DUI checkpoints are an end run around the Constitution

Pennsylvania, which is one of 38 states that allows sobriety checkpoints, DUI-related fatalities have steadily decreased (404 last year, down from 542 in 2004), even as the number of arrests for people driving under the influence of drugs has increased dramatically (14,953 last year, up from 5,529 in 2004), according to George Geisler of the Pennsylvania DUI Association, which provides technical assistance to law enforcement officials.

"Yes, it's a momentary intrusion, but when you see the number of lives that we save from impaired driving and the crime we get off the street - the drugs, the guns and wanted people - the juice is worth the squeeze," said Geisler, a drug-recognition expert who examined impaired drivers at the recent Port Richmond checkpoint.

But other research has found that "saturation patrols" - where police target a larger geographic area and look for signs of impaired driving, rather than stopping drivers indiscriminately - to be more effective than checkpoints, when measured by DUI arrests per hour.

Civil libertarians and DUI attorneys question whether sobriety checkpoints are a Fourth Amendment violation. The issue gained national attention July 4 when an innocent Tennessee college student posted a video on YouTube of police harassing him and searching his car at a DUI checkpoint. The video went viral and now has more than 4 million views.

"While I recognize the danger of drunk driving, I think the more effective and constitutional way to deal with that is to have officers on patrol, not sitting at a checkpoint," Philadelphia civil-rights attorney David Rudovsky said.

"It's sort of an end run around the Constitution," New Jersey DUI attorney Evan Levow said of checkpoints. "It's like a Checkpoint Charlie."

In 12 states, sobriety checkpoints are not conducted, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Some states prohibit them outright. Texas has determined that checkpoints are illegal under its interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

A drug-recognition expert is grilling a construction worker who looks a little too drowsy. "My eyes are always bloodshot," the driver insists. "I had a lazy eye, but I had surgery."

A jittery white man in an Eagles shirt and Air Jordan sandals is rubbing his hands together, even though it's a muggy night in July. He'd earlier denied taking any drugs. Then, he admitted, Adderall. And Vicodin. "You gotta see my tooth!" he said, apparently by way of explanation.

And Lt. James McCarrick doesn't need to conduct a field sobriety test to tell that the Asian gentleman with a ponytail had one too many cocktails. "Oh, that guy looks wasted," McCarrick says. "He's got that gait."

No, there's nothing funny about drunk driving. But DUI checkpoints? They're practically their own genre of cop humor among the late-night officers who run them. They've seen it all, heard every excuse.

"They'll try anything," said McCarrick, who has been running Philadelphia's checkpoints for the past eight years. "It's pretty comical at times. It turns into a road show."

But do checkpoints actually make the roads safer? And isn't stopping drivers without probable cause or reasonable suspicion a violation of their rights?

Those questions still produce different answers around the country, 23 years after a divided Supreme Court ruled on a Michigan case and provided the legal framework for today's checkpoints.
http://articles.philly.com/2013-08-09/news/41242044_1_checkpoints-mccarrick-air-jordan