Washington Weigh-Station Inspectors Being Armed

SPOKANE - Renegade truckers of the West beware: Washington state weigh-station inspectors are packing heat.

The Washington State Patrol officers showed off their pistols yesterday at a station just west of the Idaho border, where trucks pull in for weighing and safety inspections. They can't arrest anyone, but they will use the weapons in self-defense.

"This is a last resort," said Clifton Rogers, a commercial-vehicle inspection officer at the station. "We still push the concept of dealing with situations verbally."

The Patrol began looking at whether to arm the inspectors after the agency was fined $4,200 last year by state regulators. The fine grew out of a complaint by an anonymous employee who said the officers could not protect themselves.

The state Department of Labor and Industries said the Patrol should give inspectors bulletproof vests and "personal defense devices and/or means of defense."

The Patrol went one better - issuing the officers standard-issue 9 mm Berettas, body armor, collapsible police batons and pepper spray.

Half of the 148 officers have been issued guns and trained, and the others are to follow suit by Sept. 13. Arming and training the officers cost the state $148,000, said Patrol spokesman Jack Sareault.

Weigh-station inspectors in Arizona and Nevada are also armed. But inspectors in a number of other Western states do not carry weapons. In many states, the inspectors work for nonpolice agencies whose employees do not carry weapons and can't make arrests. In those cases, armed state police officers are also on hand some of the time.

In Arizona, weigh stations are run by fully commissioned state police officers who are armed. The vast majority of the truckers who stop at Washington weigh stations cause no problems. But occasionally, inspectors say, truckers will lose their cool.

"I personally have sometimes felt in jeopardy or in danger," officer Gene Rubbert said last week. He said he was threatened by a truck driver he recently pulled over in Tukwila.

"I was attempting to stop a pickup truck loaded with pipes. (The driver) came running over to me and said if I didn't get out of there he was going to shoot me," Rubbert said.

Rubbert left and radioed for backup from State Patrol troopers, who helped him deal with the driver safely.

Washington state weigh-station officers haven't been armed since the mid-1970s, when the Patrol stopped using commissioned troopers to perform those duties.