HIGH COURT CONSIDERS LEGALITY OF POLICE BLOCKADES VS. PRIVACY

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court justices questioned whether roadblocks to catch
drug dealers are one step on the path toward the sort of random questioning
by police that the Constitution is supposed to forbid.

The court took a new look yesterday at privacy rights vs. the interests of
law enforcement with the case of drug-search roadblocks that detain more
innocent motorists than criminals.

The court must decide whether the roadblocks set up by Indianapolis in 1998
are consistent with the accepted practices of border roadblocks to find
illegal immigrants or random traffic stops to get drunks off the road.

The city admits that its primary aim was to catch drug criminals. Civil
liberties advocates called the practice heavy-handed and risky, and asked
the Supreme Court to ban it.

Justice Antonin Scalia pounced on a lawyer for the city, who argued that
the practice is no more intrusive than the traffic stops that previously
passed court muster.

"So you think the government could stop a car anywhere in the United States
and look for illegal immigrants?" Scalia asked in mock surprise. "Simply
stop the car and say, 'Can I see your papers, please?' " As the crowd
stirred, Scalia said: "Sorta scary."

The city's lawyer, A. Scott Chinn, said authorities would have to show a
reason to suspect illegal immigrants were using a particular road, but he
did not back off his argument that the drug checkpoints are a simple and
effective way to find large amounts of drugs.

Several other cities have used similar checkpoints, and the practice could
become fairly common if the Supreme Court gives its blessing.

"The risk here is if we break down this barrier . . . we will be faced with
ever-increasing incursions that will be balanced away," by the argument
that the benefit to the public good outweighs individual privacy concerns,
said Kenneth Falk, a lawyer for the Indiana chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union.

The ACLU, which represents two detained motorists, argues that police do
not have the right to use roadblocks to investigate criminal drug activity
without good reason to suspect one motorist or another.

The Fourth Amendment that forbids unreasonable searches or seizures
generally protects Americans from random sidewalk questioning by police, or
indiscriminate traffic stops.

A federal appeals court ruled that the stops probably amounted to
unreasonable seizures.