Illegal Searches and Drug Checkpoints on Michigan Highways

Drivers Face Drug Checkpoints on Highways Near Flint

For the past couple of years they’ve been putting up cameras and steel cable fencing in the median of all the major highways and interstates all over southern Michigan, making it impossible to make u-turns. You get the feeling that you are driving into a prison whenever you approach a major town/city like Lansing or Flint! I think they’ve been planning this crap all along! Also, with Michigan’s new wiretapping laws, the police will arrest you if you are caught videotaping them even though the law clearly was meant for hidden or secret recording devices when one has a reasonable expectation of privacy – not a public servant operating in the public domain! - Watchtower76

Things are just getting out of hand. What country do we live in? Flint, I’m sure is hurting for money for the city/county so they are going to do what ever they can to make money. Here in the metro Detroit area they have been changing speed limit signs to a higher speed and then, after a few months, changing them back to a lower speed. When my daughter was getting in to trouble with the courts, I know that it was because of issues she had, not because she was a bad person. I asked her lawyer why the courts don’t address the issues, instead of just fines and jails. He told me because it’s all about the money. Of course, he looked around before saying it, to make sure no one would hear him but me! I am happy to say that one court did address the issues and now my daughter is on the right track and is a up standing person who is no longer getting in trouble. Go figure!! - JaneTheCarpenter

The courts are part of the same criminal system any way, so it’s not as if a court challenge is being made in a vacuum. You sound as if you agree with this use of the Constitution and Bill of Rights as toilet paper. You might be right that it will withstand a court challenge, but that is NOT because it SHOULD withstand a court challenge; it is because the system has turned rotten – the courts like additional rotting teeth in a gangrenous government jaw – while you sit by and celebrate your own enslavement. - revolverBoy

This sign was posted Tuesday for several hours on I-69 near Flint, one of a series of checkpoints by the Genesee County Sheriff's Office. / Jamie Fricke

October 21, 2011

Detroit Free Press - Motorists driving on expressways around Flint are getting surprised by a stunning tactic that the Genesee County sheriff has been using to fight the flow of illegal drugs -- one that legal experts said will not withstand a court challenge.

At least seven times this month, including Tuesday, motorists have said they have seen a pickup towing a large sign on I-69 or U.S.-23 that depicts the sheriff's badge and warns: "Sheriff narcotics check point, 1 mile ahead -- drug dog in use."

The checkpoints are part of a broad sweep for drugs that Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell and his self-titled Sheriff's Posse said are needed, calling Flint a crossroads of drug dealing because nearly a half-dozen major roads and expressways pass in and around the city. Pickell said he decided to try checkpoints when he learned that drug shipments might be passing through Flint in tractor-trailers with false compartments.

"We're doing everything by the book," Genesee County Undersheriff Christopher Swanson said. "We think there's major loads (of drugs) coming through here from all over, every day. And this is one of the tools we use -- narcotics checkpoints."

He said the dogs are used to sniff around the vehicles to check for drugs.

The practice has legal experts on searches and seizures at two law schools in Michigan, a constitutional law expert in Lansing and the American Civil Liberties Union calling the practice out of bounds and out of touch with state and U.S. Supreme Court rulings that ban such practices.

Based on a case out of Indianapolis, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 2000 that narcotics checkpoints where everyone gets stopped on a public road are not legal and violate Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches and seizures, professor David Moran at the University of Michigan Law School said.

Wayne State University Law School professor Peter Henning said police can set up roadblocks to search all who pass by, but only if a crime has just been committed.

And Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, who said he was not consulted by Pickell about the checkpoints, said that after a court challenge, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that so-called "sobriety check lanes," put in place to nab drunken drivers, were illegal.

The new practice of narcotics checkpoints "certainly brings up probable-cause issues," Leyton said Thursday.

Leyton said he has no power to stop the practice, however. That, he said, would require someone arrested at a checkpoint to contest the evidence in court.

The checkpoints have caused an uproar, officials said. And, as a result, the sheriff's office has altered its methods: Instead of using the checkpoints daily -- even Sundays when they started at the beginning of the month -- they are used sporadically. And instead of stopping everyone, law enforcement has been putting the signs out and waiting for a motorist to make an illegal U-turn in the freeway median to try to avoid the checkpoint, thus giving them cause to pull the driver over and search the vehicle.

