DUI Checkpoints in Washington: Why the State Runs None

RCW 46.64.060 and RCW 46.64.070 were enacted together in 1967 and are the only place the Legislature has authorized stopping a driver who has done nothing to draw attention. RCW 46.64.060 states the purpose in one sentence: to exercise the police power of the state to protect the health and safety of its citizens by assuring that only qualified drivers and vehicles which meet minimum equipment standards operate upon the highways. RCW 46.64.070 then grants the power and hedges it four ways. It runs to officers of the Washington State Patrol and to no other agency. It operates during daylight hours. It requires plainly marked state patrol vehicles. And its subject matter is limited to requiring the driver to display a driver's license, or to submitting the vehicle to an inspection and test against the minimum equipment requirements of chapter 46.37 RCW, or both. The section adds a grace period that has no counterpart in ordinary traffic enforcement: no criminal citation may be issued for a period of ten days after a warning ticket pointing out the defect.

The second stopping power that does not require watching the driver's behavior is RCW 46.20.349, and it is targeted rather than general. Any police officer who has received notice from the Department of Licensing that a person's driver's license is suspended or revoked may, during the reported period of that suspension or revocation, stop any motor vehicle identified by its vehicle license number as being registered to that person, and the driver must display a license on request. That is a plate-driven stop, not a sequence of cars pulled from traffic.

What is missing is easy to state and worth stating precisely. The word checkpoint appears nowhere in chapter 46.61 RCW (rules of the road), chapter 46.64 RCW (traffic offenses and procedure), chapter 46.20 RCW (drivers' licenses), chapter 46.32 RCW (vehicle inspection), chapter 46.44 RCW, chapter 10.31 RCW (arrest without warrant), chapter 10.93 RCW (peace officer powers), chapter 10.116 RCW (peace officer tactics and equipment), or chapter 43.43 RCW (Washington State Patrol). Neither does roadblock. Chapter 46.64 RCW, where such a scheme would sit, runs from RCW 46.64.010 to RCW 46.64.070 and stops at the license and equipment check.

The absence is not an oversight in drafting, because the Legislature has written a complete suspicionless stopping regime elsewhere. RCW 77.15.470 makes it a gross misdemeanor to fail to obey check station signs, to fail to stop and report at a check station when directed by a uniformed fish and wildlife officer or by an ex officio fish and wildlife officer participating in a department-authorized check station, or to fail to produce for inspection hunting or fishing equipment, seaweed, fish, shellfish or wildlife, or licenses, permits, tags, stamps or catch record cards. Subsection (3) even fixes where they may not go: wildlife check stations may not be established upon interstate highways or state routes. Signs, a duty to stop, an offense for avoidance and a siting limit all exist in Washington law, for hunting and fishing. None of it exists for impaired driving.

The legislative record explains why. A 2008 House Judiciary Committee bill analysis of House Bill 2771, a measure sponsored by Representatives Lantz and Goodman by request of Governor Gregoire that would have let agencies apply to superior court for a warrant authorizing a sobriety checkpoint, records the background: in Seattle v. Mesiani, 110 Wn.2d 454 (1988), the Washington Supreme Court held that Seattle's checkpoint program violated article 1, section 7 of the state constitution, which reads that no person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law. The analysis notes that the United States Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion under the Fourth Amendment a few years later, and that Washington courts have often held the state constitution more protective. That bill analysis is a staff document and not law; the point for a driver is that HB 2771 was never enacted and the codified chapters contain no checkpoint provision to this day.

What a Washington driver actually encounters is the ordinary individualized stop. RCW 46.61.021(1) creates a duty to stop for any person requested or signaled to stop by a law enforcement officer for a traffic infraction, and subsection (2) limits that detention to the time needed to identify the person, check for warrants, check license, insurance card and registration status, and issue the notice of infraction. An impaired driving investigation proceeds from what the officer observes during that stop, and arrest without a warrant is governed by chapter 10.31 RCW.

Because Washington runs no sobriety checkpoints, there is no offense of failing to stop at one. 020(2) makes that a misdemeanor. 070 and finds an equipment defect, the section forbids issuing a criminal citation for ten days after a warning ticket has pointed the defect out. 470 is a gross misdemeanor. 31 RCW and prosecuted in district or municipal court, and the Washington State Patrol and local agencies enforce it through patrol rather than through roadblocks.