"No refusal" DUI checkpoints could be coming to Tampa
Tampa, Florida-- With New Year's Eve only days away, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expects this to be one of the deadliest weeks of the year on the roads.If this doesn't scare the holy hell out of you, it should. Oh sure, on its face it doesn't sound too bad - I mean, folks have gotten out of OUI charges because they refused the breathalyzer. They lose their license for a period of time, but beat the OUI charge. It's not a perfect system, but it sure beats folks having to get their blood drawn forcibly. It will be very interesting to see the test cases - you know someone's going to push this, and I'll donate to their legal defense fund.
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Florida is among several states now holding what are called "no refusal" checkpoints. It means if you refuse a breath test during a traffic stop, a judge is on site, and issues a warrant that allows police to perform a mandatory blood test.
Just one (of the many) things they've failed to consider - what happens when the person in question is dragged, against their will, to a hospital for the blood test? Some poor phlebotomist is going to have to try to get sufficient blood for a legal ethanol while dealing with someone in police custody and, most likely, being combative. What then? Getting blood from a compliant patient can be challenging enough; procuring sufficient sample for a legal ethanol while the patient is fighting you is another challenge entirely.
Aside from that, this is a frightening blow for personal liberties. It's another step down the slope; another hit to the fourth amendment. It will be interesting to see how this fares in court - forcing someone to have their blood drawn strikes me as "unreasonable search and seizure", but then again, I'm not a legal scholar. I just hope that one of the judges responsible for this ruling finds themselves on the wrong side of this...
You know what the most frightening line in the article was, for me? This:
"We don't want to violate people's civil rights. That's the last thing we want to do, but we're here to save lives," Unfried said.That scares the living hell out of me, folks. They're perfectly willing to violate our civil rights in the interest of "saving lives". And we know what ridiculous lengths the nanny state will go to in order to whip up a crisis to save us from - please see Borepatch's diatribes on global warming for proof positive of that. Alternately, track where the money from the tobacco lawsuits went - hint, it wasn't for treatment of lung cancer like they swore it was.
When someone proposes we trade our civil rights for safety, be afraid.
That is all.
9 comments:
I'm crossposting this from NortheastShooters:
More harm has been done to this country in the name of saving lives than could ever be done by all the terrorists, criminals, and negligent asshats that have ever lived.
My God, it's like every "public servant" in our country flunked out of American History in high school!
"It means if you refuse a breath test during a traffic stop, a judge is on site, and issues a warrant that allows police to perform a mandatory blood test."
Compare with:
"no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause"
What is their probable cause? Or has refusing a search suddenly become probable cause by itself?
Our slow march away from the protections of the Fourth Amendment is getting faster and faster the farther we get.
The Constitution doesn't mean a thing any more. The US is a banana republic run by crony capitalism.
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
We have almost this locally. We have no-refusal weekends, but not DWI checkpoints. Probable cause for the warrants here is most likely the same as probable cause for the initial stop. Not that it's much better from a civil liberties standpoint. The no refusal weekends have been around long enough for some of them to work their way through the system, thus far no legal challenges of the blood draws that I am aware of.
But it's for the CHIDRUNS... sigh...
Once again our rights are trampled without recourse to the rule of law because it "needs" to be done to protect us.
Why not simply arrest those that refuse, rather than globally go after everybody?
"Probable cause for the warrants here is most likely the sam as probable cause for the initial stop."
For a stop, sure. But if I'm reading the story right,* these are "checkpoints" (i.e., roadblocks), so there's no underlying probable cause.
*The story says both "stop" and "checkpoint", but it sounds like they mean checkpoints.
Missouri has an "implied consent" law that any holder of a Missouri DL, when exercising the priveleges of that license, must submit to a breathalyzer or face immediate suspension of their license. No reversal, no appeal, nothing. I don't believe their needs to be probable cause either, other than you must be driving. You "pre-consent" to the test when you accept your license.
Been that way for many years.
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