Several police associations have begun pushing the "no notice" approach since about 2010. The goal, of course, is public safety. But police certainly will see how much of the 4th Amendment they can maneuver around while trying to do their job. So far, Courts have said that the checkpoints have to be announced, but as the police will point out the Courts have not said they have to tell you where the checkpoint will be ("Well, we announced it, just like they said we have to.").
Drunk driving is a problem. But I disagree with the Supreme Court that drunk driving is such a problem that it overrides the 4th Amendment, which is essentially the current rule. I think the government should intrude on a person's life as little as possible, random governmental checkpoints doesn't seem to fit that line.
Consider this: recent DUI checkpoints in Tulsa have a "success rate" of about 3%. Meaning the vast majority of people stopped and searched by the government with no suspicion have not done the thing they have been stopped for. Of the 3-4% that are arrested, only some will actually be convicted of drunk driving. And nationwide this is considered an amazing success rate - many areas have a 1% success rate or less. Yes, they do catch criminals - but so would warrantless door to door searches. Some success does not end the debate.
What DUI checkpoints are fairly good at is generating tickets and conducting warrantless searches for other things. Though the May checkpoint only generated 8 arrests for DUI,
it fined 134 citizens for other offenses and caught a few outstanding warrants (they also saw an SUV turn to avoid the checkpoint and chased it down... which seems dubious to me unless the SUV broke traffic laws to avoid the checkpoint). But writing tickets and warrant checks are not a justification to ignore the 4th Amendment, so we have to pretend our real concern is drunk driving. Tellingly, many advocates point to the "return on investment" of DUI checkpoints, which they have to, because...
DUI checkpoints are expensive. They take how many officers hours and hours, often on overtime? Several sources have indicated that the total cost of a DUI checkpoint is $10k. Hard to believe, but with a $101mil budget supporting 750 officers - taking a good number of them away for hours costs money. Every officer sitting at a DUI checkpoint waiting to find a drunk driver is an officer that isn't doing other things.
Roving drunk driver patrols have been shown in studies to be much more effective than checkpoints at actually catching drunk drivers. The roving patrols stopped far fewer people, but caught drunk drivers at a rate that was 35 times higher than government checkpoints. While the arrest rate is much, much higher - the "return on investment" is lower.
12 States ban DUI checkpoints as an unnecessary governmental intrusion. While I can believe that a governmental checkpoint is the most effective way of catching criminals, it doesn't seem American to me. Officer: "Pull over, show your papers." Citizen: "What did I do wrong?" Officer: "I don't know, you tell me." Citizen: "Am I being detained?" Officer: "Show your papers. If you just comply you can go."
Anyone know the officer's opinion on DUI checkpoints?
April DUI checkpoint results:
http://www.newson6.com/story/31802022/tulsa-brookside-dui-checkpoint-nets-8-arrestsMay DUI checkpoint results:
http://www.newson6.com/story/31977785/tulsa-police-arrest-10-in-dui-checkpoint...and yet they seem to be immune from the budget cuts that OHP and DPS have been whining about for months.
3% success rate? Lets do it again and again the same way and unrealistically expect some sort of success. If the goal is revenue collection maybe, but even Smoot went on record as saying "we know we dont make a difference" in accomplishing their stated goal of "ending DUI" so why are they still blowing tax dollars driving around the Winnebago-billboard?
Today's
Whirled: (DPS) will conduct the checkpoint from 10 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday at an undisclosed downtown location...to raise awareness about the dangers caused by alcohol and drug-impaired drivers.Some of that
awareness may have been true when they were more aligned with the courts orders to publicize the location.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/downtown-tulsa-to-feature-dui-checkpoint-this-saturday/article_3c0f76a6-05f9-5fc8-8f0c-52201a7a8c2d.html