Just so you know, airport security measures, such as personal searches, have been around longer than DUI checkpoint ruling (most were enacted in 1972, the DUI ruling was in 1990). I think you would be hard pressed to argue airport security measures are the fault of DUI checkpoints.
Isn’t airport security slightly different? You are boarding a privately owned plane. If the airlines want the passengers to be searched before boarding, it seems like it is their right to do so. I know there is some federal involvement with airlines, though, so I am not sure…
I think my disagreement with you may be with respect to the definition of the “slope” down which we may or may not be sliding. I think it is a little too narrow to speak of “traffic roadblocks” in isolation.
As one who values my privacy, I perceive recent history to reflect consistent and multifaceted attempts by law-enforcers to increase their stop and search authority. DUI roadblocks are but one aspect of this trend and - I may add - one that I might not be too terribly adverse to. At least if they were very limited in scope. And even to the extent that I may personally disfavor DUI roadblocks, I do not think that I would argue that they are clearly unconstitutional.
But I STRONGLY disagree with rationale such as that use of a drug dog is not a search. Yes, once in a while the courts decide that a particular police practice goes too far. But IMO such “victories” for privacy and personal freedom are few and far between, and insufficient to counter what I perceive as the trend towards increased police powers.
To me, the increased use of “causeless” traffic stops, the extension of scope following such stops (absent plain view), and the permissable detention (however brief) of stopped drivers beyond the initial purpose of the stop, are each important erosions of our personal liberty and expectation of privacy, and undesireable increases of police authority.
I perceive those who advocate more effective police are simultaneously trying to increase their authorities in just about every area. Heck, you don’t come up with a bill like the Patriot Act within a couple of days of 9/11 if it doesn’t reflect a well-thought-out and pre-existing strategy. And many of the same folk would advocate “good faith” exclusionary exceptions, etc.
I’m not saying that cops are bad people. I’m just saing that my personal belief of American values would permit increased risk of some criminal activities as a necessary result of restricting police power.
Federal law makes it mandatory on airlines to conduct certain activities such as searches and seizures. Magiver was using airport security as an example of an unconsitutional infringement based on DUI checkpoints, and I disagreed.
In the grand scheme of things, each drop of water leads to the slipperly slope of an ocean. I just don’t see DUI checkpoint law being used outside the context of … well vehicle checkpoints.
I value your privacy also. And mine.
I think we agree more than we disagree. There is something about the checkpoints that puts my teeth on edge, but I can certainly see how they don’t arise to being an “unreasonable” search and seizure.
The smell of your vehicle, or yourself if you’re in public for that matter, is something I don’t think you can reasonably expect to have privacy in. But I do find myself agreeing, in part, with Ginsberg’s dissent. It’s a tough case.
You know what I think is most to blame in the erosion of our 4th Amendment rights? The exclusionary rule. If judges, and the appellate court justices who review them, knew the evidence wouldn’t have to be kept out of the system and the truth hidden, they would be much more likely to limit police searches. But that’s a whole 'nother kettle of monkeys. Or barrel full of fish. Or something like that.
Have you been reading this thread? The limits have been passed. How is it limited to a DUI checkpoint when the majority of people being arrested are charged with non-DUI crimes? It’s been extended to being a random crime checkpoint.
As others have done, compare it to an airport boarding check. Their purpose os to check if you’re bringing something dangerous on to the airplane. And that’s where they stop. Nobody ever gets arrested for having an outstanding warrant.
The issue isn’t whether a roadblock is set up on Maple Street or Elm Street. It’s whether it’s set up at all.
I doubt there has ever been an occasion when a bunch of police officers out on patrol got together and decided to spontaneously set up their own roadblock. The decisions to start checkpoint programs are made by legislative bodies. The police just carry them out.
IMO there is a BIG difference between an odor discernible by a cop, as opposed to a dog - something that cannot be cross-examined and that I do not consider 100% infallible - being used to establish cause to expand the scope of a stop.
I thought it inconsistent for the Ct to say that dogs on persons and vehicles are okay, but heat sensors on buildings are not.
Would a smell-ometer that was infallible in detecting the odor of drugs with 99% change anything to you? Or is it that the reasonable expectation of privacy in your or your car’s odor, should extend to that perceptable to humans, but not dogs or machines? I know it’s a hijack, but I have a lot more sympathy for the latter argument than the former. At some point, as technology continues to develop, there will have to be some serious rethinking of what is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Again, reasonable expectation of privacy. Smell of a car your driving, probably not. Heat signatures of your home? Probably. They’re all very tough calls with very fact specific determinations. Which is why it’s hard to discuss the 4th Amendment in a vacuum. Of course, it’s tough to discuss anything in a vacuum, what with the lack of air and all.
Just my opinion, but here in Western Washington, if a random checkpoint was set up on any of the freeways at any time except between say 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM in the morning, the backup would almost immediately extend upwards of ten to fifteen miles, and the resulting uproar would be massive. I don’t think they could get away with it, even if it were legal here. Even if they chose one of the lesser highways, or even possibly the Bel-Red Road here in Bellevue, the results on traffic would be spectacular. Politically I think it would be a public relations disaster for the police.
On some minor street or very rural highway it might be possible, but our normal traffic here is so horrendous that any additional artificial blockage would be awful.
What law mandates this and what is the metric used to balance out security versus privacy?
IMO, if they have to use dogs or special meters, that’s no longer “smell”. I don’t have a problem with “smell” being outside the reasonable expectation of privacy. If I’ve drunk enough or smoked enough or whatever for a cop to be able to smell me or my car, then I’d consider that enough for “reasonable suspicion”.
If they have to bring in a dog or mechanical equipment, then they’re not smelling anything, they’re bringing in special equipment to register trace elements not readily available to human senses. I’d say that’s much more equivalent to the heat signature question.
