OPINION: You and the cops

Perhaps some readers tire of this message, as it's presented before most party holidays: Don't drink and drive. Drunken drivers kill and should be punished when convicted.

And we'll repeat our other mantra: Don't go through sobriety checkpoints. If you see one, make the first legal U-turn or turn away on a side street. Police cannot pursue you for choosing to avoid these organized violations of the Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted searches and seizures.

While defense of the Constitution provides ample reason for avoiding sobriety checkpoints, doing so also helps encourage better procedures for catching and penalizing drunken drivers. Sobriety checkpoints, in addition to flagrantly violating the Fourth Amendment, don't work.

Statistics show the average drunken driver who causes a fatal crash has driven with a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit. These are serious drunks and alcoholics, who aren't in the practice of waiting in line to pass through checkpoints.

Typically, checkpoints net citations for 1 percent of the drivers detained, and the vast majority are people at the lowest threshold of the legal limit, which is .05 in Colorado - a level some adults can reach with one or two beers or servings of wine.

Is it OK to drive after a few drinks? Of course not. Don't do it, ever. It's a horrible idea.

But it's also a bad idea to set up expensive checkpoints to detain thousands of motorists, in order to catch a few casual drinkers who statistically pose no significant threat.

Wasting resources on this exercise consumes our limited law enforcement resources, taking from our roads the police who should be conducting roaming patrols to catch serious drunks - the kind who swerve, drive slowly, forget to use headlights, or show other signs of drunken driving police are trained to detect.

Records from state supreme court cases in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire show roving patrols catch 10 times more drunken drivers than are netted by checkpoints, and at a far lower cost. The American Beverage Institute reports that a sobriety checkpoint may cost more than $10,000, while a roving patrol costs about $300.

If innocent, and pulled over for a sobriety check, be polite but guard against a costly false charge and a night in jail like this:

1. Refuse the roadside sobriety check. It is not required by law, is designed only to provide evidence against a driver, and is difficult to pass when stone cold sober;

2. Consider agreeing to a breath test. Doing so may save your driving privileges, which are lost for at least a year if one refuses both the blood and breath test. Unlike the blood test, results of a breath test can be challenged with relative ease in court and therefore pose the least risk of a false conviction;

3. Don't offer information beyond providing a driver's license; and

4. Do not allow a warrantless search of the vehicle.

We offer these tips, as put forth by criminal defense lawyers interviewed by The Gazette, for sober drivers. It's our hope and belief that dangerous drunks have little chance of avoiding arrest, once found by police, whether or not they guard their rights.

Don't protect your rights for the sake of inconveniencing police officers, who are extraordinary citizens working hard this holiday to uphold the law and save lives. Do it to protect yourself from the possibility of a false charge or conviction. Do it to limit the authority of the state. Do it this July Fourth weekend mostly to protect one of the fundamental freedoms that led our Founders to fight for independence: freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures by government.