Tucson, Arizona  Monday, 4 December 2000

http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/001204editroadblocks.html

If ordinary people are to feel free to go about their daily lives, they cannot be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures by the police.

Yet the Supreme Court was deeply split Tuesday, voting 6-3 on a decision in a case that sets parameters for police conduct with potential for abuse.

At first glance the case appears open and shut. The court was asked to decide whether police should be allowed to set up roadblocks to catch drug violators. The drug roadblocks work much like a DUI roadblock in which all drivers are pulled over and checked by police.

In this case, Indianapolis police set up such a roadblock in order to stem the flow of narcotics in a high-crime neighborhood.

But unlike DUI checkpoints, drug roadblocks spring from a different law enforcement concern and objective. The court has previously upheld the constitutionality of DUI roadblocks, saying they are a measure of public safety. Of that there is no question. Impaired drivers are an immediate threat to the safety of other drivers and to the public in general.

But this was not the case in Indianapolis. There, police set up the roadblocks as an ordinary law enforcement tool intending to catch drug violators.

Police there no doubt feel overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable drug enforcement problem. But police cannot hope to extend extraordinary police efforts as a means of ordinary crime control.

In writing the opinion for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out that to find such conduct constitutional would offer "little check on the authorities' ability to construct roadblocks for almost any conceivable law enforcement purpose."

She's right, the public in general should not be subjected to wholesale police searches in hopes of catching a few criminals if there is no immediate danger to public safety.

But this common-sense decision was opposed by the more conservative judges. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that the Indianapolis roadblock was reasonable. He based that opinion on the notion that the stops "served a significant state interest." Further, he said, most of the stops lasted less than three minutes and searches resulted only if a dog indicated the presence of an illegal substance.

We contend that the right to be free from an abusive police state serves a more important public interest role than the use of drug roadblocks. But Rehnquist, arguing that the drug roadblocks are a minimal intrusion on the privacy of motorists, said the practice should be constitutional.

That argument contradicts a conservative viewpoint that most often is at odds with the overstepping of police authority. And it runs contrary to a basic conservative tenet that holds that the best government is the least government.

The Supreme Court threaded a needle in overturning the use of drug roadblocks. The court properly found that drug roadblocks are clearly an abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.