If police can stop you randomly for 'drunk driving checks' - and they can stop you randomly if there is an 'active crime scene' (i.e. they are looking for dangerous baddies on the run) then I don't see why spot-checks for other crimes/problems is somehow considered out of bounds.
The problem with the argument is that it leans political: I think people are interested in just allowing people across the border willy nilly, without having to be stopped by such checks.
Otherwise, the ACLU might be similarly up in arms over DD checks? Wouldn't that be the case?
I try to be pragmatic about it:
+ If there's a high occurrence of Drunk Driving, then cops can do spot checks, esp. on long weekends.
+ If there are 'escaped dangerous cons' on the run, well, spot checks in a specific zone makes sense.
+ If there is a specific problem with large numbers of people who are in the country illegally travelling through - then random checks are a reasonable and proportional response to that.
Constitutional? Legal? I have no clue. But unless it gets really out of hand I don't see how it's totalitarian.
FYI I was never stopped randomly in the 5 years I lived in the US, and I was stopped quite a few times in France by the local Gendarmes. Sometimes obviously for DD checks, but other times I had no idea why but I had to show my passport and visa.
> The ACLU welcomes today's Supreme Court's decision in Missouri v. McNeely. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor upheld the 4th Amendment's privacy protections by rejecting the proposition that states may routinely compel drivers to submit to a blood test in drunk-driving cases without consent and without a warrant.
> We know from experience that drunk-driving laws can be strictly enforced without abandoning constitutional rights. Today's decision appropriately recognizes what half the states have already demonstrated – that maintaining highway safety does not require sacrificing personal privacy.
> [...] the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit to stop a new sobriety-checkpoint program in California. The ACLU says the program is a "substantial invasion of . . . fundamental constitutional rights."
> In its California brief, pending at the state Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the ACLU argues that if sobriety checkpoints are upheld "it will not be long before the police establish roadblocks and checkpoints for investigations of other sorts of serious crimes."
As a Canadian, I know we have legal DD stops and I'm thankful for them, as society went from a period of 'DD was normal' to 'not ok'. It took a while, it was a real social problem.
I guess we (Canadians?) just view public safety a little differently, it's usually a matter of 'what makes sense' not so much a thing about constitutionality. That said, our cops are way, way more low key than US cops.
I have no problem with being randomly pulled over for a reasonable reason by reasonable cops.
I guess it gets more complicated when a) cops abuse power b) the randomness is not random c) when there's an underlying political tension d) you can be charged with 'anything' almost ...
The US cares so much about constitutionality (and hard and fast rules generally), and eschews leaving things to peoples’ “reasonable” discretion, because a large subset of the population is completely nuts. One of our au pair’s au pair friend got pulled over by state police and had a gun pulled on her. Coming from Germany she of course freaked out. (Luckily she was a white European young lady instead of a person of color.) Americans not only see nothing wrong with that, but keep voting for the sheriffs who allow their departments to run that way.
Note that irrespective of any other issue with this, the article points out that these CBP checks have a really poor track record in terms of actually stopping illegal immigrants compared to other methods when measured in terms of cost per arrest. So if the goal is truly to stop illegal immigrants, they are misapplying their budgets.
Anyone who wants closed borders, or at least harsher reactions to illegal immigration ought to be up in arms about money being wasted this way in that case- they could stop more people by investing their budgets in other ways.
I think you're misunderstanding the difference between sobriety checks and these inland boarder checks. In a sobriety check, you retain all of your rights as a citizen. In these boarder stops, you are treated the same as someone entering the country who does not enjoy the rights of a citizen in the country.
The problem with the argument is that it leans political: I think people are interested in just allowing people across the border willy nilly, without having to be stopped by such checks.
Otherwise, the ACLU might be similarly up in arms over DD checks? Wouldn't that be the case?
I try to be pragmatic about it:
+ If there's a high occurrence of Drunk Driving, then cops can do spot checks, esp. on long weekends.
+ If there are 'escaped dangerous cons' on the run, well, spot checks in a specific zone makes sense.
+ If there is a specific problem with large numbers of people who are in the country illegally travelling through - then random checks are a reasonable and proportional response to that.
Constitutional? Legal? I have no clue. But unless it gets really out of hand I don't see how it's totalitarian.
FYI I was never stopped randomly in the 5 years I lived in the US, and I was stopped quite a few times in France by the local Gendarmes. Sometimes obviously for DD checks, but other times I had no idea why but I had to show my passport and visa.