OFFICERS UNDER SCRUTINY AT 'CLICK IT OR TICKET' SITES

AUBURN, Ala. - The first thing drivers see are the orange barrels
lined along the center and sides of the street, a kind of gauntlet
they quickly discover is a makeshift outpost for police officers.

Thousands of checkpoints like this have been set up across the South,
including on the Mississippi Coast, as part of law enforcement's
two-week "Click It or Ticket" campaign to make sure seat belts are
being used. But drivers aren't the only ones under scrutiny.

American Civil Liberties Union chapters in several states also are
watching officers to make sure that the seat belt checkpoints do not
become an excuse for unauthorized searches.

"With any law enforcement initiative, there is an opportunity for
there to be a problem," said Tari Williams, a spokeswoman at Alabama's
ACLU.

An Associated Press survey of seven Southern states conducting the
"Click It or Ticket" checkpoints from May 21 through June 3 found that
they resulted in hundreds of drug-related and felony arrests the first
week, in addition to thousands of tickets for failing to use seat
belts, or driving without a license or insurance.

On the Mississippi Coast, law enforcement traffic safety efforts over
the Memorial Day weekend resulted in more than 50 arrests for drunken
driving by police and deputies in Harrison and Jackson counties.
Deputies in Jackson County charged a man with driving a vehicle that
had been reported stolen.

Only a couple of drug-related arrests were reported on the Coast, but
more than 50 people were ticketed for not having insurance on the
vehicles they were driving. Authorities said those tickets were issued
as a secondary charge after officers charged the drivers with a
primary violation such as driving without a license or having improper
equipment.

At an Auburn checkpoint on a recent steamy morning, there were no
drug-sniffing dogs and no random vehicle searches. Such enforcement
tactics are no longer allowed, unless an officer detects some reason
that such a search is justified.

Officers spoke to the driver of each vehicle, making sure seat belts
were buckled and driver's licenses and insurance were current -
although, Lt. Willie Smith said, officers at an earlier checkpoint
nabbed a driver who was using marijuana.

"I think they kind of came up and it surprised them," Smith
said.

At this checkpoint on a residential thoroughfare between the Auburn
University campus and a shopping mall, Smith and about a dozen city
police officers - all wearing gray stretch shirts and black pants -
were on one of the special overtime assignments.

Such checks have been conducted by officers in Alabama, Georgia,
Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Kentucky.
Florida traffic officials are also participating but not with
checkpoints.

Coordinators of the federally funded program say officers have been
involved in more than 15,500 seat belt checkpoints or stepped-up patrols.

Last November, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police could not set
up checkpoints just to look for illegal drugs. The ruling did not
affect checkpoints for driver's licenses or drunken driving, which
were previously found constitutional.

While officials contend they are obeying laws related to such
enforcement programs and focusing on seat belts, reports show plenty
of other arrests.

Alabama troopers through Memorial Day handed out 6,288 tickets for
"Click It or Ticket" violations other than seat belts. A public safety
spokeswoman said those cases would be specified after the program ends.

Georgia officials reported 401 drug arrests, apprehending 387
fugitives and making 255 other felony arrests through the first week
of "Click It or Ticket" and the extended Memorial Day weekend.

North Carolina reported 300 drug arrests and Kentucky 153 through
Memorial Day, with 95 fugitives apprehended and 14 stolen vehicles
recovered.

South Carolina reported 47 drug arrests by highway patrol officers, in
addition to thousands of seat belt violations.

The arrests in Tennessee included six for illegal weapons, three for
illegal alcohol and one for illegal drugs.

In the absence of a rash of complaints about illegal searches in any
of the states, program coordinators credit observant officers with the
arrests not related to seat belts.

Williams of the Alabama ACLU attended a training session that was held
for Alabama public safety officials and others involved in the
checkpoint program.

"They assured me they were going to be strictly looking for seat belt
violators," Williams said. They said they were "not going to use it as
a way to search cars, to look in glove apartments or trunks."

But, she said, if officers "smell or see marijuana, they can't
overlook" it.

Daniel Robinson, highway safety program manager at the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Atlanta, said he was
confident police agencies were properly conducting the
checkpoints.

"Unfortunately, some people broadly interpret" the restrictions on
checkpoints, Robinson said.

"If somebody comes through a checkpoint and they've got 25 pounds of
marijuana and 25 pounds of cocaine in the back seat, I would say you
probably should arrest that person ... but not conduct extra
searches," Robinson said.

On Memorial Day, three men stopped on Interstate 20 in Atlanta for a
suspected seat belt violation were arrested after allegedly firing
five shots at a Georgia trooper, with one penetrating the windshield
of the police cruiser. One of them was also charged with a seat belt
violation.

Kentucky state police reacted to criticism from legislators and
questions about the legality of issuing tickets to seat belt violators
by deciding to have officers instead hand out "educational material."

Kentucky law makes seat belt violations a secondary offense, which
means tickets can be issued only if the vehicle is stopped for another
reason. Failure to use a seat belt is also a secondary offense in
South Carolina.

South Carolina "Click It or Ticket" campaign made special efforts to
reach black drivers, saying they are disproportionately represented in
traffic statistics.

Col. Anna Amos, director of the South Carolina Transport Police, said
there was no racial profiling and the checkpoints have been located in
areas where there were high crash rates.

The decision drew no complaint from Dwight James, director of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's South
Carolina Conference of Branches.

"The potential for saving lives was an overriding factor for us,"
James said.