<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 11/20/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jennifer McFarland</b> <<a href="mailto:jmcfarland@latah.id.us" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">jmcfarland@latah.id.us
</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<p><font color="black" face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">Dear Visionaries,</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">I hope you are all doing well as we enter
the holiday season. I issued a press release a little over a week ago
alerting the public of our "Click It Don't Risk It!" seat
belt compliance campaign. I'm happy to say that of the 15 cars I
pulled over yesterday, only one person was not in compliance with Idaho's seat belt
laws. However, I was just visited by a friend form the Lewiston Police
Department (our partner in this year's campaign), and he and I talked
about our laws relative to Washington's
laws. In Idaho,
an officer must pull a car over for a "greater" offense (speeding,
having a registration sticker in the wrong place, not having a front plate, etc.)
in order to enforce the seat belt laws. In other words, I cannot pull
over a car just because I see a small child standing up in the back seat—I'd
have to have other probable cause to pull over said vehicle. The Lewiston officer I've been working with has spent a
lot of time trying to change Idaho's
laws regarding seat belt use to: 1. make it a primary offense, and 2. raise the
fines so they are commensurate with other states' fines for the
same. I've heard arguments supporting both sides to this, but I am
curious as to what Latah County's citizens think about our seat belt laws—whether
they are adequate as they are, if they should change, how they should change,
etc. My own views on seat belt usage have as much to do with how I was
raised as they do with a general aversion to the gruesome scenes I've
experienced responding to collisions wherein the passenger(s) were not properly
restrained (and having to notify next of kin). But I also realize that my
experience is just that—mine. What are your thoughts?</span></font></p></div></div></blockquote><div><br>On balance, while I support the enforcement of seatbelt laws, it's simply poor public policy to set such a low standard for probable cause, especially when that probable cause is something that could easily be misperceived by a police officer glimpsing the inside of a moving vehicle. Having such an easy-to-establish probable cause that can be established by an unfalsifiable mistake circumvents the purpose of probable cause to begin with, which is, in this case, to prevent people from being pulled over on a pretext.
<br><br>I trust the Latah County deputies and the MPD to not abuse their powers in this regard, but I don't trust, for instance, the Boise police to do so, and wouldn't support the unequivocal increase of police powers across the state.
<br><br>-- ACS<br></div></div><br>