Washington State Senate approves bill to update, loosen restrictions on police pursuits

A bipar­ti­san major­i­ty of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate vot­ed today to update the law gov­ern­ing police pur­suits, low­er­ing the stan­dard for police offi­cers to insti­gate a chase from prob­a­ble cause to rea­son­able sus­pi­cion while attach­ing a num­ber of new con­di­tions to police depart­ments’ use of that pur­suit authority.

Sen­ate Bill 5352, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor John Lovick (D‑44th Dis­trict: Sno­homish Coun­ty) was intro­duced on Jan­u­ary 13th with many cosponsors.

Noth­ing more hap­pened to it, until today, when the rules were sus­pend­ed and it was brought to the floor, amend­ed, sub­ject­ed to debate, and giv­en a vote.

The sub­sti­tute passed by the Sen­ate con­sist­ed of a com­pro­mise strik­er offered by Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall), Chair of the Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee. The com­pro­mise deeply divid­ed both cau­cus­es in the Sen­ate. Some Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors helped Dhin­gra pass it, while many were opposed, and the Repub­li­can cau­cus also split over the bill.

Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra, a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber, has been the sub­ject of a right wing pres­sure cam­paign seek­ing a roll­back of police reform bills, includ­ing restric­tions on police pur­suits. The lan­guage she offered today is an effort to strike a mid­dle ground between leav­ing the law unchanged and yield­ing to the wish­es of the roll it back and let the police chas­es rip crowd.

The effect of Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra’s changes to the bill were sum­ma­rized by staff as:

(1) Mod­i­fies the evi­den­tiary thresh­old required for engag­ing in a vehic­u­lar pur­suit by allow­ing an offi­cer to con­duct the vehic­u­lar pur­suit if the offi­cer has rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that a per­son has or is com­mit­ting spec­i­fied crimes.

(2) Lim­its vehic­u­lar pur­suits to sit­u­a­tions where the sub­ject of the vehic­u­lar pur­suit pos­es a seri­ous risk of harm to others.

(3) Mod­i­fies cer­tain vehic­u­lar pur­suit require­ments relat­ed to super­vi­so­ry autho­riza­tion and con­trol, and estab­lish­es new require­ments relat­ed to direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion with spec­i­fied enti­ties, devel­op­ment of a plan to end the pur­suit, and the pur­su­ing offi­cer’s train­ing and certification.

(4) Pro­vides an emer­gency clause.

The bill attract­ed 26 yea votes and 23 nay votes.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
ESB 5352
Vehic­u­lar pursuits
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
3/8/2023

Yeas: 26; Nays: 23

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, For­tu­na­to, Gildon, Hawkins, Holy, Kauff­man, Keis­er, King, Liias, Lovick, MacEwen, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Ran­dall, Rivers, Robin­son, Rolfes, Salomon, Shew­make, Tor­res, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Jeff)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Boehnke, Braun, Dozi­er, Frame, Hasegawa, Hunt, Kud­er­er, Lovelett, McCune, Nguyen, Nobles, Pad­den, Ped­er­sen, Sal­daña, Schoesler, Short, Stan­ford, Trudeau, Valdez, Wag­oner, War­nick, Wil­son (Claire), Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Just to give you a sense of how unusu­al this vote was, here’s the breakdown:

• 16 Democ­rats vot­ed yea for the bill
• 13 Democ­rats vot­ed nay against the bill
• 10 Repub­li­cans vot­ed yea for the bill
• 10 Repub­li­cans vot­ed nay against the bill

Basi­cal­ly, it was the inverse of a par­ty-line vote… and we just don’t see those very often nowa­days. There were pro­gres­sive sen­a­tors on both sides of the vote, although most pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors were nays, includ­ing the entire Seat­tle del­e­ga­tion (Joe Nguyen, Jamie Ped­er­sen, Rebec­ca Sal­daña, Javier Valdez, Noel Frame, Bob Hasegawa). Among East­side sen­a­tors, only Pat­ty Kud­er­er vot­ed nay, with Lisa Well­man and Mark Mul­let join­ing Dhin­gra in vot­ing yea.

Mul­let explained his think­ing in a swift­ly-issued press release.

“I want to thank my col­leagues for bring­ing this bill to a vote on the floor. Ensur­ing the author­i­ty of police to pur­sue vio­lent crim­i­nals will help us catch bad guys and keep folks safe. This is an impor­tant part of our pub­lic safe­ty mis­sion this year, along with reform­ing our drug pos­ses­sion laws, pass­ing leg­is­la­tion on gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion, and a whole host of oth­er good bills.”

