Vehicle Stops: Routine Can Turn Deadly

Pulling a motorist over can be routine or it can be perilous and cops never know which way it will go. For rookie California Highway Patrol Officer Don Burt, a seemingly simple traffic stop on Saturday night turned deadly.

Law enforcement officials said Monday that patrol officers, like Burt, struggle every day to balance concerns for their own safety against the rights of motorists who are usually just careless drivers. Sometimes, though, a killer sits behind the steering wheel.

“We can’t . . . frisk everybody we pull over. That’s not realistic, and society doesn’t want us to do that,” said CHP Sgt. Rick Linson, who teaches enforcement tactics at the CHP training academy in Sacramento. “Society expects us to deal with them in a professional, courteous and business-like manner.”

Linson said CHP officers must make split-second decisions about whether the motorist they are dealing with is a threat.

Occasionally, as it appears Burt did, they guess wrong.

“Can we make mistakes? Yes. We’re only human,” Linson said. “We can’t treat everybody as armed felons. Not everyone we deal with is a thug.”

On Monday, CHP officials said they plan to review Burt’s actions to see if he followed proper procedures when he stopped the driver of a white BMW. The driver, identified as Young Ho Choi, was arrested on suspicion of shooting the officer during what appeared to be a routine traffic stop in the parking lot of a Fullerton restaurant. However, Choi was released Monday night “pending further investigation,” police said.

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Linson said that when Burt, 25, was at the academy 14 months ago, he scored very well on his tactical tests.

“He was an excellent cadet,” Linson said.

Many law enforcement experts said Monday that even the most alert officers with the best techniques in the world can’t always prevent a determined killer.

“If the guy is a cold-blooded killer, then there’s not much the officer can do,” said Mario Rodriguez, a senior consultant with the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. “There’s only so much you can do if someone is setting you up to murder you.”

Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Rich Wemmer, who studies and teaches officer safety issues, said traffic stops are one of the most traditional--and potentially one of the most dangerous--duties of a police officer.

“One of the more difficult tasks we have is maintaining balance,” he said. “One minute we deal with a member of the community, the next we’re dealing with a criminal. The dilemma is we never know who we are stopping.”

He said officers have to become adept at reading a motorist’s actions to determine the level of threat he or she may pose. For example, he said, officers look to see if motorists are overly nervous, moving their hands in suspicious ways, or defensive in their responses to questions. These become “red flags” to the approaching officer.

Wemmer added that police safety is even more of a concern in California, which “is still by far one of the most dangerous states to work in,” largely because of the availability of handguns.

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In Burt’s case, it was not clear why he pulled over the driver of the BMW in the first place, because his reasons were not relayed to the dispatcher. But once the vehicle was stopped in the parking lot shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday, Burt learned from the routine check that the driver had a suspended license. Following CHP procedures, Burt started to impound the car.

As part of impounding the car, Burt was required under CHP procedures to take an inventory of the vehicle’s contents. While searching the trunk, he apparently found bogus traveler checks.

At some point the driver started arguing with and shoving Burt. The driver then pulled a 9-millimeter handgun and shot Burt seven times at close range, including a fatal blast in his left eye, police said.

CHP officials said there is no clear-cut policy on exactly when an officer should handcuff a motorist who has been pulled over for a traffic violation. Each situation is unique, they said.

“There is a wide latitude for determining what level of force [officers] are going to take. It depends on the circumstances. . . . They are constantly assessing the situation,” said CHP spokesman Steve Kohler.

Kohler declined to release a copy of the department’s procedures for vehicle stops, saying that they were confidential.

Burt’s father--a veteran CHP sergeant in Riverside who joined the department in 1969--said not even a seasoned officer would have been able to predict the outburst of violence that ended his son’s life.

“You always get apprehensive when you make a stop,” the elder Burt, 52, said in an interview Sunday. “You get these funny feelings. But it sounds like his was going pretty well.”

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In hindsight, it is easy to suggest that Burt should have been more wary, but the elder Burt said it would be nearly impossible to sustain that type of attitude all the time, especially in the CHP, where traffic stops are routine and frequent.

“It would be nice if we had the manpower to call someone every time we have to do something like” search a car, he said. “But we don’t.

“Not all people are bad. That’s what makes it hard for us,” he added. “If they were all bad, we could treat them all in a hostile manner. But we can’t be on the defensive all the time.”

CHP Officer Keith Thornhill, in Santa Ana, said there is no set policy for restraining a driver when all you are doing is impounding the vehicle. If all had gone as expected, the driver would have been cited--not arrested--and would have been “free to just walk away.”

“If he was taking an inventory of the vehicle, he was just doing his work. It’s just like somebody writing a ticket,” Thornhill said.

The driver “would be out of the car. There’s no set thing that an officer should do, just what you feel comfortable with at the time.”

Such stops, he added, are “a daily occurrence.”

But some officers, while reluctant to criticize the rookie officer without having been in his shoes, said he made a deadly mistake when he relinquished “control” of the suspect to search the car.

“Most agencies, if there’s not another officer there, you would immediately put the person in the backseat of your [squad] car,” said one detective with another local police agency.

“Even if you’re not going to arrest them, you would place them unhandcuffed in the back of the car.”

Another police lieutenant of a local agency agreed that training generally calls for a more wary approach.

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“When you’re alone with a suspect and you’re going to search his car, you really ought to have someone with you, because you can’t watch him and watch his car at the same time,” he said.

“Day in and day out, typically we don’t check cars without somebody there to watch the suspect while we do it.”

Limited staffing sometimes prohibits that, he conceded, but it creates an opening for a tragedy to occur.

“I’m not saying it’s unusual,” the lieutenant said.

“Guys do it, but it’s risky when you do it. Very risky. Sometimes you just want to check a [vehicle identification] number but as soon as you do, you’re vulnerable.”