WV adopts community caretaking doctrine

WV adopts the community caretaking doctrine. Here, the officer encountered a car parked in front of a gate to a dirt road with the flashers on and the engine off. It was reasonable to try to locate the driver. This case arose in the context of a driver’s license suspension proceeding. Ullom v. Miller, 227 W. Va. 1, 705 S.E.2d 111 (2010):

We now believe it is appropriate to join the majority of jurisdictions who recognize the community caretaker doctrine, formally recognizing the expectation in West Virginia that the role of law enforcement personnel is not limited to merely the detection and prevention of criminal activity, but also encompasses a non-investigatory, non-criminal role of police officers to help to ensure the safety and welfare of our citizens. In recognizing this doctrine, however, we are mindful of the important protections of the Fourth Amendment and Article III, Section 6, relating to searches and seizures. In order to balance the caretaking role of police officers with the fundamental protections against unreasonable searches and seizures found in the United States Constitution and the Constitution of West Virginia, we believe it necessary to establish specific requirements for applicability of the community caretaker exception to ensure that the privacy expectations of West Virginia’s citizens are balanced with the immediate safety and welfare needs of motorists or the public in situations where the immediate safety and welfare of citizens is reasonably at issue.

No single set of specific requirements for applicability of the community caretaker exception has been adopted by a majority of those states recognizing the exception. Based upon our review of the requirements established in other states, we believe that the requirements recently adopted by the Supreme Court of South Dakota in State v. Deneui, 2009 SD 99, 775 N.W.2d 221 (S.D. 2009), cert. denied, __ U.S. ___, 130 S. Ct. 2072, 176 L. Ed. 2d 422 (2010), with modification, provide appropriate direction as we endeavor to best satisfy the reasonableness requirements of the Fourth Amendment and Article III, Section 6, and effect a necessary balance between the privacy expectations of West Virginia citizens and the need for police officers to properly execute their community caretaking duties. Accordingly, after due consideration, we now hold that, for an encounter to come within the community caretaker doctrine exception to the warrant requirement, the State must establish the following:

1. Given the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable and prudent police officer would have perceived a need to promptly act in the proper discharge of his or her community caretaker duties;

2. Community caretaking must be the objectively reasonable, independent and substantial justification for the intrusion;

3. The police officer’s action must be apart from the intent to arrest, or the detection, investigation, or acquisition of criminal evidence; and

4. The police officer must be able to articulate specific facts that, taken with rational inferences, reasonably warrant the intrusion.