SUPREME COURT RULES DRUG ROADBLOCKS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

WASHINGTON - Police may not stop motorists randomly at roadblocks to
search for drugs, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a 6-3 decision
that rejected the tactics of Indianapolis law officers who set up
checkpoints to cut narcotics traffic in high-crime neighborhoods.

The court, which has previously ruled that sobriety checkpoints are
appropriate public safety measures, determined that drug search
roadblocks are unconstitutional because they were specifically
designed to catch criminals.

As such, the justices said, they amounted to unreasonable seizures
barred by the Fourth Amendment.

Law and precedent hold that police must have reasonable suspicion
before they can stop and search a person or a car. If the Indiana
roadblocks were permitted, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the
majority in Indianapolis vs. Edmond, ``there would be little check on
the authorities' ability to construct roadblocks for almost any
conceivable law enforcement purpose.''

And if the court did not set limits in this case, O'Connor continued,
``the Fourth Amendment would do little to prevent such intrusions
from becoming a routine part of American life.''

The court agreed with a ruling on the case last year by the federal
appeals court in Chicago, holding that the city of Indianapolis
violated the Fourth Amendment rights of motorists whom the police
stopped at drug-interdiction checkpoints that were set up on city
streets six times in 1998.

Pulling over cars in sequence, the police would check a driver's
license and registration and then walk a specially trained dog around
the car to sniff for drugs. The police stopped more than 1,100 cars
and made more than 100 arrests. More than half were for drug-related
crimes, and the rest were for license problems or other offenses.

Although the court is considered strongly pro-police on matters of
criminal law, the Indianapolis decision heartened civil libertarians
by reinforcing recent rulings that emphasized the right to privacy
over a series of intrusive efforts by law enforcement to fight crime.

The court ruled unanimously earlier this year that police may not
stop and frisk someone based on an anonymous tip that the person is
carrying a gun. The justices said the Fourth Amendment requires more
specific evidence of wrongdoing.

The justices also ruled this year that police may not squeeze or feel
a traveler's bags in a random search for illegal drugs. The court
said a traveler's handbags are private and off limits to searches,
except when an officer has a specific reason to look for drugs.

Brooklyn Law School Professor Susan Herman said the decisions suggest
``the court wants to hold the line and to recognize that there are
rules.''

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who supported the two earlier
rulings, dissented in the Indianapolis case, joined by fellow
conservatives Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.

Rehnquist wrote that the test for highway checkpoints is ``whether
they serve a significant state interest with minimal intrusion on
motorists.'' He said the Indianapolis approach was reasonable, noting
that most stops lasted less than three minutes and that no cars or
drivers were searched unless a drug-sniffing dog reacted to a
suspected illegal substance.

A small number of other cities had employed similar roadblocks, but
most had held off, awaiting the court's decision in this case.

In Indianapolis, Scott Chinn, who argued the case for the city, said
the ruling was ``not completely surprising.'' He maintained, however,
that the checkpoints were the result of police work and neighborhood
complaints and ``were intended to be very neighborhood- friendly.

``You take a swipe, at least, at stopping the flow of this stuff in
and out of neighborhoods,'' said Chinn, the city's corporation
counsel. ``The checkpoints were set up with specific reference to
what the hot zones were in the city for drug arrests.''

O'Connor's opinion made a distinction between the Indianapolis case
and earlier court decisions that upheld highway checkpoints for
broader social benefit, such as policing the border or protecting
motorists and pedestrians from drunken drivers.

In a case from Michigan 10 years ago, the Supreme Court upheld
sobriety checkpoints as a means of protecting public safety by
getting drunken drivers off the road. The court had also ruled in the
past that a sniff by a drug-detecting dog, which is commonly used at
airports, is so minimally intrusive as not to constitute a search.
Taking those precedents together, Indianapolis argued that adding a
drug-sniffing dog to a checkpoint could not convert a lawful police
practice into one that was unconstitutional.

O'Connor said the purpose of the checkpoint made all the difference:
while sobriety checkpoints served to protect the public from an
``immediate, vehicle-bound threat to life and limb,'' she said,
roadblocks for drug detection primarily served the ordinary
law-enforcement interest in crime control.

``We cannot sanction stops justified only by the generalized and
ever-present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal
that any given motorist has committed some crime,'' O'Connor said.

Material from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times is
included in this report.