ROADSIDE INTRUSION

Society needs to be protected from criminals, but it also needs to be
protected from the police who act as agents of the government.

An efficient way to control crime is to give the police unlimited powers.

Police states, whether they operate under right-wing dictators or left-wing
totalitarian regimes, efficiently control crime, but they do so at the
expense of individual liberties.

From its founding, the United States has always cherished individual
liberties, even when this basic principle made the job of law enforcement
officers more difficult.

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed this important principle when it
ruled that the Indianapolis police did not have the right to set up
roadblocks on city streets in an effort to combat illegal drugs.

There is little doubt that the roadblocks are an easy and effective way to
nab suspects. But roadblocks also intruded upon the privacy and individual
liberties of citizens not involved with illegal drugs.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court barred
routine traffic stops used as a drug-fighting tactic.

The tactic worked. Indianapolis police used the roadblocks about six times
in 1998. They stopped more than 1,100 vehicles.

Drug-sniffing dogs smelled around the vehicles. If the dogs indicated that
they smelled drugs, the police would order a search.

In all, Indianapolis police made more than 100 arrests for drug-related
crimes. That's the good part. The bad part is that to make 100 arrests,
1,000 innocent citizens were treated as criminal suspects.

The court properly ruled that the roadblocks violated the Fourth Amendment
requirement that searches and seizures be reasonable. Individual citizens
need to be suspected of a crime before police can conduct searches.

The court failed to add clarity to the exceptions it has allowed such as
roadblocks to check for drunken driving or to check for illegal aliens
along borders.

Those exceptions were allowed to protect the public from immediate risks
caused by drunken drivers and to maintain the nation's border integrity.

The court made a good decision to not expand these exceptions to include
drug roadblocks. If vehicle stops were permitted, police could expand that
exception to include stopping pedestrians as they walk down the street and
anywhere they gather in public.

Justice O'Connor was right when she spoke for the 6-3 majority and said,
"stops can only be justified by some quantum of individualized suspicion."
Otherwise, she wisely warned, "the Fourth Amendment would do little to
prevent such intrusions from becoming a routine part of American life."