Holyoke, Massachusetts is the kind of blue-collar town where folks repair to the main street taverns early on St. Patrick's Day to get the best seats for watching the parade. Green beer flows profusely, and the crowd shouts itself hoarse with merriment. Then comes lunch.
On Nov. 21, 1997, police set up a roadblock in Holyoke with the intention of searching cars to determine whether local drivers were in possession of illegal drugs.
One of the drivers they stopped was Hector Rodriguez; he was charged with possessing marijuana and operating with a suspended license.
Mr. Rodriguez's lawyers argued the case should be thrown out of court. The evidence should not be admitted, they argued, because the search was unconstitutional -- police had neither a warrant nor any probable cause to suspect Mr. Rodriguez of a crime; they were just stopping anyone who happened by.
Prosecutors responded that drug roadblocks must be constitutional because they are similar to checkpoints set up to identify drunk drivers.
Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court -- highest court in the commonwealth of Massachusetts -- found unanimously for Mr. Rodriguez. Case dismissed.
There are crucial distinctions between the two types of roadblocks, the court ruled. Sobriety checkpoints are intended to remove a deadly and immediate menace from the road and are a ''minimal and focused intrusion'' on motorists; but drug roadblocks violate the Massachusetts state constitution because they are generalized searches to discover evidence of criminal activity, without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
The court's ruling is correct as far as it goes, but it shows on how narrow a base the Fourth Amendment -- the one that supposedly guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches a seizures" -- still stands.
Allowing random traffic stops to check for drunk drivers -- or merely to demand the internal passports which Americans still euphemistically call "drivers licenses" -- was dangerous in the first place. (Yes, they're internal passports, of the Gestapo agent's "Papers, please" variety. Did you forget how to drive last time you moved across town? Of course not. Then why did the address on the license have to be updated? You don't have to keep paying money and filing change-of-address forms to keep your high school (start ital)diploma(end ital) valid, do you?)
Like the camel's nose under the tent, authorizing those infringements only invited the beast to see if it could go a bit further. Of course police were next going to try random traffic stops to search for drugs or guns.
The argument is always that "public safety" -- not to mention officer convenience -- will be enhanced if only we will tolerate a few more minor intrusions. After all, if you're innocent, what do you have to hide? Those who cause a fuss only cause the line to move slower. And, of course, if you raise a protest, then we (start ital)know(end ital) you must have something to hide. Let's just run a little background check, here. IRS audited your tax returns recently?
But that way, of course, lies the police state. As Mr. Franklin was wont to remind us, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
To which federalist Daniel Webster wisely added: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters ... but they mean to be masters."
Papers, please.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid from Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html. Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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