But even that method raises question, U-M professor Moran said.

The technique has not been tested in Michigan courts, he said. But judges would take a dim view of it because "it's perilously close to entrapment," he said.

"It's just the kind of shabby treatment that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent," Moran said.

Among the groups of motorists most stunned by the checkpoints are state-registered medical marijuana users and caregivers. Pickell and Swanson said the checkpoints weren't meant to target medical-marijuana users, but word of the new tactic spread quickly through that community.

Many registered users and caregivers told the Free Press they now fear driving near Flint, even when they possess their medical-marijuana registry cards.

At a checkpoint Tuesday afternoon just west of Flint on I-69, officers pulled over only those who saw the checkpoint sign, then made an illegal U-turn on the freeway, Jamie Fricke, 31, of Lapeer said.

"But my buddy went through this on Monday and he said they were pulling over all enclosed trailers. They had drug-sniffing dogs out that day," on I-69 east of Flint, in Burton, she said.

Fricke, a state registered medical-marijuana user, said she had a small amount of the drug with her, but her car was not searched.

Larry and Diane Foster, both of Muskegon, said they saw a checkpoint Oct. 5 in which officers were stopping every motorist on eastbound I-69.

"We were going in the opposite direction or we would've been stopped," said Diane Foster, 55, a state-registered medical-marijuana user and caregiver. "I had medication (marijuana) on me, so I don't know what the outcome would've been."

A Bill to Teach the Bill of Rights in Public Schools

Libertarian Punk
January 5, 2022

(Below is a letter I sent to these Republican members of The House of Representatives and the Senate: Ron Paul, Rand Paul, John Boehner, Eric Cantor , Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, John Barrasso, Michael Enzi, Cynthia Lummis, Michelle Bachmann, Joe Walsh, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Darrell Issa.

If you want to send a variation of this letter, with your name at the bottom, to your representative, here’s a list of all of them.) PLEASE FORWARD THIS POST TO PEOPLE.

Hello ______ ,

We have far too many laws now, and most of them do not protect anyone from anything. Most laws only waste money, expand government, and burden the people.

However, there is one bill I would love to see presented: a law that requires all public schools, K-12 as well as state colleges, to teach a one-day unbiased course on the Bill of Rights, every year to every student. And the law would deny ALL federal funding to any school that does not comply. Perhaps the course could be in the form of a video or booklet to prevent “meddling and misinterpretation” by some teachers.

This bill to accomplish this could be incredibly simple, in plain English, and would probably only need to be one or two pages long.

These days, most public school grads have limited (or no) knowledge of the Bill of Rights. This fact, if not reversed, will contribute heavily to the eventual extinction of America as we know it. If kids think that the founding documents are simply dusty old relics sealed in helium in the National Archives (if they even know THAT!), it will be much easier for present and future tyrants to take away those rights, because young voters will not even know that those rights exist.

Documents do not grant rights, documents declare rights and try to protect rights. But studying the Bill of Rights is a good place to start, and is terribly absent in current public education.

We are paying for these schools, why not have some say in what they teach?

My state Rep in Wyoming, Gerald Gay, is considering a similar bill at the state level. But I think we need it at the federal level.

If this bill passes, it would be wonderful. If this bill does not pass, or passes and is vetoed, it would expose those who voted against it as freedom hating anti-Americans with a hidden agenda to remove rights, which might be almost as useful as the bill actually passing.

But how could it possibly be vetoed? After all, our Commander in Chief is a CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR! He would surely LOVE this bill!

I hope you will consider this legislation.

Respectfully, Michael W. Dean Casper, Wyoming.

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(And I didn’t include this in the letter, but check out Debra Jean reading the Bill of Rights, here.)

The 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution places limits on the power of the police to make arrests, search people and their property, and seize objects and contraband (such as illegal drugs or weapons). These limits are the bedrock of search and seizure law. This article covers the basic issues that you should know, beginning with an overview of the 4th Amendment itself. (To read the 4th Amendment and other amendments in the Bill of Rights, check out Nolo's list of The Most Important Cases, Speeches, Laws & Documents in American History.)