Sobriety Check Points

The sobriety check or roadblock has passed U.S. Supreme Court muster as constitutional. Under the Fourth Amendment we are protected “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” When the good of society is at stake however, the search is no longer deemed unreasonable.

In New Mexico, a sobriety check has to meet eight criteria established by the court of appeals.

  1. the selection of the site and procedures for conducting it must be made and established by supervisory law enforcement personnel rather than officers in the field. Ideally, roadblock decisions should be made by the chief of police or other high-ranking supervisory officials
  2. the discretion of field officers be restricted … As nearly as possible, each motorist should be dealt with in precisely the same manner
  3. the safety of the motoring public and the field officer should also be given proper consideration [minimal traffic congestion]
  4. the location of the roadblock is significant in determining the degree of intrusiveness and safety of the public and police…Obviously, a location chosen with the actual intent of stopping and searching only a particular group of people, i.e., Hispanics, blacks, etc., would not be tolerated
  5. time and duration [e.g., late evening, not during morning rush hour]
  6. the official nature of the roadblock should be immediately apparent. Officers in the field should be uniformed; police cars should be marked; and warning or stop signs, flares and pylons are advisable. The roadblock scene should strike an appropriate balance to provide for high visibility at the roadblock, yet minimize the potential fear and apprehension to
    the public
  7. the average length of time that a motorist is detained at the roadblock and the degree of intrusiveness should be minimized
  8. the deterrence value of any roadblock and its reasonableness for sobriety checks will be enhanced if given widespread advance publicity

City of Las Cruces, Plaintiff-Appellee, vs. Elizabeth Betancourt, and Henry J. Baca, Defendants-Appellants (1987)

You do have to produce identification and registration. You do not have to answer any questions. One problem with answering questions is that it opens the door to more questions.

Another problem with answering questions. You have a beer at 5 and get stopped at 10. What’s the answer to the question, “Have you had a drink?” Lying to a police officer is not good. Qualifying an answer may be even worse.

The answer many advocates suggest is, “Officer, I prefer not to discuss my personal affairs.” They can’t legally hold you because you chose not to engage in small-talk. And refusing to chit-chat is not probable cause.

And if you think, well I never drink, the officer at the one check point I visited also asked about drugs and (if I remember it correctly) medications. What’s the answer to that question?

[Sobriety checks are unconstitutional under state law in Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.]

One Point of View

Tom Friedman begins his column:

Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can’t agree with President Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I’d prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home right now, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.

He goes on to explain. Worthwhile.

H1N1

A good friend — a 60-year-old physician — died as a result of H1N1 influenza last week. I didn’t write about it during his illness because I respected his privacy — I still do. But please, this and all influenza can be dangerous; take care.

The H1N1 led to pneumonia which led to acute respiratory distress syndrome. ARDS is fatal for about half of those who contract it.

Idle thought

We had a small discussion hereabouts yesterday about whether Tiger Woods should talk to the police. The answer is, of course, that no he shouldn’t. He has that right. We all have that right.

He doesn’t have to let them in the house either. He has that right. We all have that right.

But I have a question about a different kind of situation. Here in Albuquerque, as in many locations, we have routine roadblocks for DWI enforcement. The one time I’ve encountered one of these roadblocks, I was asked whether I had had anything to drink. I answered, truthfully, that I had not.

Did I have to answer that question?

Random Stories of Kindness

I think I will post a Random Act of Kindness story each day in December to get us all in a better frame of mind for the stress of December. Here’s today’s found at The Consumerist.

Once on Mother’s Day, this older lady came in alone and told me that her kids weren’t able to be with her that year, but they had mailed her a gift card. So I told my manager that we had to make this an exceptional experience for her. I told her to come back with a friend some time and use her gift card because tonight, her meal was on us. We comped her dinner, and I sat with her through dessert while she told me about her kids. My coworkers were happy to cover my other tables for 15 minutes. The woman told me she would remember that dinner forever.

—Melissa McCracken, longtime waitress in Hawaii

'I never wanted to kill anybody, but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first.'

This Day in History at History.com tells a story from 125 years ago today.

Elfego Baca, legendary defender of southwestern Hispanos, manages to hold off a gang of 80 cowboys who are determined to kill him.

The trouble began the previous day, when Baca arrested Charles McCarthy, a cowboy who fired five shots at him in a Frisco (now Reserve), New Mexico, saloon. For months, a vicious band of Texan cowboys had terrorized the Hispanos of Frisco, brutally castrating one young Mexican man and using another for target practice. Outraged by these abuses, Baca gained a commission as deputy sheriff to try to end the terror. His arrest of McCarthy served notice to other Anglo cowboys that further abuses of the Hispanos would not be tolerated.

The Texans, however, were not easily intimidated. The morning after McCarthy’s arrest, a group of about 80 cowboys rode into town to free McCarthy and make an example of Baca for all Mexicans. Baca gathered the women and children of the town in a church for their safety and prepared to make a stand. When he saw how outnumbered he was, Baca retreated to an adobe house, where he killed one attacker and wounded several others. The irate cowboys peppered Baca’s tiny hideout with bullets, firing about 400 rounds into the flimsy structure. As night fell, they assumed they had killed the defiant deputy sheriff, but the next morning they awoke to the smell of beef stew and tortillas–Baca was fixing his breakfast.

