zadoc
They don't do breath tests, they just talk to each driver for a few seconds and pull them out of line for more testing if they appear to be under the influence of something (or, I would buttume, if their papers are not in order.)
It's not so much that we're short of police, it's that traffic volumes are so high around here that any kind of disruption to normal traffic flow causes major headaches. I think the whole thing is kind of ludicrous, as someone could be legally UI when driving, and by the time they get to the head of the line, they could have sobered up! (and have a painfully full bladder.)
I have a friend who came up on one of these checkpoints late at night; his parents live near the intersection of a major road and the DC Beltway, and he was staying with them at the time. The line was so long that he didn't recognize it as being a DUI checkpoint, he figured that someone must have wrecked or something - so he pulled into a convenience store parking lot, headed the other way and was planning to take the "back way" to his parents' house. He was pulled over for "evading a DUI checkpoint..." and of course they found him to be stone cold sober. Tell me again how this isn't a) a waste of police resources and b) a violation of basic rights (namely, free travel and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure)
I don't really know, or care - I just want the checkpoints gone.
It would fall under "unreasonable search and seizure," i.e. there's no probable cause for a police officer to stop the car as the driver was not obviously violating the law in any way.
Personally, I'd bet that enforcement efforts would be much more useful if officers simply drove around looking for drivers behaving erratically; this would also have the benefit of targeting the most egregious violators and also pulling over drivers driving poorly for reasons other than being UI. And, of course, it would be Consbreastutional, as there would be evident probable cause for these stops, unlike the checkpoints. With today's adversarial relationship between drivers and police, the police would probably have to have dash cams to make the charges stick, but those are becoming commonplace anyway. I would 100% support a program like this, with cruising officers targeting drivers obviously displaying poor behavior.
nate
-- replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
