City Urges Judge to Allow Checkpoints

Officials Say Police Effort Combats Spates of Violence

The D.C. government urged a federal judge yesterday to allow police to continue a checkpoint initiative recently deployed in Northeast Washington, saying the measure is a legal way to attack flare-ups of violence.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon did not say when he would rule in a lawsuit brought by a civil liberties group. The Partnership for Civil Justice, which filed the suit on behalf of four D.C. residents, urged the judge to issue an injunction that would block the city from resuming the checkpoint effort while the case moves through the courts.

D.C. police set up checkpoints to screen motorists for six days last month in the Trinidad area, where residents had been pressuring for action after a spate of shootings, including a triple homicide. Officers at the checkpoint location on Montello Avenue asked drivers whether they had a legitimate reason to be in the area.

Officials said they could set up the program in other parts of the city but have not announced plans to do so.

At a hearing yesterday, lawyers for the civil rights group said that the daily checkpoints led to "widespread civil rights violations" and that they illegally barred or delayed law-abiding people from getting into the neighborhood. But a D.C. government lawyer said that the checkpoints were legal and that an injunction would harm the city's ability to quickly respond to spikes in violence.

Thomas L. Koger, a senior assistant attorney general for the District, said the checkpoint system was tailored to prevent people from "driving in, committing a crime and escaping in a motor vehicle. . . . If you can't get away, you are not likely to shoot somebody."

"This was a common-sense approach" to quelling violence, he said.

Koger said drivers could park their cars nearby and walk into the neighborhood if they did not want to be confronted by police. He said 48 cars were turned away during the initiative.

Leon did not indicate how he would rule. He questioned whether he could issue an injunction based on "the conjecture" that the checkpoint initiative might be used again. He also expressed skepticism about whether the residents who brought the suit would suffer "irreparable harm" if he did not issue such an order.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for the civil liberties group, said the residents in the lawsuit had been illegally prevented from entering Trinidad and were seized by police at the checkpoints. They could suffer the same consequences if the judge does not immediately halt the practice, she said.

"It's an extraordinary program, the likes of which I'm not sure" have been deployed elsewhere, Verheyden-Hilliard said. "It's a constant threat as long as the program remains in force."