CITIES MAY CALL OUT DOGS TO FIND DRUGS

High Court To Hear Arguments On Whether Random Narcotics Roadblocks Are Legal.

You are in a car heading across town to an important meeting - late, as
usual. On the highway ahead, you notice a flashing sign and a police officer
waving all the cars off to the side of the road.

An officer asks to see your license and registration and says you have been
stopped at a narcotics checkpoint. While the officer verifies your
paperwork, another officer leads a drug-sniffing dog around the car.

Are you offended at the implicit accusation? Upset over the inconvenience
and delay? Or is it worth it to help rid society of the problem of drug
abuse and narcotics trafficking?

With police eyeing such roadblocks as a potential tool in America's antidrug
arsenal, drivers may have to start asking such questions. But more important
is whether such searches are legal under the US Constitution.

That's the question the US Supreme Court will consider today, when the
justices take up the case of two drivers who sued Indianapolis officials
after being stopped at narcotics checkpoints.

Neither driver was arrested. Nor had they done anything wrong. And that's
their point.

The essence of their case is that the Constitution requires that the police
not be able to detain people without reasonable suspicion that a particular
individual has committed a crime. Random dragnets violate this fundamental
principle of the Fourth Amendment, they argue.

A federal appeals court panel agreed in a 2-to-1 decision, striking down the
Indianapolis program. But now the city is asking the Supreme Court to
reverse that decision, a move that would give a green light to
law-enforcement officials across the country to set up similar
drug-detection roadblocks.

"This case, if the Supreme Court reverses, will bring the Fourth Amendment
home to all Americans," says Ken Falk, legal director of the Indiana Civil
Liberties Union, which is arguing the case at the high court on behalf of
the two innocent drivers.

Lawyers for the city counter that the Supreme Court has recognized certain
exceptions to the rule, like when police set up roadside sobriety
checkpoints to keep drunk drivers off the highways. In addition, they argue
that the inconvenience to innocent motorists of a two-to-three minute stop
is more than counterbalanced by the government interest in enforcing
narcotics laws.

Police view the roadblocks as a highly effective tool for detecting drug
couriers. When Indianapolis instituted its checkpoint program from August to
November 1998, out of 1,161 cars stopped, police arrested 104 motorists - 55
of them for drug offenses.

"Because of the ease with which drugs are concealed and transported in
automobiles, the city's interest in using checkpoints to battle illegal
drugs is substantial," says A. Scott Chinn, a lawyer for the city in his
brief to the court. "The court has often recognized that the scourge of
illegal drugs presents one of the greatest problems affecting the health and
welfare of our population."

The Clinton administration agrees. US Solicitor General Seth Waxman says in
his brief to the court that the drug checkpoints are no different than other
roadblocks. "Drug trafficking's attendant social costs - in lost lives,
violence, crime, and general public disorder - parallel, if not exceed,
those public-welfare concerns that sustain sobriety checkpoints," the
government's brief says.

In addition to the administration, 15 states, as well as the National League
of Cities and the National Governors Association have filed briefs urging
the court to uphold the drug checkpoints.

On the other side of the case are the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Association of Federal Defenders, and the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers. In their brief, the defense lawyers association questions
the reliability of drug dogs in the context of random, roadside operations.

"Cases litigated in the lower courts reveal that when dogs are asked to
inspect those whom officers have no articulable basis to suspect, false
positives can exceed 96 percent," the brief says.

In addition, many Americans feel intimidated when police dogs are present,
policy opponents argue. To subject motorists to such an ordeal with no
reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing erodes privacy rights by basing
law-enforcement operations on the mere possibility of a chance encounter
with an actual criminal, they say.

"These roadblocks rely on a large police presence and dogs circling each
car," writes Mr. Falk in his brief. "As a result, they represent a much
greater intrusion ... on law abiding motorists who are unfortunate enough to
be stopped."