Posted on 05/31/2006 12:54:05 PM PDT by AzaleaCity5691
Police arrest 67 at checkpoints Wednesday, May 31, 2006 By NADIA M. TAYLOR Staff Reporter Officers issued more than 1,800 tickets and arrested 67 people over the Memorial Day weekend at several driver's license checkpoints throughout the city, police said.
Most of the 1,834 tickets issued were for not having a driver's license or proof of insurance, according to interim Mobile police Chief Lester Hargrove.
Fifty-four people were arrested on outstanding misdemeanor warrants, and 13 people were arrested on felony warrants, Hargrove said. Most charges stemmed from traffic violations or drug offenses, police said.
One man, Carl Mitchell Washington, 22, was driving with his 2-year-old son when police stopped him at a checkpoint and found about 30 pills, which were believed to be Ecstasy, and $2,775 in cash, Hargrove said.
Washington was charged Sunday with possession of a controlled substance and endangering the welfare of a child and was released on a $3,500 bond, according to the Mobile County Metro Jail log.
Under Alabama law, possession of a controlled substance is a Class C felony, punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Endangering the welfare of a child is a Class A misdemeanor, which can carry a sentence of up to one year in jail, according to state law.
In addition to the weekend arrests, police seized two handguns and towed 53 vehicles as a result of the checkpoints, Hargrove said.
The topic of roadblocks garnered substantial media attention last month after two men were shot to death at a McDonald's drive-through in northeast Mobile. After the April 5 killings, city officials called for more frequent random checkpoints to look for and seize illegal weapons.
The latest round of checkpoints -- which ran Friday through Monday -- was the third weekend since April 28 that police have set up roadblocks in Mobile. Police issued a total of 1,362 citations during the first two weekends, which took place April 28 and 29 and May 5 and 6.
This kind of thinking is exactly why some of the Founding Fathers thought a "Bill of Rights" was a BAD idea: people would come to think that just because a right wasn't listed, it didn't exist. Do you think the 8 rights listed are the only natural rights you have? Do you not think the Founding Fathers thought the right to travel by one's own vehicle was so obvious and fundamental they didn't even conceive of adding it as an explicit right?
You'd be surprised at how quickly you can run afoul of bureaucratic regulations, how severely you can be treated for doing so, and how a cop can just toss you in jail for a judge to sort things out because there is no way the cop can be expected to know the law thoroughly. A surprising number of regulations are designed to not just punish wrongdoing, but to punish the opportunity for wrongdoing!
May your chains rest lightly upon you.
Unenumerated rights are a concept that opens doors to things like abortion, affirmative action and other bogus rulings.....
The tickets were mostly for not having "proof" of insurance, i.e. an insurance card. There are no statistics given on how many of those ticketed people had no insurance. This type of of roadblock is just another example of anarcho-tyranny. It is far easier and safer for cops to stop and ask law-abiding people for their papers than it is to solve crime and confront criminals.
Who paid for the roads? What rules there should be and how they are enforced, should always keep that in mind. The cop is my servant, not my superior.
Not if they can intimidate the occupants into surrendering their rights!
Typically they will state that they saw something "in plain view", even if they have to plant it afterward to "justify" the original search.
Another common tactic is to "find" something wrong with the car, and threaten to have it towed unless a search is allowed.
Blank warrants, bluff threats of arrest, corrupt cops have no end of pretext to cower citizens into submission.
It's sad my attitude has become so bad, maybe the good cops should think harder about the long term consequences TO THEMSELVES of backing the bad cops when they go into thug mode!
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Checkpoints are anti-American. Individual rights trump state rights. I have a right to be secure in my person, letters, and possessions unless a warrant is issued against me.
Your easy acceptance of this slippery slope is horrifying!
May your chains rest lightly upon you.......
What do you mean, changing demographics...the Jew thing, like before?
Probably pulls the wings off butterflies!
Always keep your contraband in a locked suitcase when you are in your car.
How many were arrested for the crackdown on GUNS! None is my bet. Good idea my ass! Revenue Generator Period.
The headline should read, "Security bureaucrats bring in the bucks!"
There is pretty much an accepted criteria for what is a "good" neighborhood and what is a bad neighborhood. As time drifts on, the original inhabitants of a neighborhood leave it, newcomers replace it. In some cases, such as the neighborhoods which we now are looking in for houses, the newcomers kept the neighborhood as the old residents did. These neighborhoods in time become "historical districts", "retro", the kind of inner-city communities where home prices shoot up because they stay safe, clean and a wonderful place to raise children, and often they become expensive because they are an island surrounded by the other type, and this is the kind I live near
These are the older working class neighborhoods who as time goes by, residents die, move out, new ones replace them. These neighborhoods often have a period of rapid sell off at rock bottom prices, leading to the wide belief among many who would otherwise buy there that this is a bad area. May not be true at the time, but this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Soon, the neighborhood looks more ragged, apparently the newcomers have no interest in keeping up their homes, as time goes on, the last of the old resident moves out and soon, you have a ghetto on your hands, a place where drugs are rampant, the schools are bad, many homes have overgrown yards, burglar bars, etc, and where, if you look at the booking record at a county jail, many of their arrestees seem to claim homes in said area as their residence.
Most of the city outside of of the 56 limits was built between 1940-1970, these neighborhoods have all exited (or about to) exit their first generation, and the city has annexed no new territory. It's in the city's interest to keep as many nice areas as possible while curtailing the spread of bad areas as much as possible.
Actually Alabama recently passed a law which I believe, among other things, allows the state to detain illegals, the fact that we have to pass a law for this is mind blowing.
It is public property. The police are the representative of the public. The guy in the car is not.
I agree. I don't believe the "polls" on this matter in our city any more than any other poll. I live in Mobile. I got stopped Monday after picking my son up at school at 3pm. They had a 4-line heavily traveled road blocked off (Grelot Rd) with two cops on each side checking "your papers". My highschool age son was actually in a hurry to get home to start studying for the next day's final exams. We spent 45 minutes in this mess. For nothing.
It did give me a good opportunity to tell my son about the days in the Soviet Union when they did these things routinly and how we used to talk about the USSR and their "show me your papers" road blocks in high school. Before I said a thing he was going off on how this was just wrong in a free country. Yep. Even a kid in 9th grade can see that this sort of "show me your papers" road blocks by police is very disturbing in a free country.
There were cops all over the place making sure no one tried to turn around and get out of the nightmare traffic jam. You were just screwed if you decided to go down this normally fast moving 4-lane road in the middle of the city in the middle of the AFTERNOON.
This is being run so poorly too that it will quickly piss off the majority of the Mobile population. They could have at least had 4 cops checking "your papers". But no. They strangle 2 lanes each side down to 1 and then have 2 cops checking each side and cars backed up for a LONG wait. Grrrrrrr.
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