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you plan on driving during the holidays, you may have to deal with
a sobriety checkpoint or police roadblock of some sort. Even though
you probably haven't done anything unlawful, you'll nonetheless
be compelled to stop your vehicle and submit to at least an once-over
by a policeman looking for evidence of impaired driving or other
illegal activities.
These increasingly
popular dragnet-style methods have, rather amazingly, been sanctioned
by the Supreme Court — even though it's eminently debatable
whether the Framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights would
have endorsed what amount to random stop-and-frisks, without anything
remotely resembling probable cause. In any other situation, police
would need probable cause at minimum — e.g., substantive reason
to suspect illegal or criminal activity — before having any
right to detain or search you. But that standard evaporates once
you get behind the wheel.
Citing "compelling
state interest" and "getting drunks off the road"
— as the courts and groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving
have done — doesn't negate the fact that people, usually perfectly
innocent of any crime, are being waylaid by the authorities and
subjected to a frightening and intimidating interrogation (lights,
sirens; men with badges and guns), without their having done anything
at all, other than operate a motor vehicle on public roads.
The courts
say that by operating a vehicle on public roads you have given your
"implied consent" to sobriety checkpoints and have, therefore,
surrendered some of the protections you'd be entitled to in, say,
your own home. But the fact remains that police do not (yet) have
the right to randomly stop and search pedestrians for signs of illegal
activity or intent — whether they are in public or not. Probable
cause is still necessary.
That's as it
should be — and exactly as the Framers of our government intended.
Blanket searches of anyone and everyone, just for the heck of it,
are exactly the kinds of things our ancestors fought the British
over. That we have come to accept it today is an ominous portent.
It suggests a shift in mentality that might, one day in the not-so-distant
future, dispose us to passively submit to more heavy-handed tactics.
If the danger is not recognized, and if the precedent set by such
things as random sobriety checkpoints is not effectively challenged,
we are paving the way for a totalitarian.
The whole point
of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is to set clearly defined
boundaries beyond which the state may not tread — without very
good reason, that is, and even then only toward those particular
individuals who have given clear evidence of wrongdoing.
"Catching
drunks" is no more a justification for random sobriety checkpoints
than "catching crooks" is for suspension of habeas corpus
protections. The alternative is a devil's bargain — and the
price is extremely high.
Public anxiety
surrounding the recent terrorist attacks may well tilt the balance.
There has been talk of mandatory national ID cards with biometric
"tags" such as fingerprints and even retinal scans. And
police checkpoints have become more common — all with little
protest. The promise of "order" and "security"
is viciously seductive. . . and it's easy to understand how people
get lured in.
Identifying
and catching terrorists, for example, is certainly a laudable goal;
so is apprehending people who get behind the wheel when they're
pickled. But as worthy as those goals are, they should not require
us to surrender the freedoms that make this nation unique in the
history of the world.
Any government
can be "tough on crime" — all it takes is the ham-fisted
application of unlimited force. But only one nation has enshrined
the right of the individual to be left alone — at least until
he gives clear evidence of having done something that might put
others at risk.
That's a legacy
worth protecting, or at least it ought to be.
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