With the new direction, if we show up and that turns into a physical altercation, there can be consequences to the deputy (like) civil consequences (or) potential criminal consequences. If we don’t show up, there’s potential consequences to the community.”
Magers is particularly concerned about the impact of requiring mental health professionals or EMS workers to respond to mental health calls, including suicides, where law enforcement usually responds first in rural counties like Lincoln County.
“With volunteer fire and EMS, usually they wait for law enforcement to go and make a situation safe. Now, the law is basically saying that unless there’s a crime involved, we are not to respond to those situations from the standpoint of using force to take somebody into custody,” Magers said. “With volunteer EMS, that can be a problem because they’re not necessarily equipped to be responding to that and (are) waiting to see what happens.”
Some laws will have more local effects than others. A new pursuit law restricts an officer from pursuing a vehicle unless the driver is under the influence, the driver poses an imminent safety hazard to others or probable cause exists for a violent offense, sex offense or escape from custody or detention facility.
A supervisor’s authorization is required for a deputy that doesn’t have previous pursuit authority to pursue a vehicle.
“My reserve officers will need authorization from me or Corporal Bryan Gordon to pursue a vehicle,” Reardan police chief Andy Manke said. “That will be a frustration for us.”
Manke said another law that will have local impact is a juvenile’s right to an attorney before waiving their Miranda rights. That law doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, but will be another adjustment for local law enforcement.
“They have to get access to an attorney before they legally waive their Miranda rights…and their parents can’t waive their rights either,” Manke said. “We can still arrest them, but if they refuse to speak and then talk to an attorney, the interview’s over.”
The restriction on chokeholds was already something in place locally unless an officer needs to use deadly force in a fight for their lives, Manke said.
Effective July 1 was Senate Bill 5476, or the Blake Decision, which makes drug possession a misdemeanor or a felony. This requires officers to officer drug treatment instead of jail for the first two contacts made with a drug suspect and can’t charge the suspect until the third contact. Further, the charge can’t be made until drugs are confiscated (which is still allowed) and verified as illegal narcotics through a drug analysis lab.
“The significance (is this) can result in somebody (staying free) that should be in jail, because often when you have a drug habit, in many cases you’re a thief or a burglar, and when you’re incarcerated those property crimes decrease,” Magers said.
Altogether, local law enforcement views the new laws as confusing, conflicting and concerning.
“Frankly, we’re waiting for better guidance while we have to live with this,” Magers said. “In many of these cases, there’s going to be model policies a year from now…to give us guidance, but yet the law goes into effect immediately.”
“We’re going to air on the most restrictive interpretations of the laws. That’ll be important for us so we don’t get into civil liability issues,” Manke said. “But it will make our job to protect and serve more difficult.”
Drew Lawson is the editor of the Davenport Times. He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University.
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