A short while later, two lawmen and several of Baca’s friends came to his aid, and the cowboys retreated. Baca turned himself over to the officers, and he was charged with the murder of one of the cowboys. In his trial in Albuquerque, the jury found Baca not guilty because he had acted in self-defense, and he was released to a hero’s welcome among the Hispanos of New Mexico. Baca was adored because he had taken a stand against the abusive and racist Anglo newcomers. Hugely popular, Baca later enjoyed a successful career as a lawyer, private detective, and politician in Albuquerque.

Baca was 19 at the time of the shootout and lived until 1945. In 1958, Walt Disney Studios produced The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca. Robert Loggia played the title role, with a cast that included Annette Funicello (as Chiquita), James Coburn and Alan Hale, Jr. (Gilligan’s skipper).

A golf tournament of sorts, the annual Elfego Baca Golf Shoot in Socorro, New Mexico, celebrates the deputy — “competitors are loaded into four-wheel drive vehicles to ascend Socorro Peak, 7,243 feet above sea level. Here they will battle in a one-hole shoot. The hole, a fifty foot patch of dirt, is located on the New Mexico Tech campus, about 4 hours long, 2550 feet down, and almost three miles away.”

You can read more about Elfego Baca here.

Allen Stewart Konigsberg

… is 74 today. I saw Woody Allen doing stand-up once upon a time when we were both a lot younger (about 45 years ago, sigh).

Here’s a few of his insights, some possibly from that very time.

“A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said ‘no’.”

“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”

“I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.”

“Some guy hit my fender, and I told him ‘be fruitful, and multiply.’ But not in those words.”

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.”

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

We get lots of comments

Typical of the comments you don’t get to see (the spam):

“I am from Germany and know bad English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: ‘The dealer will practise two casinos to you and two hands to the dealer, blackjack.'”

“I am from Mexico and , too, and now am writing in English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: ‘Blackjack, nonchalant hcl types and articles.'”

“I am from Kyrgyzstan and also am speaking English, give please true I wrote the following sentence: ‘Whether the counting is to deal n’t in as supervisor pair or to find a unavoidable bankroll of round, the addition should get how you allow the card, blackjack.'”

All this morning from the same IP address.

Awesomest Palin News of the Day

Andrew Sullivan relays news that in her book Sarah Palin attributes the following to famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.

“Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.”

A fine quote. Just one problem. It isn’t Wooden’s. It is actually a quote from John Wooden Legs, a Cheyenne Indian, in an essay “Back on the War Ponies.”

The $3 Million Dollar Men

“The 926 players in the major leagues before rosters expanded in September averaged $2,996,000, according to the annual report of the players’ association, which was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.”

AP via Huffington Post

Average. Nearly. Three. Million. Dollars.

For six months.

(I do wonder what the median is.)

Another chance to do what?

“Clemmons was serving a 108-year sentence on at least five felony convictions. In moving to get him out early, Huckabee cited his youth – age 18 – of his first conviction. Huckabee, a Baptist minister, thought Clemmons deserved another chance.”

Timothy Egan

Who’s Clemmons you might ask? Oh he’s the guy that apparently ambushed and killed four police officers near Tacoma yesterday.

How may I be of assistance?

What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.

But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human.

The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help.

The New York Times has more.

Glad I could help you find this article.

Things to come

On his blog, Nobel-laureate economimist and Times columnist Paul Krugman suggests the future. He begins:

What’s going to happen, economically and politically, over the next few years? Nobody knows, of course. But I have a vision — what I think is the most likely course of events. It’s fairly grim — but not in the approved way. This vision lies behind a lot of what I’ve been writing, so it might clarify things for regular readers if I laid it out explicitly.

The rest is worth your time. He’s been right on most things.

Worst lines of the day

Anyone in a position of authority who is aware of a gay or lesbian individual has 24 hours to inform police or face jail time. Individuals found to engage in efforts to sexually stimulate another for the purpose of homosexual relations, or found touching another for that purpose, will face life in prison. Those who engage in “aggravated homosexuality” — defined as repeated homosexual relations or sexual contact with others who are HIV/AIDS infected — will face the death penalty.

Andrew Sullivan quoting a summary of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009.

Rick Warren: “As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides.”

John F. Kennedy: “Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.”

Best line of the day, so far

“[Mick] Jagger was preposterous and admirable, as always: these days, he always seems like he’s filming a workout tape.”

Ben Freeman reviewing the HBO broadcast of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.

“Fergie, who had started at the back of the stage, on a riser, in a sinuous Kali-like pose, ended up in a cock-and-hen mating dance with Jagger, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that it flew in the face of context, decency, and history.”

Apparently, according to Freeman, they messed up “Gimme Shelter,” surely a capital offense. Go read his commentary; rock music criticism at its very finest.