Portland
Judge
Rules
"Trap
and
Trace"
of
Gardening
Supply
Store
Phone
Illegal
8/6/99
This Monday (8/3) a Multnomah County circuit judge in Portland, Oregon, ruled that the city police department's marijuana task force had illegally obtained a court order last year to trace the telephone numbers of callers to American Agriculture, a local indoor gardening supply store. According to court documents, the police had made weekly downloads of the phone numbers of callers to the store, then run a reverse-lookup on the numbers to learn the names and addresses of the callers, whom they then investigated as possible marijuana growers. Between 1995 and 1999, the task force made more than 1,000 arrests of marijuana growers, and boasted a 50% success rate with "knock and talk" searches, where officers convince suspects to allow them to search their homes without a warrant. Trap and trace procedures do not record conversations like a wiretap, but only trace callers' phone numbers. Still, their use by law enforcement is regulated and limited to certain circumstances. In Oregon, police are required to have a court order allowing them to collect the numbers from the local phone company, and the trap and trace is supposed to be used only for thirty to sixty days in order to monitor a specific suspect. This March, after a man facing charges in a cultivation case uncovered the trap and trace, lawyers representing dozens of defendants in other cases demanded that evidence against their clients be thrown out, since it was gathered illegally. The judge, Michael Marcus, ordered the task force to either reveal its methods or admit the technique was being used unlawfully. At first, attorneys for the City of Portland did neither, and would not even acknowledge that the trap and trace existed. And then, in June, the task force admitted to using the trap and trace, but insisted it was used all along to investigate American Agriculture, which they suspected was conspiring with marijuana growers who purchased hydroponic gardening equipment from the store. According to testimony from the task force, however, the police were unable to turn up much evidence against the American Agriculture. In 1996, federal prosecutors turned down the case, and only one person, a defendant in a cultivation case, implicated the store in the alleged conspiracy. This week, Marcus said that the task force's evidence against the store did not amount to probable cause, and that the trap and trace was therefore illegal. Marcus' ruling could be good news for American Agriculture's owners, who have filed suit against the city in federal court, claiming the trap and trace violated their civil rights. But the judge also warned that his ruling did not guarantee a victory for the defendants in the cultivation cases, because the task force might not have relied solely on the trap and trace in its investigations of them. A final decision on that case is expected at the end of this month. You can read our earlier coverage of this story online at http://www.drcnet.org/wol/085.html#portland.
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