Nearly every weekend, it seems, secondary roads in Massachusetts or New Hampshire are blocked by state and local police looking for drunken drivers.
Usually, the "sobriety checkpoints" result in just a handful of arrests, with most drivers waved through after a brief conversation with an officer.
But if something seems amiss — like a strong odor of alcohol emanating from the vehicle — the driver is directed into "the pit," where more questions are asked, and possibly a sobriety test administered.
Such roadblocks are legal in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but their effectiveness is being questioned following the death of a man arrested during such a roadblock Nov. 25 in North Andover.
Massachusetts and New Hampshire State Police officials say that roadblocks can result in the arrests of as few as two people to as many as 30 people, depending on the location and the time and date of the roadblock.
"We hope they are a deterrent," said Massachusetts State Police spokesman Dave Procopio. "In a perfect world, the ideal sobriety checkpoint would result in no arrests, because nobody would be drinking and driving."
But defense attorneys who have challenged the roadblocks say they are costly intrusions into the lives of an otherwise law-abiding public.
In New Hampshire, Salem attorney Mark Stevens said he challenges every driving-while-intoxicated arrest made in a roadblock that comes his way.
"We challenge on Constitutional, statutory and operational grounds. But the main reason to challenge is that they are offensive," Stevens said. "The really tragic thing, other than the loss of the Fourth Amendment, is that not many people are found guilty. If you put all those officers out at the time the bars all close, you'll find more."
Stevens, as well as many civil rights activists, claim that the roadblocks harken to dictatorial regimes where people can be detained for no reason to have their papers reviewed by authorities.
"If you think about it," he said, "they're not much different than roadblocks in Nazi Germany."
In 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in a Michigan case that sobriety checkpoints were, in fact, legal under the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures."
The court's minority dissented that sobriety checkpoints do violate the Fourth Amendment and subject both drunk drivers as well as the law-abiding public to an "unreasonable program of random seizures."
After the high court's decision, the Michigan state Legislature passed a new law making police roadblocks illegal in that state. Ten other states followed suit, including Rhode Island and Texas, making such roadblocks illegal.
Massachusetts attorney Jay Milligan, who also specializes in driving-under-the-influence cases, has appealed many roadblock arrests, although, he admits, "our success rate is not high."
He, like Stevens, often contests the roadblocks on procedural grounds, noting that the guidelines used by the state police often vary, when they should be consistent.
"While they have been deemed Constitutional, they still have to follow their own guidelines," he said.
In New Hampshire, state police are required to get a Superior Court judge's order approving the time and location of a roadblock, said New Hampshire State Police Capt. Chris Colitti.
That information must be published in the newspaper. During the actual roadblock, certain guidelines must be followed to ensure that people's rights are protected.
In Massachusetts, the notification guidelines are less stringent, as state police are simply required to notify the media within four days that a sobriety checkpoint is going to be held on a secondary road in a particular county at a given time.
While the specific location is not given to media outlets, the state police do try to find out whether the roadblocks have been publicized, according to Procopio.
"It's up to the media to publicize them. And the press releases go on our Web site," Procopio said.
The Eagle-Tribune does not, ordinarily, publicize pending sobriety checkpoints.
Stevens noted that many roadblock arrests aren't even for driving while intoxicated, but are for other things as well. Further, he said, there is pressure on the part of police to make arrests, even in marginal cases.
"If police are getting a federal grant for a (driving while intoxicated) roadblock, you'll get arrested if you have alcohol on your breath because they need the numbers to justify the grant and show the public, 'Hey, you are giving up an important right, but this is why we are doing them,'" Stevens said.
But police say the roadblocks are effective as a deterrent and as a way to get drunk drivers off the road. They also say the are cost-effective.
Procopio says there has been an increase in driving-under-the-influence arrests over the last few years, as well as an increase in the number of roadblocks statewide. He also said the number of alcohol-related crashes has gone down.
New Hampshire reports similar findings, as state police noted that as the number of checkpoints annually has gone up, from just 7 in 2005 to 54 in 2009, the number fatal accidents has gone down.
Colitti said that in Rockingham County, the number of fatalities overall has gone down so far this year, from 28 last year, to 17 in 2009. The cost of each runs from $800 to $1,700 to pay the eight officers typically assigned overtime.
