PULLMAN – Washington State University campus police will not patrol the halls of dormitories this fall.
That’s after two cases in the spring in which criminal charges were dismissed when a judge ruled that dorm hallways were like the hallways of a home, and police couldn’t just walk in and search for crimes.
“If you don’t mind the police peeking in your window, going in the back yard and peeking around, then you probably won’t mind” what WSU officers did in these cases, said Steve Martonick, a Pullman attorney who represented a student in one of the cases.
Prosecutors have appealed the decision in one case, and law enforcement officials say it remains arguable whether universities must treat dorm hallways as private or public spaces.
Police officers at the University of Washington conduct scheduled nightly patrols through dorm hallways, and officers at Eastern Washington University and the University of Idaho sometimes patrol dorms.
Ray Wittmier, assistant chief of the UW department, said he has two officers who patrol dorm hallways every night and doesn’t plan to change.
WSU Police Chief Steve Hansen said there will be no more dorm patrols unless officers receive clear authority.
David Brody, an associate professor and director of the criminal justice program at WSU-Spokane, said federal courts have tended to define dorm hallways as public spaces. But some case law in Washington leans toward defining them as private.
Both cases involve the actions of Officer Matthew Kuhrt.
In one case, Whitman County Superior Judge David Frazier dismissed felony burglary charges May 19 against WSU students Jacob Sterling Houvener and Jerid Sturman-Camyn. Frazier said the students had a “reasonable expectation of privacy in the corridor/hallway” of their dorms, and they had not waived it when Kuhrt entered their hallway in February.
Kuhrt was investigating a burglary that occurred on another floor in the same dorm tower, court records say. The case is under appeal.
Frazier also dismissed drug-possession charges May 19 against WSU student Kelsey Gardner based on similar arguments. Gardner was in a dorm room in January with other students when Kuhrt smelled marijuana during a patrol. Kuhrt went to get a warrant. Officers found drugs in Gardner’s purse, court records say. The defense argued that Kuhrt was improperly in the hallway to begin with.
Hansen said Kuhrt was not acting on his own, and that department policy was to have officers checking out the hallways in the dorms.
Policy at WSU dorms prohibits entry by anyone but residents and their guests. Dorm floors are locked at night, and contain shared facilities such as bathrooms and TV rooms. Those are some of the reasons defense attorneys argued that the hallways were private areas.
Byron Bedirian, who prosecuted the case for Whitman County, argued in court documents that the officer’s entry into the hallways is consistent with WSU’s duty to provide a safe, educational environment to its students.
He contended that students do not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in hallways that can be accessed by hundreds of other students.
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