Pubdate: Fri, 01 Dec 2000
Source: Times Record News (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact:  1301 Lamar, Wichita Falls, TX 76301
Fax: 940/767-1741
Feedback: http://www.trnonline.com/opinions2/letters/form.shtml
Website: http://www.trnonline.com/

RANDOM RULING

Court Gives Minor Victory To Privacy

AT least one branch of the U.S. government is willing to limit the power of 
the state when it is brought to bear in the so-called war on drugs.

Yes, drug abuse is a serious problem in this country.

Yes, the manufacture and transportation and sale of illegal drugs is a 
proper concern of law enforcement.

But, yes, too, we seem to have gone overboard, particularly in some areas 
where the rights of individuals under the U.S. Constitution have been set 
aside to justify stepped-up efforts to stop the drug trade and drug use.

One such instance has involved the use by various local and state police 
departments of traffic checkpoints set up on busy streets or interstates to 
stop all passing motorists and search their vehicles for illegal drugs.

Certain South and lower central Texas highways gained notoriety for these 
kinds of sweeping operations, spawning protests from civil rights and civil 
liberties activists.

But, this week the Supreme Court issued a ruling on a case out of 
Indianapolis where police were using the same kind of procedure to stopped 
hundreds of motorists at random who were passing through a particular point 
on a roadway.

The court said the random roadblocks violate the Fourth Amendment of the 
Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The key was defining what's reasonable, and the court said this kind of 
roadblock is not. Instead, it is an invasion of the privacy of all citizens 
stopped, most of whom are guilty of absolutely nothing.

The court's ruling is only a partial check on the power of police to set up 
roadblocks to try to find scofflaws. Previous decisions by the court have 
upheld the legality of checkpoint programs to find drivers who are drunk, 
and it's difficult to discern from news reports alone how the court defines 
"reasonable" on the one hand, in the case of trolling for drunks, and 
"unreasonable" on the other, trolling for drug mules.

Apparently, the court simply found that the benefit to the public of the 
roadblocks does not outweigh the inconvenience to the public of going 
through them.

It seems a fine point, but such is the nature of some court rulings.

And a victory is a victory in a national obsession over drug use that has 
seen a distinct erosion in individual freedoms as police test the limits of 
their abilities to deal with the drug problem.

The case sends a message that needed to be sent: There are, in fact, 
limits, even though sometimes that doesn't seem to be the case.

Police believe they have a mandate to do whatever it takes to deal with 
drugs, and who can blame them? That's a clear message from other branches 
of government that finance and otherwise support this anti-crime activity.

But, the court's ruling makes clear that the mandate is not as sweeping as 
some would believe.
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