Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Myers hopes to work with legislators
COLFAX – Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers finds three controversial bills adopted last summer to be problematic with their impact on his office.
The two House bills and a Senate bill were to change the way police operated in Washington. The bills were written by Western Washington members of the state legislature without consulting law enforcement. It was politicians versus police.
“I don’t think there was any problem with the way we were doing things,” Myers said. “The ultimate goal is to keep our community safe. Our charge is to find solutions.”
Lawmakers catered to the anti-police movements and passed bills to reduce the use of force, limit police’s ability to detain and pursue people, and decriminalize drug possession.
“These are roadblocks and not helping the situation,” said Myers. “The way the language is written it could be problematic.”
House Bill 1310 requires police to “exhaust available and appropriate de-escalation tactics … (and) take as much time as necessary, without using physical force.”
The law directs police to use more officers to deescalate the situation before making physical contact with people.
The law is vague on how to limit de-escalation and can be interpreted to mean police need to keep withdrawing to avoid a physical interaction.
“We’ve always been using the least restrictive means or levels of force,” Myers said. “If they are going to hurt themselves or someone else we are not going to keep backing up and waiting for three days.”
House Bill 1054 changed police’s ability to detain people for questioning and limit the pursuit of fleeing suspects.
An officer needs evidence to justify the reason to physically arrest or detain a person, even if they are a witness. Police have to let people leave until the new higher bar is met. Witnesses saying a person was involved in a crime or seeing a person walking out of a house where a crime was committed doesn’t provide enough legal cause to detain a person, said Myers.
“We can’t detain someone where we could before. The ability to detain people ... is critical,” said Myers. “We have to let them walk away and sometimes the information we need walks away with them.”
Law enforcement was able to detain people for a reasonable amount of time to determine if they are involved with a crime until HB 1054 became law.
“We’ve had numerous situations where we had to let people go until we had more information,” said Myers.
The law limits police pursuits of people fleeing in vehicles. Police no longer pursue fleeing suspects for property crimes.
“People flee cops for a reason … drugs in their vehicle, warrant, committed a crime … the only reasons you can pursue now is if a person committed a violent act on another person … or a sex offense, or the person is driving under the influence,” said Myers. “You can see where that makes an officer’s job difficult.”
Senate Bill 5476 changes the rules for arresting people possessing illegal drugs. To make an arrest, police must document the person as a repeat offender.
“It’s almost like they legalized possession,” Myers said.
The new law requires that when suspects are caught in possession of controlled substances, such as heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine, police are required to give them a referral to a drug assessment and treatment for their addiction.
“They never would have gotten treatment without the threat of the system,” said Myers.
If caught three times, officers can issue a misdemeanor citation and refer the case to the prosecutor.
“The minute you decriminalize the possession of drugs, you open the market,” said Myers. “Washington State is a great place to traffic drugs.”
Myers said drug trafficking and use tend to draw property and violent crimes.
“The thing about Whitman County, I often said that where your drug problem goes, your other problems go,” said Myers. “We know so many of our problems come from drug problems.”
The three laws have created problems for enforcement. Myers said the legislature should go back to the sheriff’s and police chiefs and improve the laws using law enforcement’s experience.
“We’re not quite a year into this … We’re going to try to figure out how to do our job better and make the right choice. Officers still need to use their common sense and judgment,” said Myers. “Our goal right now is how to work with our legislative bodies to make the laws work better.”
Bill Stevenson is the former editor of the Whitman County Gazette, Colfax Daily Bulletin and Franklin Connection. He has nearly 30 years of journalism experience covering news in Eastern Washington.
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