“This bill isn’t per­fect, but it’s a big improve­ment over the sta­tus quo, and I want to see it move through the rest of the process and get to the governor’s desk to be signed into law,” Mul­let added.

“Vio­lent crim­i­nals should hear what this means – when you see the lights and sirens, pull over, because you can­not just dri­ve away and you will be caught.”

As men­tioned above, Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra’s strik­er requires police to com­ply with new require­ments when ini­ti­at­ing a chase under the rea­son­able sus­pi­cion standard.

These new require­ments are as fol­lows (text is from the sub­sti­tute bill):

Noti­fi­ca­tion: “The super­vis­ing offi­cer, the pur­su­ing offi­cer, or dis­patch­er shall noti­fy oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies or sur­round­ing juris­dic­tions that may be impact­ed by the vehic­u­lar pur­suit or called upon to assist with the vehic­u­lar pur­suit, and the pur­su­ing offi­cer and the super­vis­ing officer […]

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion: “The pur­su­ing offi­cer must be able to direct­ly com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er offi­cers engag­ing in the pur­suit, the super­vis­ing offi­cer, if applic­a­ble, and the dis­patch agency, such as being on a com­mon radio chan­nel or hav­ing oth­er direct means of communication […]”

Exit strat­e­gy: “As soon as prac­ti­ca­ble after ini­ti­at­ing a vehic­u­lar pur­suit, the pur­su­ing offi­cer, super­vis­ing offi­cer, if applic­a­ble, or respon­si­ble agency shall devel­op a plan to end the pur­suit through the use of avail­able pur­suit inter­ven­tion options, such as the use of the pur­suit inter­ven­tion tech­nique, deploy­ment of spike strips or oth­er tire defla­tion devices, or oth­er depart­ment autho­rized pur­suit inter­ven­tion tactics.”

Train­ing: “The pur­su­ing offi­cer must have com­plet­ed an emer­gency vehi­cle oper­a­tor’s course, must have com­plet­ed updat­ed emer­gency vehi­cle oper­a­tor train­ing in the pre­vi­ous two years, where applic­a­ble, and must be cer­ti­fied in at least one pur­suit inter­ven­tion option.”

“A vehi­cle pur­suit not meet­ing the require­ments under this sec­tion must be ter­mi­nat­ed,” the pro­posed law states. (That’s also new language).

The Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion for Police Account­abil­i­ty has opposed efforts to weak­en the restric­tions on police pur­suits that were adopt­ed back in 2021.

“In 2021, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture adopt­ed a bal­anced statewide stan­dard for police vehic­u­lar pur­suits to address the grow­ing risk that pur­suits posed to the gen­er­al pub­lic,” the coali­tion not­ed in a Jan­u­ary state­ment. “At that time, pur­suits were respon­si­ble for 10–20% of the fatal­i­ties from police activ­i­ties each year. Half of those killed were unin­volved bystanders or passengers.”

“The 2021 law pri­or­i­tizes pub­lic safe­ty: police are allowed to engage in pur­suits when there is an estab­lished threat to pub­lic safe­ty – vio­lent offens­es (like car­jack­ings, armed rob­beries), sex offens­es, DUIs, and prison escapes – but not for mis­de­meanors or prop­er­ty crimes.”

“The data show that the reform has achieved its pur­pose: there have been 3 deaths from pur­suits since the law changed, com­pared to 9 deaths in the same time­frame before, near­ly a 70% reduc­tion in fatalities.”

“The law is work­ing. We are sav­ing lives.”

Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra has artic­u­lat­ed a sim­i­lar view, and declined to give this bill (in its orig­i­nal incar­na­tion, as pro­posed by Sen­a­tor John Lovick) a hear­ing back in Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary in the Law & Jus­tice Committee.

How­ev­er, as today’s events demon­strate, bills aren’t tru­ly dead just because they don’t sur­vive a cut-off. There are ways to revive a bill, and one of those ways was used today to bring SB 5352 out of com­mit­tee and send it to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for fur­ther consideration.

The Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion for Police Account­abil­i­ty’s slideshow on police pur­suits is worth check­ing out if you’re not famil­iar with the debate over this bill. If we get reac­tion from the coali­tion to today’s events, we will update this post.