SOME BARGAIN

Warrantless Searches Entail Profits, Losses

Police work is demanding, stressful, sometimes dangerous and, in general,
necessary. This region has had more than a few officers shot down, and shot
at, during drug stops - especially on Interstate 95.

The drug trade is bad, and whether the people who transport drugs are armed
or not, they're carrying dangerous and potentially deadly cargo that links
them to lawbreakers even more unsavory than themselves.

Drug stops can be lucrative, with 80 percent of confiscated drug money
going to the Sheriff's Office. Judging by Friday's report by staff writer
Robert Boyer, these involuntary contributions and a land donation by the
county mean that Cumberland County taxpayers won't have to pony up for a
proposed $2.8 million training center for the Sheriff's Office.

There is, however, a "but" on the way. And you have your choice of contexts
for it.

First, the county's Interstate Criminal Enforcement team sifts through a
lot of innocents before finding someone who is guilty of anything more
serious than a broken tail light, a seat belt violation or driving just
over the posted limit.

Second, notwithstanding all of the ICE-men's extensive training in
separating bad guys from good guys, a 10 percent success rate is nothing to
brag about.

Third, because virtually all of these judgment calls involve someone's
constitutional rights, each bad call is a serious matter in its own right
and all of them together are alarming.

That's not to say that the Sheriff's Office has a monopoly on the practice.
It is widespread - likely the rule rather than the exception.

Many law enforcement agencies take offense at the word "pretext" in
connection with such stops. But the Sheriff's Office is particularly
vulnerable in that debate because its officers do not routinely issue
traffic citations. And that isn't an oversight, it's policy, freely
acknowledged by Sheriff Moose Butler in a recent public discussion of law
enforcement in areas targeted for annexation by the city of Fayetteville.

The crux of it is that, within the department, "traffic" offenses are
largely the domain of the ICE team, whose highly trained members must in
each case determine whether probable cause to search someone's car does or
does not exist. And, by their own estimate, nine out of 10 of those highly
informed judgments are wrong.

This could imply something about the quality of the training. More likely,
it implies something about the wisdom of having law enforcement officers
try to practice law, which is comparable to putting a lawyer in command of
a hostage situation.

The bottom line can be found in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. Unless you feel secure in your "persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," knowing that it takes
the ICE-men 10 searches to net one bad guy, it should be clear that
warrantless searches have become way too routine.

More restrictive use of warrantless searches would be costly - to the
effort to restrain the drug trade and to the agencies that get the
forfeitures. Next calculation: How much is your privacy worth?