Longview Daily News from Longview, Washington • 1

The Daily News Serving the Lower Columbia area from Longview, Washington Thursday, June 20, 1991 50 cents Court allows police to seek bus searches ii''i -luHv'Lfv i ht--t Conservatives put imprint on the court Auoduni Pros photo This sprawling jail on the outskirts of Medellin, Colombia, has been prepared especially for Pablo Escobar's surrender Kingpin is Robin Hood to some But to others in Colombia, Escobar is evil murderer AT-A-GLANCE win election to scores of judgeships. Ruled that states may force their judges to retire at age 70. The court, by a 7-2 vote, said state judges are policy-makers who are not protected by a major federal anti-bias law, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In the search case, the court overturned a ruling that police in Florida violated a bus passenger's rights when they boarded the bus during a stopover and found cocaine in one of his travel bags. The officers said the passenger voluntarily let them search the luggage.

The high court sent the case back to the lower courts for new hearings to determine whether the passenger reasonably believed he had to comply with the police search-request or could have refused with impunity. The full impact of today's ruling, and its possible application to searches aboard trains, planes and possibly other public accommodations, remains to be determined. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court, said, "Our cases make it clear that a seizure does not occur simply because a police officer approaches an individual and asks a few questions. So long as a reasonable person would feel free to disregard the police and go about his business the encounter is consentual and no reasonable suspicion is required." But Justice Thurgood Marshall, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, said such random bus searches are unconstitutional on their face.

"The suspicionless police sweep of buses in intrastate or interstate travel bears all of the indicia of coercion and unjustified intrusion associated" with forbidden police tactics, he said. "The bus sweep at issue in this case violates the core values of the Fourth Amendment" barring unreasonable searches and seizures. Daily News wire services MEDELLIN, Colombia Pablo Escobar started out as a teen-age entrepreneur reselling tombstones he had stolen from a cemetery and sanded flat. Keeping one step ahead of the police, he became the world's most violent and successful cocaine merchant and Colombia's most wanted criminal. It was more than ingenuity and ruthlessness that fostered Escobar's rise from small-time hood to cocaine king.

Along The billionaire drug trafficker surrendered just hours after the Colombian Assembly voted to ban extradition of drug lords. Head of the Medellin cocaine cartel Born in Rio Negro, Colombia Age 41 His mother was a teacher and father a farmer -4 200 miles Sea I PANAMA lOr-V-J Medellin jsurineidlorsJ Rf I Paaic Jz caan 7 Bogota I r'' COLOMBIA! ECUADOR I L- PERU 7 BRA2IL WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court today ruled that police may board buses and ask any passenger to consent to being searched, an increasingly common tactic in the war on drugs. The justices, voting 6-3 in a case from Florida, said the tactic is constitutional as long as the passengers feel free to refuse to comply with the police request. The court said such searches do not automatically violate a passenger's rights, even when police lack a court warrant or reason to believe someone has committed a crime. Today's ruling by the increasingly conservative Supreme Court is in line with its recent decisions giving law enforcement officials more power to conduct searches when they lack warrants and probable cause to suspect a crime.

In other action, the court: Reinstated a $10 million libel lawsuit by a psychologist who accuses a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine of making up quotes attributed to him. The court unanimously ruled that Jeffrey Masson's suit against Janet Malcolm should go to trial. The justices said the Constitution's guarantee of free speech does not extend to deliberately altered or fabricated quotations that change the meaning of what was really said and are attributed to and defame a public figure. Ruled that a key provision of a federal law protecting the voting power of minorities applies to the election of state and local judges. The 6-3 ruling in cases from Louisiana and Texas is a victory for the Bush administration and civil rights groups and a boost to blacks and Hispanics hoping to the way, he briefly entered politics and nurtured a Robin Hood image, winning thousands of admirers in the ghettolike commas of his native Medellin by providing jobs, housing and sports facilities.

Shielded by a network of loyal supporters, Escobar kept refining and exporting tons of cocaine during a seven-year police manhunt with a $500,000 price on his head. The 41-year-old drug lord's surrender Wednesday was less a defeat than a truce on terms of leniency that evolved from the exhaustion of both Ordering hundreds of murders, including a justice II wa.Hwa II Colombia's maior role is in the minister, an attorney general and a presidential candidate Ordering about 300 bombings in the past two years, including bombing of the Colombian jetliner that killed all 107 passengers and crew in November 1989. Pablo Escobar sides in a brutal drug war. Upon surrendering with three of his lieutenants, John refining of the coca leaves from other countries like Peru and Bolivia. This is mostly done throughout the vast expanses of the remote Plains and Amazon regions in the southeast, areas accessible only by air or slow moving river transport.

Jairo Velasquez, Carlos Aguilar and Otoniel Jesus Franco, Escobar was taken by helicopter to the jail prepared for him in his hometown, the Medellin suburb of Envigado, The prison, originally planned as a drug rehabilitation center, has private baths, gardens, a soccer field, television and game rooms. The drug lord was allowed to dictate security arrangements, with authorities meeting his demand to have Please see Escobar, Page A2 Faces nine charges of either drug trafficking or murder. AP graphic State study: Second Longview- Rainier bridge needed Teriods of congestion will come more often, be more severe and be of longer duration Using the existing bridge and constructing a second two-lane span next to it. Building a bridge in the area of Third Avenue. Constructing a bridge in the Cottonwood Island vicinity, opening that area up for industrial andor commercial development.

