Court Opinion

ID: 9536481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:00:38.001054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:32.988446
License: Public Domain

RIGGS, J.,
dissenting.
The majority, citing State v. Bridewell, 306 Or 231, 759 P2d 1054 (1988), sets an expansive course for which Bride-well provides no chart. I do not believe that the language in Bridewell was intended to include the kind of community care-taking involved in this case. I would change course.
In Bridewell, the officer’s sole motive in entering the *258defendant’s property after the expression of community concern about his well-being was to determine whether the defendant had been injured, incapacitated or, possibly, was the victim of foul play at his remote, rural home. The Supreme Court held that drugs found during the search incidental to that community caretaking effort must be suppressed.
In this case, the police officer saw an apparently empty car in a convenience store parking lot, facing toward the street with the engine running. On closer inspection, the officer observed defendant slumped over the steering wheel, apparently asleep or unconscious. She tapped on the window and, when defendant failed to respond, opened the door and shook him. Defendant awoke extremely disoriented and smelling strongly of alcohol. He was arrested for DUII and a warrantless search ensued, during which the officer discovered methamphetamine.
The officer’s initial contact with defendant was a proper stop based on reasonable suspicion, and the officer’s subsequent actions also constituted a kind of community care-taking function that Bridewell should not be read to cover. Although the officer testified that her initial reason for tapping on the window and investigating further was to “make sure [that defendant was] all right,” the further investigation was clearly and legitimately broader. Unlike in Bridewell, where the sole issue that prompted the officer’s contact was defendant’s own well-being, the officer’s investigation here also served a larger, legitimate public safety purpose. A car in a public parking lot with the motor running, facing toward the street and occupied by a figure slumped over the wheel presents a level of potential danger to the public and the driver that did and, I hope, always would prompt alert police officers to perform the kind of investigation done in this case. I believe that our communities expect that this kind of “caretaking” by the police is within the legitimate public protection functions of law enforcement officials and that contraband discovered during such endeavors should not be suppressed for the reasons cited by the majority. Bridewell does not and should not speak to this kind of “caretaking” and, therefore, should not control here. The trial court correctly denied defendant’s motion to suppress.
I dissent.