Total DUI

Last month, Miciah Massey and Tashawntay Wade filed suit in federal district court alleging that the Lake Forest Park, Washington police department violated their civil rights. While the precise facts of the case are in dispute, this much seems clear: a family friend, Thomas Brooks, was arrested several months ago for DUI. He happened to be driving Massey's car. Neither Massey nor Wade was with Brooks at the time of the arrest, and Brooks lives in Nevada.

Brooks returned to Nevada without appearing in court, and a warrant for his arrest was issued on misdemeanor DUI charges.

One night in November, Lake Forest Park police officers appeared at Massey's door after midnight, looking for Brooks. Wade told them that Brooks had returned to Nevada but, according to the couple, the officers pushed their way inside the house, waking two young children and Massey's father and thoroughly searching the house.

Massey and Wade have filed a civil suit, and the FBI has opened an investigation into whether the couple's civil rights were violated, but the most troubling aspect of the story is the position maintained by the law enforcement agencies involved. The attorney for the Lake Forest Park Police Department insists that so long as police had a reasonable belief that Brooks was in the house, they had a right to enter and conduct a warrantless search of the premises--the home of another family, where they knew Brooks did not reside.

In addition, Massey's license plate number has been entered into a state patrol database, linked to Brooks, and Wade has twice been pulled over by officers looking for Brooks. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last week that the database administrator said that it was unfortunate that Massey and Wade kept getting stopped, but that it was appropriate for officers to continue to stop them. Wade filed a complaint with the police department and was reportedly told that the only way to resolve the problem was to get Brooks to return to Washington to face the DUI charge.