Anyone that has traveled through third world country highways has encountered them; ubiquitous checkpoints at every turn. The reason for them? Let’s investigate:
Along the border, Homeland Security can set up a checkpoint anywhere within 100 miles of the border. This lets them legally (?) search a majority of the population. A majority do live within 100 miles of the coast or the border. The checkpoints have been successful in intercepting tons of marijuana. Of course more tons get through. Intercepting a small percentage of the loads getting through makes no difference at all. Even if Homeland Security, the Border Patrol and the DEA, and most important the CIA were 100% efficient, incorruptible and on the level, it makes little difference. Like so much else, the more they win, the more we all lose. If it becomes more difficult to cross contraband the stronger the smuggling cartels become. They have the funds to run their own surveillance against the anti-smuggling security forces, have money for bribes, and also the muscle and terror to force compliance. There are whole towns in Mexico where everyone has either been involved in the traffic or has a family member who has. The ones that have been caught usually do about 2 years in the federal pen. A small price to pay for someone that has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The prosecutors and judges could ask for more, but there is no room and besides, so what? 10 or 15 years free room and board for someone your just going to deport at the end? So that’s how they play the game.
Checkponts are the lazy cop style of law enforcement.
They are especially popular with Tyrannies. You’ll find them all over the third world and increasingly more in the first world as well. Say what you like about their effectiveness or lack of it, they are money raising son-of-a-guns. Well, sort of. You can always find someone that’s out of line somehow. In Latin America, especially in the poorer countries, theft by officialdom is very common. You take someone off the bus, and it’s his word against yours. Somebody’s paperwork won’t be in order. There’s always something. Then of course laws can be made up on the spot. And while the bribes and shakedowns can be profitable for the guys with guns there’s not really enough money to make it worth while for the government. The main thing here for the power structure is to give their minions something to do other than lounge around the base or the station and much, much more important is to let the people know who is boss. To show them that you (the power structure) are the mero-mero…that they have no right or real possession over their property or their person. That the state is all powerful and that there is no such thing as an unreasonable search or seizure… “because if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.”
As far as looking for real dangerous criminals…Sometimes they do, more often not. As far as the drug prohibition and other victimless crimes, straining hundreds, even thousands of innocents to get one so called guilty one is about the only way to go. As far as real police work goes though checkpoints don’t account for much. To capture dangerous rapists, murderers, thieves, fraudsters, crooked financiers and politicians takes investigation. Also the dangerous crimes on the highway are not expired stickers, the driver with half a beer too many or someone going a few miles over the speed limit. The aggressive tailgaters and reckless road rage filled lunatics are the true threat. They are much harder to catch and not as profitable.
There is also, in this country, a prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizure without probable cause or reasonable suspicions. It’s called the 4th Amemdment. This flies into the very teeth of the checkpoint mentality. Also the military is becoming more involved in civilian law enforcement such as at this community festival in Kentucky:
This goes to my point about checkpoints being as much for their psychological impact as anything else. Checkpoints also are mobile these days. On the highway for instance:
Or for dui: Read the Wall Street Survivor
To go north from the border, we all have to pass through the border patrol checkpoint. Going to Mexico in a vehicle we pass through the army or marines checkpoint. Now the talk is that leaving Mexico there will be another search and then American customs is waiting. Sometimes county deputies are there looking for south bound stolen cars. Homeland Security is also on the prowl looking for guns and cash going south. They’re talking about making it permanent. That would be four checks to go across to Mexico and back. The more checkpoints the more secure? Just the opposite. The more checkpoints the more tyranny and poverty and less freedom and…the more crime. While the security forces are searching grandmothers and babies and John and Jane Q. Public, the real crooks are having a party.
Southbound Inspections: Cartels unimpeded by checkpoints
And then there are the vampire no-refusal dwi checkpoints.
So it’s “Papers Pleeze” anywhere at any time, except they don’t say please anymore.
Other news
Excerpt from Road Block Reservations
These days, the checkpoints on eastbound Interstate 8 and northbound Arizona 95 near Yuma (a passageway to the I-10 and I-40 corridors linking Arizona and California) are open 24 hours a day. And with the addition of seven times more K9 dogs, they have become the biggest weed traps in the country.
Strictly in terms of quantity, other checkpoints catch more dope. The Border Patrol is allowed to set up roadblocks as far as 100 miles from any national border, and it operates 33 permanent and numerous other “tactical” or movable checkpoints on the Mexican and Canadian frontiers. In the Southwest, checkpoints are typically found on California’s north-south I-5, numerous small highways near Mexico, such as Arizona’s Highway 86, and along I-10 between Tucson and El Paso, Texas. The Border Patrol sometimes puts up movable checkpoints on I-10 between Phoenix and Los Angeles, but it’s rare to encounter one.
Drug-sniffing dogs at some of the checkpoints, especially the ones south of Tucson and through Texas, find literally tons of marijuana being smuggled from Mexico.
But the Border Patrol and other law enforcement officials in the Southwest report that no checkpoints in the United States bust as many small-time marijuana users as the ones near Yuma, on I-8 and Arizona 95.
The past three years have seen an explosion of such cases. In just 11 months last year, the two checkpoints nabbed more than 1,200 people for possession of marijuana — and usually for smaller amounts than what Mary carried.
Excerpt from Roadblock Revelations:
July 4 2008“The cartels use the profit from marijuana to purchase cocaine in Colombia and Peru and the ingredients for meth and heroin from other regions,” said Elizabeth W. Kempshall, special agent in charge of the Arizona office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “So marijuana is the catalyst for the rest of the drug trade.”
In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides - NY Times
The tightening of border security to the east and west, which started in the 1990s and intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, funneled more drug traffic through the Tohono O’odham reservation, federal officials said, and especially more marijuana, which is hard to slip through vehicle crossings because of its bulk.
A record 319,000 pounds of marijuana were seized on the reservation in 2009, up from 201,000 pounds the previous year, along with small amounts of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
By JOSE DE CORDOBA
MEXICO CITY — As drug violence spirals out of control in Mexico, a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.
“The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war,” said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. “We have to move from this approach to another one.”
The commission, headed by Mr. Cardoso and former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia, says Latin American governments as well as the U.S. must break what they say is a policy “taboo” and re-examine U.S.-inspired antidrugs efforts. The panel recommends that governments consider measures including decriminalizing the use of marijuana.
Read More>>
