COURT SLAMS RANDOM DRUG ROADBLOCKS

In 6-3 Ruling, Supreme Court Says Such Searches Violate Citizens' Privacy
Rights

WASHINGTON - A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down as
unconstitutional random roadblocks intended to catch drug criminals. The
court's most conservative justices dissented.

The 6-3 ruling weighed privacy rights against the interests of law
enforcement. The majority found that Indianapolis' use of drug-sniffing
dogs to check all cars pulled over at the roadblocks was an unreasonable
search under the Constitution.

The majority, in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said
the ruling does not affect other kinds of police roadblocks such as border
checks and drunken-driving checkpoints. Those have already been found
constitutional.

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.

Locally, police said they did not yet know what effect the ruling would
have on its Metro Narcotics Task Force.

"We haven't had time to look at the ruling," said Columbus Police Chief
Willie Dozier.

The task force, composed of 20 area law enforcement agents from six city
and county agencies, is a self-sustaining unit that generates its budget
from drug-related property seizures. During a spring break roadblock along
Interstate 185 in March, the task force made 80 arrests and seized six cars.

Lawyers for Indianapolis conceded that the roadblocks erected there in 1998
detained far more innocent motorists than criminals.

The city said 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.

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

The court was not swayed by the argument that the severity of the drug
problem in some city neighborhoods justified the searches.

"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.

Cars were pulled over at random in high-crime neighborhoods in
Indianapolis, motorists questioned, and a drug-sniffing dog led around the
cars. Most motorists were detained for about three minutes.

The city conducted six roadblocks over four months in 1998 before the
practice was challenged in federal court.

Police stopped 1,161 cars and trucks and made 104 arrests. Fifty-five of
the arrests were on drug charges.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas dissented.

"Efforts to enforce the law on pubic 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."

The drug checks were brief, random and in line with the kinds of checks
approved in the past, Rehnquist wrote, Also, they helped police find drunks
and people driving without proper paperwork, he wrote.

The American Civil Liberties Union brought the court challenge on behalf of
two detained motorists. ACLU lawyers claimed police had no right to use the
roadblocks to investigate criminal drug activity without good reason to
suspect one motorist or another.

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

Staff writer S. Thorne Harper contributed to this report.