SEQUIM — Is a police car a public place? Is it a workplace?
Those are key questions when it comes to enforcing the state law regarding smoking wherever workers and the public may go.
This week, Sequim Police Chief Robert Spinks and City Attorney Craig Ritchie tackled them, too, after a smoking police officer lit up a couple of Peninsula Daily News readers.
It all began with a “disgusted” rant in Sunday’s Rants & Raves “for the Sequim Police Department for allowing their officers to smoke in their patrol vehicles.
“Not only is it dangerous to have your hands busy with something other than the wheel,” the rant continued, “it is a terrible reflection on the city and a poor role model for our children.”
Spinks’ published response noted that “imposing a no-smoking ban while on duty or in the patrol cars would be considered a change in working conditions subject to mandatory union bargaining.
“If the city wanted to consider a non-tobacco use policy for all city employees while they are working, then I wouldn’t object . . . that would be something that the city could add to its list of items to bargain on when the current set of union contracts expires.”
Spinks added that he’ll “pass that along to human resources and the city manager.”
PDN reader complains
The day after the rant and response appeared, the Clallam County Health and Human Services Department received a compliance-violation complaint from PDN reader Roger Huntman.
Spinks’ response “flies in the face of state edicts about smoking in the public workplace, which includes police vehicles,” Huntman wrote.
Dr. Tom Locke, the county health officer, agreed that Washington state law — RCW 70.160 — prohibits smoking in workplaces to protect workers from secondhand smoke.
“A police car is certainly a place of employment,” Locke said.
When asked who would enforce the no-smoking law, Locke replied that it’s up to county and city agencies and their managers.
Spinks, as manager of the Police Department, would appear to be the enforcer.
“There’s an obligation of management to comply with the law,” Locke said.
Sequim City Attorney Ritchie, however, dismissed the county’s interpretation of the statute.
Not a public space
Allowing police officers to smoke in their cars is legal, Ritchie said, because the spots where the officers sit are not public places.
“Is the driver’s seat of a [police] vehicle open and used by the public? Obviously not,” the attorney said.
So the law doesn’t apply to the officer who puffs and drives — and whoever is in the passenger seat or back seat isn’t protected from secondhand smoke.
And though it seems a patrol car is a place where the officer works, the state law doesn’t include such vehicles in its list.
Building entrances and exits, windows that open, ventilation intakes, serving areas where smoking is prohibited, restrooms, conference and classrooms, break rooms and cafeterias and other common areas come under the “places of employment” umbrella.
Yet all that cited and said, Ritchie has recommended that Spinks change the Police Department policy.
“It looks bad,” he said of officers who light up. “And it possibly reduces the resale value of the vehicle.
“We certainly don’t want to have an asthmatic we arrest to have a seizure” due to secondhand smoke, Ritchie added.
When all of this smoke clears, Sequim’s officers may well have a new policy and a reason to phone the Washington State Tobacco Quit Line, 1-800-QUIT-NOW.
“The Police Department has proposed the following change in work conditions language to our union as part of a major overhaul of our agency’s General Operating Manual, which will roll out at around 500 pages,” Spinks wrote in an e-mail to the PDN Tuesday.
“Smoking and other use of tobacco products is not permitted inside department facilities or any department vehicle .. . Employees in uniform are also prohibited from smoking or using tobacco products while in public view.”
“May 1, we roll the manual out to our staff, and [we will] use May as a training and policy review month,” Spinks added. “June 1 is the target date to swing 100 percent to the new manual.”
Spinks noted that he agrees with the state law protecting nonsmokers in public places and said he’s not a smoker or a tobacco chewer. Then he pointed out something he sees missing.
“What is lost in the current statute is any mention of chewing tobacco, which poses equally serious health concerns as well as visual and related workplace issues,” Spinks said. “Our proposed policy goes beyond current legal requirements to address these additional concerns.”
Smokeless elsewhere
If and when Sequim blows the smoke out of its cars and buildings, it’ll join the Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Forks police departments and the Clallam and Jefferson county sheriff’s departments. None of those agencies permits officers to smoke in city or county vehicles.
“We do not allow it,” said Port Townsend Police Sgt. Ed Green, in part because the department considers patrol cars to be public and workplaces and because the cars are borrowed from the Public Works Department.
Public Works could ask to use those cars, he added, and then its drivers would be exposed to secondhand smoke.
The state law prohibits lighting up in a workplace regardless of whether other employees are around, said Jill Dole, Clallam County’s Tobacco Prevention Specialist.
“A bar owner can’t stand around and smoke in a bar before it opens its doors,” she said. “The toxin lingers, especially in a car.”
The Port Angeles Police Department may come out of this smelling the best, in a sense.
“The city policy is no smoking in city vehicles,” said Port Angeles Police Sgt. Tyler Peninger.
With pride, he added: “No officers here smoke.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
