Posted on 06/04/2013 5:00:23 AM PDT by relictele
A sobriety checkpoint in Burbank on Saturday that screened 1,021 drivers yielded zero arrests, police reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Around here, Alabama, most check points are on side roads. Had one on main state highway going thru next town by local cops, and stopped several hundred after work drinkers.over 150 were detained,also ONE lawyer. Law here requires state
approval and state patrol present on state highways All charges dropped.
Took lawyer several days to find and report law, made newspaper.
=’s loss of liberty.
The story is a lab tech noticed drugs missing/diluted in evidence storage. He/she started microengraving crack rocks with some random identifiers. After a while the lab was getting the same rocks back for new cases. The tech narrowed it down to the cops involved and reported it.
These types of cases happen all the time. I know someone who managed to get video of a cop planting drugs in his car. The case was dismissed but the cop didn't get disciplined at all.
The WOD enables law enforcement to plant a coin sized package on anyone and turn them info a felon at will. I don't understand how so many FReepers don't see this legal barn door...
No, it is a detention and no, an officer cannot do a DNA swab on a traffic stop.
Much obliged. These guys were lucky, given that they had already gotten the full treatment, that it was so widespread that there were even people within the department thinking something was up.
My initial fears remain: if it’s just one guy planting stuff on you once, I don’t know how your word would beat his. Even with little cameras in your car, it would still be luck to actually see or hear the plant as it happened.
The “grant” comes from traffic fines and not from the state budget.
Your word will never beat a cop’s and they know it.
The mantra inside the NYPD is “do whatever you need to do. Just not on camera”.
Again, then you should have NO Problem with a house to house round up of these people (similar to recent events in Boston).
MY perceived threats are an over reaching, increasingly totalitarian government.
Let that yoke rest easy on your shoulders.
most dui checkpoints have “chase vehicles” to go after those who do a u-turn to avoid the hassle or delay.
in the courts you are “guilty until proven guilty”.
And if 0 drivers are fined as happened here, what then?
The DL argument as a “right” is one of those “sovereign citizen” kook arguments made in the courts. Generally judges just put those people at the end of the docket because they are a waste of time.
If this was a serious effort they would simply pass a constitutional amendment in the respective state establishing a DL is a fundamental right and that would gut much of the revenue infraction courts.
Quite correct. It puts the lie to the ‘drivers may choose an alternate route’ BS the police trot out. They know they’re shooting fish in a barrel and they don’t want any fish to escape.
In the spirit of our venerated IRS, many (most? all?) state DMVs have a separate, unaccountable, unchallenge-able system that enforces DUIs thanks to the ludicrous laws that gave us ‘implied consent’ among other things.
This means that a person’s case might be dismissed in court or reduced to a different offense but the DMV will suspend or revoke a driver’s license as if the individual pleaded guilty or was convicted.
Thanks, back at ‘ya. 1st Cav did some real ass-kickin’.
Re: stolen cars
You have probably seen or read about the cameras mounted on police cruisers that read each and every license plate and run it against a list of stolens, expireds, etc. Good thing too as we wouldn’t want to burden the patrol officers and distract them from their lengthy cell phone chats.
Combine this with now-mandatory DNA collection and Orwell is batting around 1.000.
Fortunately, all these expanded police powers will rid our streets of criminals and deliver the socialist Utopia they keep promising, at which point Skynet will be deconstructed. Won’t it?
now they can collect your DNA as a fishing expedition.
You imply then that a DUI checkpoint is some sort of money making scheme and that the end point is revenue. No, the end point is to arrest drunk drivers, who do in fact kill people. One could argue that if no arrests were made, then the campaign was successful.
However, I do find it rather odd that 1200 vehicles were stopped and no arrests were made. The odds of 1200 people not having an outstanding warrant among them, or other issues is very strange.
