Roadblock blues

Drug checkpoints violate civil rights

Imagine driving home at night. You see a man holding an orange sign that says "Police Checkpoint - Stop Ahead." You slow down and come to a stop behind the car in front of you. Every two or three minutes, you move a car length ahead. When you approach the front of the line, the officer promptly demands to see your license and registration, waves his flashlight around inside your car and walks around it, giving it a good three-times-over. All the while he's got a dog sniffing your car.

This atrocious situation is no mere nightmare, as the Indianapolis City Police has, since 1998, set up six random drug checkpoints and stopped over 1,000 people. The stops last about five minutes and the police officers try to make sure that no more than six or seven vehicles are stopped at one time. James Edmund, who felt his rights violated by these stops, sued the city with the help of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. A federal trial court found in favor of the program, but the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found the program unconstitutional. The City of Indianapolis will now ask the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling when they plead their case today.

The crux of the case is whether or not the program fits within the current interpretation of probable cause. Checkpoints along the border of the U.S. and Mexico for the purpose of curbing illegal immigration are legal, as are checkpoints that ensure immediate safety (such as sobriety checkpoints and roadblocks in response to a bomb threat). However, the Circuit Court ruling likened the drug checkpoints to setting up "a metal detector outside each person's home ... in order to determine whether he was carrying a gun for which he lacked a permit."

The drug roadblock system is an extreme measure that violates a person's Fourth Amendment rights. Probable cause is discarded under this program, as the police are able to stop cars for no reason other than the suspicion that anyone may be transporting drugs. The police need no search warrants or even suspicion of wrongdoing: the program treats everyone as a suspect.

If the police could legally do this at roadblocks, why would they not have probable cause to suspect any person walking down the street of criminal activity? Probable cause touches many issues. With the proposed interpretation of probable cause, the FBI would be able to suspect anyone with Internet access of using his e-mail program for illegal activity. It would, therefore, be able to use its questionable and easily abused Carnivore program, which is currently in testing, to screen incoming and outgoing e-mails at random.

There is more to the issue of checkpoints than personal privacy. The dissenting opinion of the Circuit Court states that decentralization of the criminal justice system must be taken into account when ruling on whether or not random drug checkpoints are legal. The Supreme Court's acceptance of the appeal by the City of Indianapolis, however, means that decentralization cannot be an issue: The high court will now decide the constitutionality of the drug roadblocks.

The Supreme Court needs to rule against the random drug checkpoint system. A ruling in favor of the drug roadblocks would pervert the meaning of probable cause, discarding everyone's rights so that the police could catch a few more criminals.