Posted on: Monday, March 26, 2001

DUI concern mustn't encourage police state

One of the most terrifying facts of everyday life in the Stalinist Soviet Union or Maoist China was the obligation of each citizen to be responsible for the behavior of his fellows. Citizens could be punished for failing to turn in their neighbors or colleagues for the least transgression. So everyone lived in constant fear.

To be sure, Hawai'i is light years away from totalitarianism. But police states needn't be built, and freedom needn't be lost, overnight. The erosion can be almost unnoticed.

And it's always for what seems a good cause. We can think of no better cause than the reduction in our community of drunken driving. But pursuit of that goal must not allow us to sacrifice the constitutional protections that make our society the envy of most others.

A case in point involves a driver who was stopped and arrested for DUI by a Honolulu police officer in January 1999. As reported by Advertiser courts writer William Cole, the officer was following up on a call from a second motorist who claimed she witnessed the driver weaving. He almost cut her off, she added.

The driver was initially convicted of drunken driving, but appealed, claiming an illegal stop was made.

The Intermediate Court of Appeals overturned the conviction. Now the Supreme Court has promised to review that decision.

At issue is the notion of "probable cause." American citizens are protected against capricious or arbitrary search or seizure. The simple question for the Supreme Court in this case is: Did the arresting officer rely solely on the say-so of a witness to pull the driver over, or did the officer arrive on the scene and himself witness erratic driving sufficient to justify the stop?

It doesn't take much imagination to picture a society in which citizens could wreak vengeance for slights real or imagined by simply "dropping a dime" when their enemy drives away in a car. Even if the driver passes the field sobriety test, the humiliation and hassle would be substantial.

As the appeals court ruled: "There must be other evidence that by itself or combined with the anonymous informant's report would lead a police officer to reasonably suspect" that genuine criminal activity was being committed.

It's vital that our citizens cooperate with police and take the initiative to report crimes, when and where they see them. But those reports must lead to, and not substitute for, proper, constitutional police work.