I the end, these checkpoints are fostered by groups such as MADD and are meant to deter, rather than make a lot of arrests.
no it is pretty much revenue.
the most effect way to stop DUI has been education programs. Nothing else has really worked. The only reason convictions MIGHT be higher has been the removal of discretion from judges.
“Task force” pork dollars etc. are just about padding the police departments and “looking busy.”
So you are saying ...
Our Founders intended to enumerate all of our unalienable rights in the Bill of Rights ...
AND, despite the fact that the Bill of Rights consists of only ten relatively brief statements, they succeeded.
You don't really believe that, do you?
You ve been hitting the government KoolAide again. The ability to travel on public and open lands is a right...regardless of whether you are walking, driving a horse and wagon, bicycle, whatever.
The state wants you to think everything is a privilege in order to control us. For example the Ohio state attorney general's office makes sure to point out that my CCW permit is a privilege. That is not true, but since the uniformed citizens in Ohio allowed the state legislature to to make concealed carry illegal in Ohio back in 1953, and they now let us carry concealed again, it is no longer a right, but has become a privilege.
That is more twisted than a strand of DNA.
You imply then that a DUI checkpoint is some sort of money making scheme and that the end point is revenue.
No implication required. I know it is. The money trail is well-marked and easy to follow.
No, the end point is to arrest drunk drivers.
Well then any claim of 'success' is fallacious. The numbers state this unequivocally.
who do in fact kill people.
An absurdly broad categorical statement. Yes it happens but in what quantity or percentage? At what levels of BAC? What other conditions contributed? Weather? Time of day? Traffic volume? Topography? Number of lanes?
Far too much nonsense about 'alcohol-related crashes' has been printed and swallowed by far too many. See third item at: http://www.duigulag.com/facts.htm
That one-size-fits-all argument has been used by the TSA, anti-gun groups, zero-tolerance schools and so on. Existence of a societal problem is not sufficient justification for the imposition of a police state on the whole of society.
One could argue that if no arrests were made, then the campaign was successful.
You yourself state that the objective is arresting drunk drivers, NOT keeping DUIs off the road. Two very different things. But there are tons of obvious and/or current methods for doing so. Off the top of my head there are taxis, safe ride groups, services that drive your vehicle and stow a scooter in your trunk for their return trip from your home. Regardless of the source of the funds, why isn't an equivalent amount spent on shuttle service between bars and restaurants? The same objective is achieved AND commerce within municipal borders takes place thus generating tax revenue. In many locales there are government vans of 12-15 seats used for transportation of senior citizens at taxpayer expense during the day. Why not use this existing equipment? 'Oh the city/state can't be in the business of transporting drunks.' Why not? It achieves the desired result without a load of court cases. We both know the reason why.
Sorry but the Pollyanna stuff about DUI checkpoint working as intended ignores the realities of the program's true intentions. DUI has become big business as fines skyrocket and cronies establish 'traffic schools' with large attendance fees (some of which is kicked back to government). There is scant scientific support for lowering BAC levels to .08 and now states - and the feds - are agitating for a .05 level with even less science applied. The rapidly shifting definition of 'impairment' means that the term was arbitrary to begin with.
A stone cold sober driver approaches the checkpoint and turns away to use another route home to avoid being delayed. For this laudable common-sense action he is pursued with vigor by police who ignore the 'escape route' letter of the law. Why? What on earth does this have to do with deterrence and/or apprehension of drunk drivers?
The grants that supply the so-called Governors' Highway Safety Fund are not derived from fines since the federal government does not receive those fines, the states do via their court systems. Federal grants have the inevitable strings attached: police overtime to be reimbursed must be spent only on DUI enforcement. Prevention and arrests for rape, murder, arson and other unpleasantries will have to wait.
Why is MADD entitled to de facto direct participation in our government? They are a group with an opinion and a fax machine, nothing more.
In the end, people may have their own opinion on the constitutionality of traffic stops that, by the admission of the police and the courts, lack probable cause, but to believe that the state has purely altruistic motives given the PR and straight cash value of such checkpoints is to be terminally naive.
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