Doing nothing after considering the economic and social impacts of that. The panel recommended further study to assess the economic impacts, projected differences in travel at the various suggested bridge sites and effects to the local transportation the traffic jams are expected to get worse. "Periods of congestion will come more often, be more severe and be of longer duration," concluded the study, which was received by the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Governmental Conference on Wednesday. The panel that studied the issue recommends building a second bridge parallel to the existing bridge instead of merely replacing it with a larger one. Building a second bridge would make more financial sense than replacing the Lewis and Clark Bridge because of its condition, according to the study.

"The existing bridge, despite problems with the deck itself, is actually in good shape," said Rep. David Cooper, D-Battle Ground. The bridge does need deck and guardrail repair, said Cooper, a member of the Legislative Transportation Committee. The committee, which consisted of 14 officials representing area industries, Cowlitz and Columbia counties and the cities of Longview and Kelso, was formed under 1990 legislation sponsored by the late Sen. Arlie DeJarnatt, D-Longview.

The panel identified four options for handling growing traffic volumes between the two river communities: By Cindy Lopez The Dally News A just-released state study has recommended construction of a second bridge between Longview and Rainier, predicting the Lewis and Clark Bridge won't be able to handle traffic volumes by the year 2010. A new bridge between Longview and Rainier would cost between (61 million and $91 million, according to the study commissioned by the Legislature. Use of the bridge that connects Washington and Oregon already exceeds capacity during peak hours, and State study American buyers most loyal to Japanese cars, survey says U.S. Forest Service is 100 years old; worry lines are beginning to show Views of the News By Ted M. Natt Editor and Publisher More sensitivity ONE OF the trends emerging with this conservative U.S.

Supreme Court majority is a lack of sensitivity about its role as the only place an individual can get a fair shake. This is a court majority that is inclined to side with the views of the police or prison wardens, prosecutors or others in government. It is a majority inclined to give them all more leeway in how they act against individual citizens. The Bill of Rights is the citizen's only real protection against unwarranted government intrusion into their lives, homes and property. It directs how the powers of the state shall not be used against individual citizens.

Those are protections that can be interpreted broadly or narrowly. Today's court majority is increasingly taking a narrow view. This week, for instance, it severely cut back the grounds Please see Views, Page A2 WASHINGTON (AP) American consumers exhibit stronger brand loyalty to the cars made by Nissan, Honda and Toyota than to the products Detroit turns out, a Brookings Institution economic study said today. That represents a long-term obstacle for American car makers, the authors said. Even if American cars now are just as good as their foreign competitors as Detroit claims people are likely to perceive them as inferior and continue to prefer Japanese cars.

Transportation engineer Fred Mannering of the University of Washington and economist Clifford Winston of Brookings, a Washington, D.C., think tank, studied the "vehicle ownership histories" of 488 households that accounted for nearly 1,000 vehicle purchases over the last several decades. They charted a steady decline throughout the 1980s in devotion to American-made cars and an upswing in acceptance of those made by Japanese companies. "The major source of the U.S. makers' problems is attributable to vehicles that were of worse value and quality than the Japanese," Winston said in an interview. "That's something they can make progress on, but loyalty is something that is, to some extent, out of their control." Winston said U.S.

auto makers especially Chrysler's Lee Iacocca with his commercial saying, "Chrysler's cars are every bit as good as the Japanese, but nobody knows it" have expressed frustration at the way their cars are still perceived as inferior. "This reflects the legacy of the past, brought about by the loss of loyalty that could take years for them to overcome," he said. The authors defined brand loyalty as more than just buying the same maker's car each time Instead, they said it reflects a variety of factors vehicle ownership experience, word from friends, news and advertising all combining to make a customer think of his brand as the standard against which- to judge all competitors' cars. Andy Stahl, forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in Seattle, a leader in court battles to protect the owl. The forest centennial, being celebrated across the country this summer, dates from March 3, 1891, when Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act.

Within three weeks, President Benjamin Harrison created the Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve, 1.2 million acres around 19-year-old Yellowstone National Park. It was followed the same year by the White River Plateau Timberland Reserve in Colorado. More reserves followed in 1892 in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico and Colorado. Though it drew little attention at the time, historians now point to the act as a turning point in the national policy on public land: Instead of selling it or giving it away, the government began to hold land in reserve. The act was born of a mood that began to develop in 1864, when George Perkins Marsh wrote in his book Ot Man and Nature that too much logging in his native Vermont had damaged the landscape and hurt fish and wildlife.

To feed a growing nation, 190 million acres of forest were cleared for farms between 1850 and 1910, equivalent to all the lands now in the na-Please see Forest, Page AS GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) When the first national forests were created in 1891, conservationists were worried the unchecked westward march of cut-and-run timber barons would leave the nation without lumber, water or wildlife. This year, the U.S. Forest Service celebrates the centennial of the lands under its care and environmentalists still are worried. Logging in the national forests continues, and they say wildlife is imperiled.

"It is so bitter, and so ironic," said Brock Evans, National Audubon Society vice president for national issues. "They are liquidating it all slower in the Forest Service, with a lot more bureaucracy, but they are liquidating it nonetheless. The arguments are all the same." The echo of the century-old battle is particularly loud in the Pacific Northwest, home to the biggest timber producers in the national forest system and the northern spotted owl, which has turned the timber industry upside down since it was declared a threatened species last year. "Eighty years ago, we didn't understand what we were doing would lead to the gray wolf's extinction from Oregon, to the grizzly bear's extinction from Oregon. The difference now is we are able to study and understand the results of our management a lot better than before," said.