Court Opinion

ID: 9545901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:21:57.183439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:44.108829
License: Public Domain

TANZER, J.,
dissenting.
Today this court holds that it is constitutionally unreasonable for a police officer who takes an intoxicated 19-year-old from her automobile into civil custody after she *225gives false information as to her identification, to look in her wallet to find out who she is and where she lives. I think the officer’s action was reasonable. I think most people, judges or not, who are concerned about the welfare of their families and friends, particularly in a society beset with problems of alcohol and drug abuse, would also consider it reasonable. For this court to hold the officer’s action to be constitutionally barred and the results subject to suppression in order to deter future similar police illegality is unreasonable. Understandably, the majority has cited no law, principle or precedent that actually supports its holding and I am aware of none.
The officer was acting under the authority of ORS 426.460(1):
“Any person who is intoxicated or under the influence of controlled substances in a public place may be taken or sent home or to a treatment facility by the police. However, if the person is incapacitated, the health of the person appears to be in immediate danger, or the police have reasonable cause to believe the person is dangerous to self or to any other person, the person shall be taken by the police to an appropriate treatment facility. * * *”
This statute was enacted as a reform, superseding so-called “status crimes” such as “public intoxication,” which were invalidated in cases such as Robinson v. California, 370 US 660, 82 S Ct 1417, 8 L Ed 2d 758 (1962), and particularly Powell v. Texas, 392 US 514, 88 S Ct 2145, 20 L Ed 2d 1254 (1968). The theory of the entire legislation was that intoxication without more should be dealt with by the state as a civil problem. The state was to be helper or protector of the afflicted and no longer prosecutor of the criminal. There is some contemporary dubiety about the state’s role as helper or protector, but that is nevertheless the hopeful intent of the legislation. Looking at the facts in light of the statute, this officer’s conduct was lawfully authorized.
In the early morning hours, the police officer came upon an intoxicated young woman in a parked automobile who gave him an operator’s license which he had reason to believe was not her own and a home telephone number which he learned was not her own. The officer had probable cause to arrest her for both the crime of use of a false *226operator’s license and, possibly, for driving under the influence of intoxicants. He also had legal authority to take her to her home or to a treatment facility and to take her into custody for those purposes. He did not arrest her for either of these crimes. His decision to take civil action when he could lawfully have taken the more severe course of a criminal arrest is an indication of the reasonableness of the officer’s action. Upon taking her into custody on either basis, criminal or civil, it was reasonable for the officer to take action to learn the identity of the person. Having completely deprived that person of liberty and privacy by taking her into custody, it was also reasonable for the officer to look for evidence of identity in a place where such evidence is likely to be found, i.e., a wallet or purse. We so held in the arrest case of State v. Florance, 270 Or 169, 527 P2d 1202 (1974) (expressly overruling State v. O’Neal, 251 Or 163, 444 P2d 951 (1968), which barred an officer doing so at the time of arrest). That look was a negligible increment to the loss of privacy the person already suffered.
It may not be essential for the officer to know the identity of the person he is taking into custody, but it is certainly reasonable. The officer and the governmental entity which he represents would reasonably want to have a record of the identity of the person seized if they are later sued for false arrest. Also, it is reasonable for the police to want to know who the person is in case she were to escape from custody. It is true that the police sometimes shelter derelicts with no known identity, but this defendant is not a derelict, and one optimistic purpose of the law is to help prevent her becoming one. She is a 19-year-old woman and an object of the law is to provide some protection for her. It is reasonable for the police to be able to consider taking her home or calling her parents to take her home, for example, as ORS 426.460 authorizes, regardless of whether she wants them called. That requires that the police know her identity and it is reasonable for them to take action toward that end.
The majority purports to limit the application of the opinion to these facts. It would hold that it is unreasonable for an officer to search for identity when taking a person into custody, but it leaves open whether the same action would be reasonable when the person is booked into
*227some facility. Cf. State v. Brown, 291 Or 642, 634 P2d 212 (1981). This is an invented distinction with no theoretical foundation and the majority offers no legal support for it. Custody involves a loss of liberty and privacy to the degree reasonably required for purposes of custody. It is not a significantly greater intrusion on privacy to find out who the person is. The controlling fact is custody itself, not whether the custody is on the street or five minutes later at a holding facility. Once custody is established, it makes no difference whether the custodial officer is the arresting officer or a jailer and whether the place of custody is a police car or a building. See, United States v. Robinson, 414 US 218, 94 S Ct 467, 38 L Ed 2d 427 (1973), and Gustafson v. Florida, 414 US 260, 94 S Ct 488, 38 L Ed 2d 456 (1973). The police either can or cannot reasonably look in a pocket or purse to determine the identity of a person in custody. I would hold they can. To hedge as the majority does raises a distinction without a difference which betrays the majority’s lack of conviction in the rationale. The majority decides who wins, but it does not deal with the law of custody.
I dissent. Tongue and Peterson, Judges, join in this dissent.