Posted on 07/05/2013 3:32:51 PM PDT by DariusBane
Video:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e3_1373034153
Many officers hate checkpoints because they're boring. It's cold, hot, there are to many mosquito's, but they do it because it works.
My sister worked as a bartender for 10 years within walking distance of my house, about a mile away. I’d go for my walk and keep her company on many nights. Some nights I may have a few alcoholic drinks but mostly just water from walking in hot weather. Yes, this is what people would say.
Go out a little more to some of the bars in your area known for heavy drinking. You’ll hear this.
LOL! If this happened, they would all become prosecuting attorneys then were would we be? ;-)
No, because accidents will happen. Fill yourself with an intoxicant and you’re choosing to drive with your ability to drive and reflexes impaired, that’s your choice and not an accident. That’s not the cars fault. Do you blame the gun for gun crime? No, you blame the person committing the crime, right?
this is the vid I was telling you about.
What makes you think that random checkpoints will stop at DWI? What about weed, guns, terrorists, expired licenses, etc.? How about, "Random body cavity searches saved my daughter", or "Random water boarding saved my uncle" ...those should be OK?
If you are okay with DWI stops without reason or cause, you would be ok with anything.
Me too.
You would never have lasted in the wild west.
Should people drive drunk? No. Do they? Yes. Do we all have to pay for that? No, it’s why we have rights. Punish the guilty and leave the innocent the hell alone.
I know a town where they have DUI checkpoints.
Everyone in town knows about these, and avoids them. Not enough cops to block every street, so it becomes a game. The cops know it, the citizens know it. Once in a while the cops snag an outsider, and then they have something to put in the blotter that makes them look efficient and Worthy of the Public Trust. Mostly, they look like a bunch of Barney Fifes.
A couple of times the cops have set up across from the biggest bar in town, and waited. Friends of mine send their designated driver out, and he does a walloping drunk act. Of course, the cop sees this, and chases the guy down. The guy blows a big fat goose egg on the drunk-meter; the rest of his crowd gets in their cars and drives home the other direction, laughing at the absurdity of it. The ‘drunk’ says, “I dunno what you’re talking about, officer. I only drank soda; here’s my receipt. You must have seen me stumble on the curb or something.”
No doubt I could pull out a bunch of tragic stories like yours; I have several dating back to my high school years. The real issue is that this has more to do with what was seen in the video in the original post than the tragedies you recount. The entirety of purpose of a checkpoint is power and control (and, of course, the revenue generation). All cloaked in do-gooder nanny-ism.
There are drunks on the road! We have to do something! They’re doing something! Yay! We’re safe!
Not too long ago I was driving my wife’s grandmother home after a family party when we got funneled into a checkpoint. She’s 99 years old, and couldn’t produce an state ID because she doesn’t have or need one at her age. So we waited for a supervisor to clear us for an ‘adult passenger not displaying’. I don’t recall that they wrote down her name; they may have. Does this ring like Nazi Germany?
I had to show my license, registration and proof of insurance. I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, but I was treated as if I were a drunk; I had to prove I was sober by answering questions and driving the very tight lane they made us navigate. Let’s be clear: the purpose of checkpoints is to catch people in violation of administrative laws and ordinances (lights, seatbelt, current tag), not drunks (they catch very few). And when they have you on a violation of administrative law, they write a fat money-generating citation. Which they do, in spades. The blotter doesn’t list the list these ‘little’ violations, because if they did, the people would rise up at the obvious adsurdity of the money-grab.
That’s it. The rest of it is BS.
Maybe you think someone needs to watch over the town and make sure that no one misbehaves.
Me? I think that’s an invitation to Big Brother, or worse.
Well, shame on him for knowing his rights. What the crap are you thinking? We do not exist at the pleasure of the police.
Sheesh. You boot-lickers annoy me.
Well, kinda, as a matter of fact, YEAH. It would be violating MY civil rights. There are better ways to ferret out illegals than slowing or stopping every citizen, going lawfully about his business with things to do, requiring time-out and be SNOOPED just for choosing that route from point A to point B. There are other ways to get illegals. Like being given the freedom to profile, a right that has been removed.
How about doing away with DWI?
If you cause an WRECK while impaired, you are charged with attempted murder. If you kill someone while driving impaired, you face FIRST DEGREE MURDER. After all, you made the decision to drive impaired.
Get serious and knock of the harassment of citizens.
Very good. Very, very well stated.
Yup. In just one day — for daring to travel to one of our taxpaid national parks, I was stopped three times in TX and once in NM.
I was about ready to ram the last BP illegal checkpoint, but that’s the only one where we were waved through.
My husband and I are clean-cut, we hadn’t even been out backpacking and looking “hippie-ish.” We only had a cooler and a couple of small bags. No tinted windows, and the camper shell has a huge clear window in the back too.
Yet, we were detained from entering a historic battlefield because the Stasi had to keep interrogating us and slowed us down that much.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, this was all in the primary checkpoint. Not only the dogs, the mirrors under the car, all of it — but they looked at us suspiciously and I had to answer a slew of invasive questions. I don’t feel like chitchatting with jackboots while out on some very rare vacation.
This is all part of the catch-and-release farce with illegal aliens. Instead of simply enforcing the existing laws, citizens within 100 miles of the border (either side) can be detained and interrogated.
Harris county Texas sheriffs deputies are scary scary scary.
These guys deal with thugs all day everyday so when you get stopped by HCSO...better keep your hands on the wheel.
That’s no joke. You go fumbling around the center console or glove box, you’re likely to get a round placed in ya.
Is Houston in Harris County?
I can understand why they’d be extra cautious. They have to be tough.
Our Sheriffs in Colorado want law abiding, gun owning citizens on their side.
Yesterday I walked in an Independence Day parade in a small town in southern Colo. There were about 550 marchers. At the head were 4 County Sheriffs from southern Colo.
Everyone of us either carried a pistol or rifle. Some carried both.
The thing is, there is no right or justification for the kid cop being there in the first place. He had zero, zilch, justifiction and in it can be argued was breaking the law by wanting to whif the guy’s breath in the first place! Don’t these cops have more constructive things to be doing? The cops could have been as polite as pie, but the same would be true.
Here in Texas......crap load of illegal aliens driving while drunk out of their minds.
It's a big big problem. We keep an eye on the Montgomery co. police blotter, a large percentage of DUI/Drugs are of folks who don't belong here.
You’re talking too much sense.
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