The year my brother graduated from HS, they had a Sr skip day. Almost all of the kids went to a local beach. It got around the crowd that the police had set up checkpoints at various locations along the route home. Friends my brother had (8 of them, I'm glad he rode home with someone else) jammed themselves into a car and used back roads to evade the police. One mile from home, the guy driving crashed into a tree killing himself, his sister, two girls that were ejected from the car and critically injuring the rest. My father was one of the first firefighters on the scene. He couldn't identify four of my brothers friends, but knew the car. Later, they gave him the job of telling the parents their two kids, twins, a boy and a girl, were dead and the whole classes graduation ceremony basically became a funeral.
Seven miles from my house, in an area known for it's DWI checkpoint (that keeps catching drunk drivers because their stupidly drunk) night turned into day and a young mother was taking her little girl to daycare. As she waited to turn in, a drunk that had been trying to “sleep it off” in his car awoke, blood alcohol still double what was legal, pulled out from the bar, drove the 5 blocks it took to reach the women's car waiting to turn in, didn't even put his brakes on — rammed her car from behind instantly killing the four year old. My husband's first death as a new firefighter. He worked frantically to free the little girl as the mother screamed and cried for her daughter. When they got her out of all of the mangled steel, my husband realized the little girl was our little girl's age, same brown hair, same Disney backpack. He almost lost it. But held it together to try and revive the little girl, but she was already dead. He came home not being able to get that sight and the screaming sobs of the mother out of his head. And then the drunk guy, sitting on the curb, “Can I leave now?” It took almost every police officer, firefighter, and onlooker all of their strength to not smash that guy in the face.
These are only a few examples. I can't say what would have happened if the drunk drivers that were caught at the checkpoints had made it through. I only know what happened to many that evaded the checkpoints and the outcomes were tragic. So when, at least where I live, many drunks are stopped at checkpoints, I'm glad.
Government has contributed to drunk driving by a series of magnitudes, by aiding and abetting lawless open borders...
Tens of thousands Illegal aliens have left a landscape of broken and dead American victims in their path...and continue to do so.
Thank you government.
Both examples you posit show how checkpoints didn't do a thing to prevent death or injury from via drivers. In fact, regarding your first example, one could argue that the checkpoint indirectly caused the accident.
I guess I can take solace in the fact that the previous 42 replies were more or less condemning roadblocks and supporting our constitutional rights.
I have police officers in my family and have discussed roadblocks and traffic stops with them in the past. By and large they detest the practice of roadblocks and speed traps and do not feel they contribute to the safety of the public at all. However, they are directed to carry them out through orders of their superiors - who get their orders from the politicians who are looking after themselves.
They state that they can identify and stop drunk drivers just by being out on patrol as there are dead giveaways to drunk drivers that all of us have seen. People who can't keep in their own lane, drive at night with the headlights off, drive too slow, etc.
Once you throw up roadblocks, the not so good cops get a power trip out of it and anybody who gives them any lip, asserts their constitutional rights (as the young man in this video tried to do), or otherwise comes across as a "smart ass" is immediately subject to harassment and intimidation.
So in the end, roadblocks are not about catching drunk drivers at all but about beating the citizens into submission and forcing them to forfeit their constitutional rights in the name of "safety."
Those who are willing to give up their rights in exchange for safety deserve neither.
What makes you think that random checkpoints will stop at DWI? What about weed, guns, terrorists, expired licenses, etc.? How about, "Random body cavity searches saved my daughter", or "Random water boarding saved my uncle" ...those should be OK?
If you are okay with DWI stops without reason or cause, you would be ok with anything.
Should people drive drunk? No. Do they? Yes. Do we all have to pay for that? No, it’s why we have rights. Punish the guilty and leave the innocent the hell alone.
I know a town where they have DUI checkpoints.
Everyone in town knows about these, and avoids them. Not enough cops to block every street, so it becomes a game. The cops know it, the citizens know it. Once in a while the cops snag an outsider, and then they have something to put in the blotter that makes them look efficient and Worthy of the Public Trust. Mostly, they look like a bunch of Barney Fifes.
A couple of times the cops have set up across from the biggest bar in town, and waited. Friends of mine send their designated driver out, and he does a walloping drunk act. Of course, the cop sees this, and chases the guy down. The guy blows a big fat goose egg on the drunk-meter; the rest of his crowd gets in their cars and drives home the other direction, laughing at the absurdity of it. The ‘drunk’ says, “I dunno what you’re talking about, officer. I only drank soda; here’s my receipt. You must have seen me stumble on the curb or something.”
No doubt I could pull out a bunch of tragic stories like yours; I have several dating back to my high school years. The real issue is that this has more to do with what was seen in the video in the original post than the tragedies you recount. The entirety of purpose of a checkpoint is power and control (and, of course, the revenue generation). All cloaked in do-gooder nanny-ism.
There are drunks on the road! We have to do something! They’re doing something! Yay! We’re safe!
Not too long ago I was driving my wife’s grandmother home after a family party when we got funneled into a checkpoint. She’s 99 years old, and couldn’t produce an state ID because she doesn’t have or need one at her age. So we waited for a supervisor to clear us for an ‘adult passenger not displaying’. I don’t recall that they wrote down her name; they may have. Does this ring like Nazi Germany?
I had to show my license, registration and proof of insurance. I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, but I was treated as if I were a drunk; I had to prove I was sober by answering questions and driving the very tight lane they made us navigate. Let’s be clear: the purpose of checkpoints is to catch people in violation of administrative laws and ordinances (lights, seatbelt, current tag), not drunks (they catch very few). And when they have you on a violation of administrative law, they write a fat money-generating citation. Which they do, in spades. The blotter doesn’t list the list these ‘little’ violations, because if they did, the people would rise up at the obvious adsurdity of the money-grab.
That’s it. The rest of it is BS.
Maybe you think someone needs to watch over the town and make sure that no one misbehaves.
Me? I think that’s an invitation to Big Brother, or worse.
Thats a nice story. Always a reason to tighten the vice on the innocent to catch the guilty? I am sorry for your loss but in this world NOTHING is guaranteed. Not your life, not your fortune.
If you are willing to trade your liberty for the illusion of safety you are a coward.
To expand on my answer, this is a Constitutional question, not a heart issue.
1. The driver exerted his 5th Amendment right against self incrimination.
2. The Officer knew that invoking the 5th amendment cannot be grounds for probable cause. ( The privilege against self-incrimination serves as a protection to the innocent, as well as to the guilty, and we have been admonished that it should be given a liberal application. Hoffman v. United States)
3. The “crew” working the checkpoint did not even have to communicate intent. The K-9 officer knew his job was to provide probable cause. It made no matter that the K-9 officer knew he was falsifying probable cause. He did not even have to be asked.
So your tax dollars and mine are used to destroy the Constitution. But that’s ok with you? Shame on you.
When a crew of officers subvert the law, and believe me if it had come to a court case, they would have provided false testimony under oath the worst thing that can happen to the officers is they lose the conviction. Shame on you.
For a citizen, when faced with corrupt Police he risks everything. Reputation, job, perhaps marriage. But you are ok with this? Shame on you.
This is not an isolated incident. This is SOP all over the country. It is accepted as a game, and is part of training for LEO to subvert the 4th Amendment, and the 5th. They do it because they can. They do it because people like you turn a blind eye. People like you demand a transfer of risk and don’t care how they get it. Shame on you.
That's some of the worst grammar I've ever seen.