TRIMMING THE DRAGNET

Our View: The rights that protect criminal suspects are, in fact, the same
rights that protect all Americans.

What's worse, illegal drugs being transported on our highways, or being
stopped at a police roadblock so a trained dog can sniff your car for drugs?

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on that question this week, ruling 6-3 that
those random drug roadblocks were unconstitutional.

Civil libertarians hailed the case as a victory for the rights of
individuals, and we agree with them.

At some point - actually, at a lot of points - we as a nation have to
decide just how many of our rights we're going to give up to catch the bad
guys.

Unlike sobriety checkpoints, which look for people who pose an immediate
threat to themselves and others, the court found the drug checkpoints in
Indianapolis went too far.

"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," Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor wrote in the majority opinion.

Indianapolis Police stopped 1,161 cars and trucks and made 104 arrests -
including 55 for drug charges - at six roadblocks conducted over four
months in 1998, The Associated Press reported.

Society is better off when the cops catch the bad guys, but the innocent
were treated to the same initial scrutiny as the criminal suspects.

Cynics will call the court's ruling a victory for what is often referred to
as "criminal's rights," but the rights that protect criminal suspects are,
in fact, the same rights that protect all Americans.

If we, in our fear, anger and disgust over this nation's drug problem allow
our protections to be thrown away, then we have traded the evil of illegal
drugs for the scourge of a police state.

How far is too far?

"While we do not limit the purposes that may justify a checkpoint program
to any rigid set of categories, we decline to approve a program whose
primary purpose is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest
in crime control," the majority opinion said.

Getting 55 drug arrests is good news, but stopping 1,161 cars and trucks to
do it is a high price indeed to accomplish a goal that most of society
already supports.