Ruling on checkpoints may not affect area much

Though it's yet to be done in Scott or Cape Girardeau counties, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in support of vehicle checkpoints to collect crime tips, giving local law enforcement another crime-fighting tool.

The high court ruled Tuesday in an Illinois case that police may set up roadblocks to collect tips about crimes, rejecting concerns that authorities might use checkpoints to fish for unrelated suspicious activity. The 6-3 decision allows officers to block traffic and ask motorists for help in solving crimes. Critics complain that authorities might misuse the power, disguising dragnets as "informational checkpoints."

"My concern is what kind of controls are placed on it," Cape Girardeau defense attorney Stephen Wilson said. "In a sobriety checkpoint, police have a written plan set out on how many cars they want to stop. ... It takes out the randomness. But this could be set up for almost anything."

Still, he doesn't expect agencies will conduct informational checkpoints often because they're expensive to staff.

"I suspect it will require some type of heinous crime, in which they are desperate for leads," Wilson said. "They'd like to run sobriety checkpoints every Friday night, but they can't afford it."

Other than stopping specific vehicles to search for jail escapees or robbery suspects, no local agencies have operated any crime-tip gathering roadblocks in Southeast Missouri, said spokesmen from police in Sikeston, Cape Girardeau and Jackson and sheriff's departments in Scott and Cape Girardeau counties. Because checkpoints are manpower intensive, these departments conduct relatively few without using grant money.

"I can't say that we've ever had a situation where it occurred to us to do this, in all honesty," said Cape Girardeau police Capt. Carl Kinnison. "I remember reading something when the Supreme Court was first looking at this and I thought, 'That's a good idea.' ... I could see where it would lead to useful information that would be gathered."

Although the justices have allowed random sobriety checkpoints to detect drunken drivers and border roadblocks to intercept illegal immigrants, they ruled in 2000 that roadblocks intended for drug searches are an unreasonable invasion of privacy under the Constitution.

In Tuesday's decision, Justice Stephen Breyer said that short stops, "a very few minutes at most," are not too intrusive on motorists, considering the value in crime-solving. Police may hand out fliers or ask drivers to volunteer information, he said.

In a partial dissent, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned whether random roadblocks yield any useful tips. The delays "may seem relatively innocuous to some, but annoying to others ... still other drivers may find an unpublicized roadblock at midnight on a Saturday somewhat alarming," Stevens wrote for the three.

The constitutionality of the informational roadblocks was challenged by Robert Lidster, accused of drunken driving at a 1997 checkpoint set up to get tips about an unrelated fatal hit-and-run accident. The roadblock was at the same spot and time of night that the hit-and-run took place about a week earlier.

Authorities in Lombard, Ill., got no helpful tips that night in the death of a 70-year-old bicyclist, but they arrested Lidster after police said he nearly hit an officer with his minivan.

Lidster argued that police could have used other methods to get information about the hit-and-run driver, like billboards or stories in newspapers and on radio and television stations. Television coverage of the roadblock did lead to information that helped solve the case.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said the ruling "will allow law enforcement in Illinois and across the nation to seek voluntary assistance from citizens in their efforts to solve crime."

Illinois was supported in the case by more than 20 other states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.

The case is Illinois v. Lidster, 02-1060.

Staff writer Mike Wells contributed to this report.