IOW, I think using drug dogs (and any mechanical equivalent) SHOULD constitute a “search”.
Obviously IANASCJ. I suspect if the original question had been for equipment instead of for cute widdle puppy dogs, that would have been decided differently.
I’m not going to do research for you. Might I suggest you give it a go before you make assertions about it.
I don’t know how they work RBTs in the US, but in this part of the world they randomly grab one or two cars from the traffic approaching the checkpoint, wave them to the side of the road, breathalyse the driver, and (assuming the driver isn’t DUI) send them on their way. The whole thing takes less than a minute or two and it in no way impairs the flow of traffic.
So what your saying is that if someone is doing something illegal in a legal check they should be given a free pass?
Ridiculous.
“Oh I can see you’re not driving drunk and as for those two pound of cocaine in the front seat, well naughty, naughty. Better hide it in the future. Have a nice day.”
There are equally codified ways to change the previous code. Its been done 27 times at the Federal level, and over 500 times at the CA level.
As for the OP, I raised the same issue locally in advance of our inevitably improperly noticed DUI checkpoints on New Years Eve.
But since I live in an area where the locals can’t distinguish between law, god, and country, there was strong pushback.
On New Years Eve, fer chrissakes, 3 checkpoints nabbed exactly zero drunk drivers, or even those suspected of being drunk. They nabbed a random assortment of minor criminals, less than on a normal night probably.
No doubt everyone feels they just have to work harder.
Meantime, the local cops have shot dead 4 people in the last 18 months, in a town of 40,000, most recently this week, a kid on a bike, by all accounts a god-fearing young man. And the first without a Hispanic name.
I might add that these 4 deaths at the hand of the cops are more, best as I can tell, than the deaths by the hand of everyone else in the same period. Who is protecting who from whom?
That is BS of the highest order. Sy=uch searches, and especially such broad searches, did not exist until relatively recently, while the “transit system” has its roots in Roman times at least.
IANAL, but I bet the right to pass over people’s property, as an easement, free of constraint from the owner or government has its roots no later than the Magna Carta era.
But in the US, DUI checkpoints are a recent phenomenon.
I don’t recall “consenting to being stopped without suspicion” being anything I agreed to in order to drive in CA.
But they have been granted a privilege. And that does not mean giving up the right to unreasonable searches not related to DUI merely for being in some random place at some random time, compared to the rest of the population.
Of course it is. It is one courts have lost their minds over, IMHO, but it is still a stop, if not a search. It is illegal to carry a gun without a permit, to drink in public, etc., yet you never see these checkpoints on sidewalks or anywhere else. Why not? Because that would be a search. The only difference is that there is an allegation that by driving you give up certain rights in order to exercise the privilege of driving. Which is unclear at best.
That’s pretty much how it works. You are funneled to a stop, asked to produce papers, observed to see if you fumble, smell, show signs of nervousness, or slurring of speech, or are glassy eyed.
If you pass the test, you are allowed to pass.
Otherwise, you are pulled over, tested further, and queried or more intrusively searched for evidence of any crime they can thing might apply. As the OP noted, the dragnet catches few drunks, and many more petty criminals regularly.
The point that I think is being made is that there is a gigantic difference between “stopped without suspicion for a fishing expedition and having your car searched” and “stopped for a non-intrusive 45 second RBT and sent on your way without further ado if you pass”.
Look, the rest of the English-speaking world is genuinely speaking from experience when we say that RBTs are not the precipice of some slippery slope that will lead to Robot Zombie Hitler wiping out Freedom™ instituting some kind of Orwellian Nightmare State, OK?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Sure they do - they are conveyances on the public road for travel. Where do you draw the line that you want to draw?
Not really, our modern sense is directly derived from theirs. They were pretty clear they were against this sort of behavior when the British did it them.
WTF? Maybe for the millisecond between the ratification and the ratification of the Bill of Rights. This stuff was all addressed quire clearly in the Constitutional Convention - it was stil on the minds of these learned men more than a decade after they went to war over these matters.
Right. We are debating the meaning of unreasonable,not whether founders didn’t care about searches.
It is not uniformly applied. Everyone who passes through that point at that time gets asked, but that is not uniform.
What is wrong with it? Being required to have it is not the point, it is the pretext. (and not having it being a tiny administrative matter hardly worth all the drama).
Not only that, but it is clear from our Constitution that people are free to travel and conduct their business and not be stopped absent reasonable suspicion. Are you telling me that the cops at a checkpoint have any suspicion at all that any driver does not have his papers in place? If so, pull him or her over and be done with it. Otherwise, I am sure there is other police work to be done.
That is not the standard of a stop. In CA for instance, checkpoints need to be publicly announced if they want any charges resulting to stick as I understand it. There is no law against having a "deadly "vehicle - all vehicles are equal in that regard, and we are allowed to have them. Mere possession of a vehicle is not cause for suspicion, let alone being stopped and asked for papers. And the car itself has its ID displayed outside the vehicle and need not be stopped at all to be identified if there is a suspicion that the possession of the vehicle itself is a problem. If it is, then a stop is justified, but blanket stops because “vehicles are deadly”? Uh, no.
In some laws. But in the right to travel on public roads, no. Try to walk through a DUI checkpoint sometime. I bet you could, and would be asked for the same ID. And if you are drunk, expect to be treated the same as a driver subject to more.
No cite right now, but in CA at least, unless there is a problem with the driver, or the stop somehow arouses other suspicion (which is the real point), I don’t think they can ID the passengers. But how hard is it to manufacture a reason? I thought s/he was a parolee with a warrant. Oops I was wrong, too bad about the drugs we found subsequent.