Political Checkpoint

Why are there more protests about a police crackdown in Northeast than about the murders that caused it?

CRITICS OF the District's decision to use police checkpoints have reason to question the practice's constitutionality and wonder about its long-term effectiveness. What's wrong is to play down the violence plaguing these troubled neighborhoods. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier are correct to see the crime problem in Northeast as a true public emergency that warrants new thinking and bold action.

A burst of violence several weekends ago -- seven people killed and three wounded in nine hours -- prompted the District to put in place a neighborhood checkpoint program that had been under development for two months. For six days at random times, police operated checkpoints in the hard-hit Trinidad neighborhood in the city's 5th Police District. Because police had concluded that people who didn't live in the neighborhood were driving into the area and shooting from vehicles, the checkpoints were aimed at turning away motorists who had no legitimate purpose there. Police said more than 700 vehicles were allowed in, 46 were turned away, and there were no shootings.

There's a dispute over whether the operation violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. There is some merit to the claim that police were using the checkpoints for general law enforcement, which could render them unconstitutional. But city attorneys make a convincing argument that because the program's goal was the physical safety of roadways, it passes constitutional muster. Indeed, they liken the Trinidad stops to sobriety checkpoints, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Any political judgment must balance the intrusiveness of the checkpoints against the seriousness of the problem they are designed to address. The fact is that the pace of homicides in this part of the city is 175 percent higher than last year at this time. "We're in crisis mode," resident Kathy Henderson told the D.C. Council in powerful testimony that chided those who, by virtue of Zip codes in crime-free neighborhoods, are able to engage in an "academic discussion" of the program's merits. Her words reminded us what all of the Washington area felt during the three weeks in 2002 when two snipers stalked the region. We don't recall anyone complaining about the inconvenience or constitutionality of police stops then.

In criticizing the checkpoints, Art Spitzer, legal director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, observed to The Post's Marc Fisher that "the sad answer is that there may be nothing that prevents crime in a crowded urban area in the summertime." That kind of unfortunate thinking -- that certain neighborhoods must accept violence as a fact of life -- is a reason that there was more of an outcry over police efforts to stop the killings than over the killings themselves. And therein lies the real outrage.