Court Opinion

ID: 9545404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:11:35.651885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:41.493120
License: Public Domain

DE MUNIZ, J.,
dissenting.
The majority accepts defendant’s position that the only justification for the patdown here is if defendant was validly in custody for detoxification.1 The majority holds that he was not because, under the majority’s statutory interpretation, defendant’s mother’s front yard is not a “public place” for purposes of ORS 430.399(1). I would not reach that statutory issue because I conclude that the trial court was correct that the search was justified on the ground of officer safety.
The officers were invited onto the mother’s property by defendant’s sister, who was frightened by defendant’s behavior and had called the police.2 When the officers arrived, defendant’s mother and sister told them that defendant had been acting paranoid and accusatory, was agitated, was following them around and had threatened to kick the bathroom door down when the mother was in the bathroom. *692The sister told the officers that defendant’s behavior was consistent with past times when he was on drugs, that defendant had “all kinds of drug paraphernalia in his room” and that he had told her that he had bought “crack” that night. While talking with the officers, defendant sat in a rocking chair, rocking so hard that he traveled across the room backwards. He continued rocking even though the chair was hitting against a wall. The officers testified that they believed that defendant was under the influence of intoxicants.
When defendant’s sister went outside defendant kept pulling the curtains aside to try to see what she was doing and, when the officers told defendant that their conversation was over, he bolted out the front door, charging toward his sister. The officers intervened. When they put their hands on defendant, “he stiffened up,” started to scream, tried to resist putting his hands behind him and resisted being moved to the police car. Officer Woodward testified that the officers “placed [defendant] into custody at that point,” that her “initial response was simply to get [defendant] under control, and we then decided to take him to detox.” The officers then searched defendant.
The majority concludes that the record establishes that “the officers took defendant into custody before [the officer] patted him down. [The officer] performed the patdown because the officers were planning to transport defendant to a detoxification center.” 154 Or App at 686. However, the majority’s reading of the record ignores Woodward’s testimony that the reason for the search was
“for officer safety. And any time we, for officer-safety purposes, put somebody in the car, we generally pat them down. Also given the kind of behavior [defendant] had been exhibiting, I considered him a threat to my safety, yes.”
An officer may take reasonable steps to protect the officer or others if the officer develops a reasonable suspicion, based on specific and articulable facts, that the citizen might pose an immediate threat of serious physical injury to the officer or to others then present. State v. Bates, 304 Or 519, 524, 747 P2d 991 (1987). It is the totality of the circumstances at the time that must be evaluated to determine whether the *693circumstances reasonably appeared to justify taking reasonable precautions. Id. at 525. The majority’s reading of the record ignores that totality of circumstances and, instead, parses the events into discrete, isolated segments. See State v. Rickard, 150 Or App 517, 526, 947 P2d 215, rev den 326 Or 234 (1997) (treating factors as discrete and separate would dissolve the totality of the circumstances and ignore the continuing possibility of danger).
Here, the officers had been told of defendant’s past drug behavior and his purchase of crack that night and had observed his erratic conduct. The officers had an objective basis for their belief that defendant was under the influence of intoxicants. In that intoxicated condition, defendant had acted in a bizarre and aggressive manner. Defendant charged his sister and resisted and screamed when the officers tried to subdue him. Those circumstances viewed as a whole support the trial court’s finding that the officers had reason to fear for their safety. The search was a reasonable precaution under the circumstances, and I would affirm the trial court on that basis.
However, if the majority is correct that the search is valid only if defendant was legally in custody for detoxification, I do not agree that defendant’s mother’s front yard is not a “public place” for purposes of ORS 430.399(1), the civil detoxification statute. ORS 430.399(1) authorizes the police to take a person to a treatment facility if the person “is intoxicated or under the influence of controlled substances in a public place,” but does not define “public place.” The majority concludes that “[p]lacing ORS 430.399 in its historical context reveals that the legislature intended for ‘public place’ to mean a place that the public is free to enter at will.” 154 Or App at 688. The starting point for the majority’s conclusion is former ORS 166.160. Under the majority’s interpretation of that statute, the police had the authority to remove intoxicated people from public places, which the majority concludes meant “places that they and the public otherwise had a right to be.” The police also had the authority to “deal with intoxicated people who were in private places but who caused public disturbances.” 154 Or App at 688. The majority concludes that, in decriminalizing the offense of public drunkenness in 1971, the legislature carried over the distinction in former *694ORS 166.160 between public and private places when it enacted ORS 430.399 and former ORS 166.035. The majority reasons that former ORS 166.035 provided for a crime of public intoxication for disturbing the public from any public or private business or place; therefore, “public place” in the civil statute, ORS 430.399, must necessarily be limited to a place where the public has a right to be.
However, the majority’s interpretation ignores the legislature’s specific treatment of “public place” in the 1971 enactments. At the same time that it enacted former ORS 166.160 and ORS 430.399, the legislature enacted ORS 161.015(10). That statute specifically applied to former ORS 166.160 and defines “public place” as limited to “a place to which the general public has access.” The legislature did not make that definition applicable to ORS 430.399. I conclude that the historical context shows that the legislature knew how to limit the definition of “public place” but that it did not do so for purposes of ORS 430.399.
The majority’s analysis bypasses the framework of PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or 606, 610-11, 859 P2d 1143 (1993), under which the starting place in statutory interpretation is the text in context, giving words of common usage their ordinary meaning. “Public” is commonly understood to mean “accessible or visible to all members of the community” and includes that which is “exposed to general view.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1836 (unabridged 1993) (emphasis supplied). Applying the common understanding to “public place” in the text of ORS 430.399 shows that defendant here was in a place “exposed to general view” and, thus, was in a “public place” for purposes of ORS 430.399. There is no need to go further to interpret “public place” in ORS 430.399.
The majority’s limitation of police intervention in situations involving intoxicated persons leads to an unreasonable result. Under the majority’s interpretation, the police would not be authorized to take for treatment a person passed out in a drunken stupor in a front yard when the temperature is minus 20 degrees. Nor would the police be able to take for treatment a person having delirium tremens in a night club restricted to members only. Although the majority *695“appreciates the difficulty” of officers trying to deal with such situations, it concludes that the problem is a legislative one. With all due respect, I suggest that the problem results instead from the majority’s erroneous interpretation. I dissent.
Deits, C. J., and Warren and Riggs, JJ., join in this dissent.

 The trial court did not find a valid detoxification hold.

 Defendant’s mother testified that she did not think her daughter was scared, but the trial court found that the mother’s testimony was not reliable.