I’m glad that North Carolina professor and drunk driver Dorothy Verkerk is challenging the constitutionality of the traffic stop that may have saved hers or someone else’s life.
Let me back up a step or two. I’m not glad that she was drinking and driving for at least the second time in four months, and I sincerely hope she’s found the help to control either her drinking or her driving after drinking.
I’m also not glad that the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Fire Department and specifically Lt. Gordon Shatley, who made the call to activate fire apparatus’ lights to get Verkerk to pull off the road, are embroiled in a legal and media mess.
I am glad that this issue is getting a thorough legal review, as the resolution will likely set precedent and policy for many fire departments.
As many know, this is not the first instance of firefighters executing a traffic stop or some other law-enforcement activity that falls outside their typical scope of authority — such as fire inspection, arson investigation and scene control. It is however an area of immense grey and blurred lines.
For example, the incident in July where a California firefighter made a traffic stop seems pretty clear cut. The firefighter made the stop for erratic driving; police did not ticket the motorist and said the firefighter overstepped his authority.
Traffic stops are dangerous. They are dangerous for cops who are well trained and well equipped. They are infinitely more dangerous for firefighters who haven’t the training or equipment.
Even being granted the authority to issue parking violations to those knuckleheads who find it perfectly OK to park in fire zones is a slippery public relations slope for fire departments.
Yet the case in North Carolina is murkier. The court is trying to determine if the stop itself was intended to assist or detain. Common sense would say it was an assist.
From Lt. Shatley’s vantage point, Verkerk could have been someone with dementia, a diabetic with low blood sugar, someone sleep deprived or any number of things as easily as someone who’d had too many pulls off the jug.
If the accounts of Lt. Shatley’s actions are accurate, I’m not sure what he could have done differently. However this case shakes out, he did what was necessary to protect civilians from Verkerk and protect Verkerk from herself.
Yet how it is decided hopefully will be examined long and hard by fire departments across the country to set their own policy for how firefighters should react to similar situations.
Despite whatever opinions of Verkerk that we may develop from this story, she may end up doing fire departments a great service.