Checkpoints: They Make You Stop and Think

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2008

Checkpoints stand as more than physical barriers against violence. They separate the wanted from the unwanted. They are gateposts meant to divide the good from the bad, to keep chaos away from calm.

They are forbidding guardhouses with searing lights, dogs and people in uniforms. They create assurance in a society that wants certainty. Sometimes, they succeed. In the District's violence-torn Trinidad neighborhood, the latest checkpoints have provided nine sweet days of peace.

"Since the checkpoints were established on July 19, no shootings have occurred in the Trinidad area," D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said in a statement last week, announcing the extension of the checkpoints until tomorrow. The extension "sends a clear message my officers will saturate the Trinidad neighborhood to keep the residents there safe and ultimately find out those responsible for the violent crime in the area last weekend."

Controversial as they are, checkpoints have tried to divide the good from the bad throughout history. They have been heralded for disrupting terrorism. Cursed for disrupting commerce. Praised as necessary filters of bad intentions. Condemned for human rights violations.

They hold within them the power to check death. Here, authority figures look for wires in your shirt or dress, a shaky hand, a nervous eye. A stutter. Incongruent behavior.

Even if you have nothing to hide, you ride up to a checkpoint slowly. Hands on the wheel, careful not to make any sudden movements, although your license and registration are there in your black evening bag on the back seat. You hold steady as the officer points that bright beam of light, blinding your eyes and obscuring his face.

From inside the car, the officer looks almost supernatural, a guardian at the gate. You sit still, careful to answer all questions, careful not to hesitate with words, careful to show good intentions.

Hoping only for passage to the other side, the side where the other good people abide.

"I was stopped on Montello and Owens Place," recalls Lowana Coles, 45, a federal worker who has lived in Trinidad for eight years. "I was driving through on my way home and they had the checkpoint up. I was summoned to pull over, so I pulled over. They explained what they were doing."

She showed the officer her license and proof of insurance. "I told him I was glad they were in the neighborhood and wished they could do it more often."

A small inconvenience for peace at night. "It saddens me to hear these people are being killed literally for nothing," she says. "I'm sure it will get much worse before it gets better. I want to run away, but where will I run to?"

Checkpoints date back at least to biblical times, with gates in walls built against aggressors. Some checkpoints were built of turf, some of earth, rock and stone, stretching for miles, later abandoned when the evil on the other side retreated. There were the walls of Jericho to protect the city from nomads. The Great Wall of China, built to withstand the power of the Huns. The wall of Antonius, an ancient Roman barrier built across Britain, intended as a defense against the people of the north. The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961 to keep people in. Checkpoint Charlie become a symbol of the Cold War, symbolizing the separation of East from West. Depending on which side you were standing on, it was seen as a gateway to freedom, or a usurper of it.

Checkpoints control geographic borders. People who fit a profile are led away to separate rooms, to be questioned.

In conflict zones, checkpoints have been dangerous places to guard -- and dangerous places to pass. Countless soldiers have been killed by seemingly innocent people. And seemingly hostile, but innocent, people have been killed by soldiers.

Checkpoints in Rwanda manned by children, carrying AK-47s and drinking bottles of Guinness and demanding money. Checkpoints in Bosnia. Checkpoints in Lebanon. Checkpoints in Israel where two neighboring societies meet, one for inspection, the other to be inspected. Checkpoints in Iraq, where some soldiers and Marines say they are sitting ducks, never knowing what car (or pedestrian) will hold a bomb.

The barriers bring with them questions of civil liberties, the right to move unencumbered.

The Partnership for Civil Justice sued the District of Columbia in June to challenge the constitutionality of checkpoints. "The District's military-style roadblock system was deployed, in part, to give the appearance that the government is addressing this deeply felt need," the class action complaint argues. "But it is neither constitutional, nor effective."

Those who guard checkpoints lack the power of omniscience or omnipotence; they cannot see inside a person, cannot discern malign or benign intent.

"How do you define a good or bad neighbor when you look at a person?" says D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5). "When you have to bring order and control to neighborhoods, they are short-term measures at best. In the long term, you run the risk of people feeling they live in a police state."

You drive through Trinidad and wonder: Could you determine the good and the bad by just looking?

A woman with long braids and long legs in tight jeans walks briskly up Trinidad Avenue NE. She is holding the hand of a small child. The child can't keep pace with the strides of the woman walking up hill. The child is running beside her.

A man with gray hair is washing a car from a bucket, as a crowd watches him.

A young man in a white T-shirt sits on the curb as police search his car, looking between the seats. Another young man, with no shirt and shiny dreads, is walking down the block. Looking at you looking at him.

Along Trinidad Avenue, men sit on their open porches overlooking the street. There is a woman sweeping her sidewalk, brushing hard against the concrete, straw broom beating away the dirt.

A police officer sits alone, his squad car's lights flashing, flashing. But he is not stopping anyone. It is as though he is waiting for a command. Other police cars are waiting at other entrances into Trinidad.

Of course they can't seal every entrance into the neighborhood. As you drive around, you see many side streets that are open, unprotected from the bad elements who could at this hour of the evening already have crossed the invisible barrier.