Town ponders moratorium on police consent searches

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- What will happen if the Fayetteville City Council imposes a four-month moratorium on consent searches during police traffic stops?

That’s an unknown factor as council members continue to debate whether to impose the moratorium in response to concerns over racial profiling by Fayetteville police.

The City Council is scheduled to consider the moratorium at its meeting Monday night.

If the 120-day ban is approved, will the city’s crime rate go up? Will it lead to more violent crimes? And will it create riskier conditions for police?

“It’s hard to say,” said Jeff Welty, an assistant professor of public law and government at the North Carolina School of Government at Chapel Hill.

Consent searches, when police ask to search a vehicle without probable cause, have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

They are regarded as a tool for authorities to detect evidence of criminal activity, Welty said.

“By removing this tool from their disposal, one would assume they would be less effective in detecting evidence of a crime,” he said.

But Troy Williams, a proponent of the moratorium, isn’t so sure.

Williams said data show that consent searches don’t result in the discovery of massive amounts of drugs or caches of illegal weapons.

“They’re only finding something about 5 percent of the time,” Williams said of the searches.

It appears that statistics provided in June by Police Chief Tom Bergamine back up that argument.

Bergamine told council members his officers conducted 1,190 traffic stop-related searches of drivers and passengers in the first four months of 2011.

Of that figure, 72 percent – or 891 people – were black.

Officers found contraband in about 17 percent of those searches, Bergamine said. That included guns, stolen property, 114 pounds of drugs and about $1,000, the chief said.

But the searches are regarded as an effective enforcement tool for police, Welty said. By curtailing the searches, it could allow more contraband on the streets.

Lorenzo Boyd, a criminal justice instructor at Fayetteville State University, finds the idea of a moratorium troubling. Boyd, who serves as a consultant to 11 police departments across the country, including Fayetteville, is a former deputy sheriff in Suffolk County, Mass.

“Earlier this year, 21 guns were taken off the streets [in Fayetteville] through consent searches,” he said.

His concerns are echoed by Eric See, chairman of the Department of Justice Studies at Methodist University and a member of the Fayetteville Police Foundation board of directors.

“I just don’t see an upside to the moratorium,” See said.

Like Boyd, See said he believes it will allow more illegal drugs and weapons to filter into Fayetteville, putting all residents at risk.

See also questions the wisdom of banning a practice that has been upheld in the Supreme Court.

“I just don’t see a solid rationale for it,” he said. “It’s certainly one of the many tools they [police] have.”

City Attorney Karen McDonald has received mixed responses from state officials as to whether the City Council has the power to ban consent searches.

A staff lawyer at the General Assembly opined that the council doesn’t have that authority while a professor at the School of Government in Chapel Hill maintained that it does.

Williams and others, including city leaders, have countered that the majority of drivers don’t know that they can just say no to an officer looking to search a vehicle.

“Even if they aren’t aware,” See said, “it’s still a legally constitutional practice to ask.”