Court Refuses to End Checkpoints

Officers man a checkpoint in June on Montello Avenue in the Trinidad community in Northeast Washington. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for the Partnership for Civil Justice, said she filed an appeal within minutes of Leon's decision. The suit challenging the constitutionality of the program will also remain alive, she noted.

"Our view is that the battle has just begun," Verheyden-Hilliard said. "The police are engaged in an unprecedented and illegal expansion of police power."

Leon said the residents did not meet their burden in proving they needed the preliminary injunction. They did not show that they had a "substantial likelihood of success on the merits" as the case moves ahead on the broader constitutional issues, he wrote. He added that they could not show that they would suffer "irreparable injury" if he did not grant the request.

The judge devoted much of his opinion to noting that the program was far different from other checkpoint initiatives that were deemed unconstitutional because they were geared toward "general crime control." For example, Leon wrote, the Supreme Court struck down police checkpoints in Indiana that were used in 1998 to find drugs because the program was just uncovering "ordinary criminal wrongdoing."

The D.C. checkpoints were "materially different," according to the judge, and addressed a specific and dangerous problem: gunmen using cars.

The judge found that the program strikes the proper balance of protecting the public without unnecessary intrusion. Police took pains to instruct officers that they were only trying to prevent potential gunmen from entering the area and could not simply arrest people for refusing to provide information, he wrote.

"Combating extremely violent acts that are facilitated by the use of vehicles to enter, and quickly exit, our neighborhoods is undeniably a grave public concern," he wrote.