COURT BARS DRUG ROADBLOCKS

A staff and wire report

WASHINGTON -- A ruling by the Supreme Court striking down random roadblocks
intended for drug searches will not affect Fayetteville law enforcement
agencies.

In a significant ruling on the use of police power, the Supreme Court said
the rulings are an unreasonable invasion of privacy under the Constitution.

Law enforcement in and of itself is not a good enough reason to stop
innocent motorists, the majority concluded Tuesday.

Spokesmen for the Fayetteville Police Department and the state Highway
Patrol said the ruling will not affect the way they work.

"We don't do drug checkpoints," said Fayetteville police Sgt. Mike Todd.
"We do driver license checkpoints and DWI checkpoints."

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stressed that point when the ruling was made.

But the reasoning behind those kinds of roadblocks, chiefly that the
benefit to the public outweighs the inconvenience, cannot be applied
broadly, O'Connor wrote.

"If this case were to rest on such a high level of generality, there would
be little check on the authorities' ability to construct roadblocks for
almost any conceivable law enforcement purpose," the opinion said.

Todd said that when motorists give officers "reasonable suspicion" during a
traffic stop, searches are possible.

Sgt. Everett Clendenin of the Cumberland County office of the Highway
Patrol said his agency follows similar policy.

"The Supreme Court ruling will not affect our daily operations whatsoever,"
he said. "We do not overstep the boundaries of the Constitution."

The Highway Patrol's Booze It or Lose It and Click It or Ticket checkpoints
do not violate the constitution, Clendenin said.

Dissenting opinions

The Supreme Court ruled that roadblocks Indianapolis set up in high-crime
neighborhoods violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against
unreasonable searches and seizures

The court's three most conservative justices dissented, saying the
Indianapolis roadblocks served valuable public safety and crime-fighting
goals. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas dissented.

"Efforts to enforce the law on public highways used by millions of
motorists are obviously necessary to our society," Rehnquist wrote. "The
court's opinion today casts a shadow over what has been assumed ... to be a
perfectly lawful activity."

Justice Anthony Kennedy, like O'Connor a sometime "swing vote" between the
court's ideological poles, sided with her in the majority.

The American Civil Liberties Union had sued on behalf of two detained
motorists, and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago eventually
found the practice was probably unconstitutional.

"Today's decision sends a clear message that even a conservative court is
not willing to countenance the serious erosion of our basic constitutional
rights," said Steven Shapiro, ACLU's legal director.

During oral arguments in October, several justices seemed troubled by the
notion that by unwittingly driving into the checkpoint, a motorist is open
to a criminal investigation.

Others questioned whether the use of drug-sniffing dogs was heavy-handed.
The dogs were led around the car's exterior at every stop.

Other cases

The case is one of several the court has taken recently that examine the
limits of police powers to hunt for drugs.

The court heard arguments in the case of a man detained by police outside
his home for two hours while officers got a search warrant for drugs. In
that case, justices seemed to indicate by their questions that they saw
little wrong with the police approach.

The justices will also consider a case involving a man arrested for growing
marijuana after police outside the home monitored heat generated by grow
lamps in his garage.

In 1999, the court ruled that immigration officials violated bus
passengers' privacy rights by squeezing the luggage in overhead racks in a
search for drugs.

In the Indianapolis case, lawyers for the city said catching drug criminals
was the primary aim of the roadblocks set up in the summer of 1998.

The city conceded the roadblocks detained far more innocent motorists than
criminals. But it contended the checks were a quick and efficient way to
hunt for illegal drugs and that the severity of the drug problem in some
areas justified the searches.

While agreeing that society would no doubt be safer without illegal drugs,
O'Connor said "the gravity of the threat alone" cannot determine whether
the program was constitutional.

Similarly, the majority rejected the idea that the checkpoints could also
help catch drunks and drivers without valid licenses or registrations.