Ohio Police post fake "Drug Checkpoint Ahead" signs on I-271

[J N Winkler]

And, yes, I've had officers search my car for drugs and contraband before.  It happens every so often when we drive to México–by US Border Patrol agents, by the Federales, by the Mexican army.  Sometimes they just look through your window, sometimes they have you pop the trunk, sometimes they have everybody get out of the car, and sometimes you get to open up every piece of luggage you have with you and watch them poke around through your friends' underwear.  Do I worry they're planting drugs?  No.  Does that make me naïve or stupid?  No.  It makes me just like the other thousands upon thousands of other people who have no problem with it.

Those are dragnet-type searches which are not based on specific suspicion and, for a law-abiding person, are more of a hassle than anything else.  It is qualitatively very different to be under suspicion by the police as a specific person of interest and that is when a person has to be very careful, even if he or she trusts the police not to do anything overtly illegal like planting evidence.

[kphoger]

But isn't that what we're talking about?  Isn't a DUI checkpoint a dragnet-type search?

[J N Winkler]

But isn't that what we're talking about?

Not quite.

Isn't a DUI checkpoint a dragnet-type search?

Yes, it is, and it is permitted by the Supreme Court on that basis (Michigan v. Sitz).  Similarly, Border Patrol checkpoints for illegal immigrants are dragnet-type operations and are also permitted by the Supreme Court on that basis (US v. Martinez-Fuerte).  And, in Mexico, drug and weapons checkpoints are dragnets and in practice operate very similarly to DUI and border checkpoints in the US.  (I don't know what the legal position is in Mexico in regards to search, but the reality is that for the Mexican military and law enforcement personnel manning them, the traffic passing through is fully random and the law-abiding citizens massively outnumber the criminals.)

In the US, drug checkpoints are a different kind of animal altogether.  The Supreme Court does not allow them to be run as dragnets.  This means that law enforcement agencies wishing to run them have to get around this unfavorable legal position by using techniques which ensure that the traffic passing through is not randomly selected.  In the Ohio case, for example, the only traffic that should pass through the interception area consists of drivers who have previously made an illegal maneuver in an attempt to avoid it.  That by itself escalates the status of every person passing through the checkpoint to that of a person of interest in a criminal investigation.

[SP Cook]

An important and thoughtful book:

"Rise Of The Warrior Cop: The Militarization Of America's Police Forces" by Radley Balko

It wasn't always this way, and we never should have let it happen.

[seicer]

Good book.