Washington State House of Representatives amends and approves police pursuit bill

A bipar­ti­san major­i­ty of the Wash­ing­ton State House has endorsed updates to 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.

The House con­sid­ered and then made minor changes to a Sen­ate bill that had appeared a month ago to be dead until it was sud­den­ly revived, replaced with new lan­guage, and sud­den­ly vot­ed out with Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can votes.

Sen­ate Bill 5352, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor John Lovick (D‑44th Dis­trict: Sno­homish Coun­ty), now returns to its cham­ber of ori­gin for a con­cur­rence vote.

As in the Sen­ate, the bill split the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can cau­cus­es to a sig­nif­i­cant extent and was basi­cal­ly the inverse of a par­ty line vote.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
ESB 5352
Vehic­u­lar pursuits
Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the House
4/10/2023

Yeas: 57; Nays: 40; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barnard, Berg, Bergquist, Bronoske, Callan, Chan­dler, Chap­man, Cheney, Chris­t­ian, Con­nors, Cortes, Davis, Dent, Don­aghy, Duerr, Eslick, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Fos­se, Goehn­er, Good­man, Hack­ney, Hansen, Klick­er, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Low, McClin­tock, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Ramel, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Rule, Ryu, San­dlin, Schmick, Schmidt, Senn, Shavers, Sim­mons, Springer, Stearns, Steele, Stonier, Tharinger, Tim­mons, Walen, Waters, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Alvara­do, Barkis, Bate­man, Berry, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chopp, Cor­ry, Cou­ture, Doglio, Dye, Enten­man, Fari­var, Gra­ham, Gregerson, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hutchins, Jacob­sen, Kretz, Macri, May­cum­ber, McEn­tire, Mena, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Pol­let, Reed, Robert­son, Rude, San­tos, Slat­ter, Stokes­bary, Street, Tay­lor, Thai, Volz, Walsh, Wilcox

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ortiz-Self

Here’s the breakdown:

• 39 Democ­rats vot­ed yea for the bill
• 19 Democ­rats vot­ed nay against the bill
• 18 Repub­li­cans vot­ed yea for the bill
• 21 Repub­li­cans vot­ed nay against the bill

There were pro­gres­sive state rep­re­sen­ta­tives on both sides of the vote, although most pro­gres­sives were nays. Major­i­ty Leader Joe Fitzgib­bon was a yes vote, as was Speak­er Pro Tem Tina Orwall and ris­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic star Tar­ra Simmons.

“The law on vehic­u­lar pur­suits has saved lives — few­er bystanders, offi­cers, pas­sen­gers, and dri­vers are los­ing their lives as a result of hot pur­suits,” said the Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion for Police Account­abil­i­ty in a state­ment sev­er­al hours before the vote. “We hope the Leg­is­la­ture is very care­ful in their con­sid­er­a­tion of whether it should be changed. Because lives are at stake.”

The strik­ing amend­ment from the Com­mu­ni­ty Safe­ty, Jus­tice, & Reen­try Com­mit­tee was described by non­par­ti­san staff as mak­ing the fol­low­ing changes:

EFFECT: Requires a pur­su­ing offi­cer in a juris­dic­tion with few­er than 15, rather than 10, com­mis­sioned offi­cers to request the on-call super­vi­sor be noti­fied of the pur­suit. Pro­vides that the emer­gency vehi­cle oper­a­tor train­ing required for pur­su­ing offi­cers must include train­ing on per­form­ing the risk assess­ment analy­sis of whether a per­son being pur­sued pos­es a seri­ous risk of harm to oth­ers and the safe­ty risks of fail­ing to appre­hend or iden­ti­fy the per­son are con­sid­ered greater than the safe­ty risks of the pursuit.

Assum­ing that these changes are accept­able to a major­i­ty of the Sen­ate, the bill could be sent to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee in a few days.