Are sobriety checkpoints worth it?

On average, Fargo Police have arrested about three people each time they’ve set up a sobriety checkpoint since beginning the occasional practice in October 2004.

The Cass County Sheriff’s Department, which began doing similar checkpoints last year, averaged about two arrests.

That has critics here and elsewhere asking if the practice is worth the money spent on them or if it even targets those most endangering other people by driving drunk or high.

Mark Doyle, president of the Fargo Area Retailers Association and owner of Chub’s Pub in Fargo, said he and other bar owners think sobriety checkpoints could be hurting their business.

Doyle said he understands the need to catch drunken drivers, but questioned if the checkpoints are working when they generate low arrest numbers or sometimes none at all.
Sarah Longwell, managing director of The American Beverage Institute, agrees.

“It really is a waste of time because it’s not targeted enforcement” said Longwell, of the restaurant trade association dedicated to protecting the responsible consumption of adult beverages.

She says checkpoints result in too few arrests for their costs to taxpayers and don’t catch the most dangerous drunken drivers.

But local law enforcement officers disagree.

They say checkpoints – which must be publicly announced in advance – deter many people from driving drunk.

“Our primary goal is to educate and to deter impaired drivers,” said Cass County Sgt. Bruce Jorgensen.

Fargo police Sgt. Carlos Nestler said the combination of checkpoints and saturation patrols, which also target people driving under the influence, is working.

“I’ve noticed that since we’ve been doing this, we see more cars left at bars overnight,” Nestler said.

Doyle concedes that he does see that at his north Fargo bar.

“I come to work every morning, and there are 10-12 cars in my lot, sometimes more on weekends,” he said. “I mean, you can have three beers and get to .08 (blood-alcohol level illegal to drive).”

Some states, including Minnesota, don’t allow sobriety checkpoints despite the U.S. Supreme Court upholding their constitutionality in 1990.

The American Beverage Institute maintains that sobriety checkpoints hurt local businesses that sell alcohol to law-abiding citizens.

“Checkpoints scare people from the moderate, responsible social drinking that’s legal,” says Longwell, whose national group unites wine, beer and spirits producers with distributors and on-premise retailers.

She calls sobriety checkpoints part of a “flawed mentality” that should be scrapped for roving patrols that target several traffic safety problems such as speeding, distracted driving and drunken driving.

Sobriety checkpoints typically employ several uniformed officers blocking off a roadway to check drivers for impairment. Signs tell motorists a checkpoint is ahead, and motorists often may avoid them by turning beforehand.

Longwell argues that the checkpoints are more about police making themselves visible and less about actually catching the more intoxicated drivers who can easily avoid the publicized checkpoints.

“It’s like asking the enemy to walk into your camp and surrender,” Longwell said. “They’re not going to do it; they’re going to go around them.”

The costs required to conduct the checkpoint is also something Longwell says her restaurant trade association takes issue with, saying the money would be put to better use elsewhere.

Fargo police and the Cass County Sheriff’s Department use federal grant money to put on the checkpoints. The money covers overtime and also funds saturation patrols.

Fargo received an $11,000 grant from the North Dakota Department of Transportation for fiscal year 2007, spending $3,333 of that funding on checkpoint overtime, Nestler said.

The department’s power shift, or fourth shift, is central to keeping down checkpoint costs, Nestler said.

“Last year we didn’t even spend all our overtime money for them because we used so much of just the power shift for it,” he said.

Since October 2004, Fargo police have conducted 31 sobriety checkpoints that have yielded 100 arrests.

For some perspective, last month Fargo police arrested 67 people on suspicion of driving under the influence, according to e-briefing dispatch arrest logs. Almost 60 percent of those arrests occurred between Friday nights and Monday mornings, with 39 arrests made over the weekends, the logs show.

Most checkpoints are done on Friday or Saturday nights. None were done in December.

Fargo police Chief Keith Ternes has said he wishes the department could conduct checkpoints more often to continue their success and possibly improve it.

“I simply don’t have the staff to do them on a weekly or biweekly basis,” he said.

The manpower required to conduct checkpoints has deterred West Fargo police from putting them on at all, but the department steps up DUI enforcement four times a year with the help of federal grants, said Assistant Chief Mike Reitan.

For a period of four to eight days, typically targeted around special events such as the Fourth of July or the Red River Valley Fair, West Fargo police dispatch extra officers focusing on DUI enforcement, Reitan said.

For fiscal year 2008, which lasts until the end of September, West Fargo Police have received $5,000 in federal grant money for the increased patrols.

Last year, when Paul Laney became sheriff, the Cass County Sheriff’s Department joined other local agencies in conducting the checkpoints.

With the help of the North Dakota Highway Patrol, Cass County conducted five checkpoints in 2007 that led to 11 arrests, Jorgenson said.

A $10,000 alcohol enforcement grant from the state’s Department of Transportation will pay for saturation patrols and help continue the stops, with about six planned from April to November of this year, Jorgenson said.

Doyle, of the local bar association, said more taxi cabs might better help reduce the number of drunken drivers on area roads. He says some of his patrons must wait an hour for one.

“In a city this size, that’s almost unacceptable,” Doyle says.