Buried in the print Register today was a great story from Fullerton: Fullerton councilmen criticized for not taking DUI grant. In part,
Councilmen Travis Kiger, Bruce Whitaker and Greg Sebourn last week voted against taking the Office of Traffic Safety [MADD-funded] grant that would have funded five [$10k per] sobriety checkpoints – roadblocks manned by police officers who ensure drivers are sober. … Kiger said checkpoints violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment – which guards against unreasonable searches – and are ineffective and merely a tool used by police unions to garner overtime pay. “I don’t appreciate thousands of legal and licensed drivers being stopped without cause,” Kiger said. “The other side is that it is wasteful. … They have been proven ineffective over and over.”
The new Council majority saw through MADD‘s ongoing assault on the 4th Amendment and exposed the nonsense and waste of money and manpower that these sobriety checkpoints really represent. Councilman Kiger was also precisely ON TARGET is pointing out that this MADD Grant was just and only a $50,000 contribution to Fullerton PD’s overtime budget.
This will certainly anger the Blue Shirt Brigade and their union supporters, but rejecting this Grant was exactly the thing to do. Kiger’s right — checkpoints are not only unconstitutional, but they’re ineffective — if they weren’t MADD and the PD would be spewing statistics of how many drunks they’ve filled the local jails with. A driver who’s had a few can still see them and avoid them (I’ve confirmed it’s “best practice” to provide an available side street or alley to use to escape them before entering the cordoned area). A sober driver has little appreciation for police’s guilty before proven innocent attitude, having a cop’s face stuck in his car to smell his breath and having his time wasted by MADD’s paranoia. How is that not an ILLEGAL SEARCH?
We’re looking forward to more sensibility and plain common sense out of the Fullerton majority.
I would have gone a step further. FPD, and for that matter, MADD should have been politely asked to show the results of the last X sobriety checkpoints; that is, how many drunks were found, unlicensed drivers, druggies, expired tags, illegals without licenses, etc. That would have given everyone a better picture of the waste many people believe these annoying tests of one’s privacy are.