DWI checkpoints are supposedly banned in Texas (or at least the legislation which would supposedly authorize them failed to pass in 2009) so I’m not sure how the Sheriff in San Angelo can justify checkpoints for insurance and drivers licenses – “Show me your papers, Comrade!” From the San Angelo Standard Times (Oct. 28):
More than one of every six vehicles stopped in a two-hour checkpoint in San Angelo on Wednesday morning received a citation, the San Angelo Police Department said.
The police, Tom Green County Sheriff’s deputies and San Angelo City Marshals conducted the checkpoint from 8:15 a.m. to 10:20 a.m. in the 300 block of East Avenue L, stopping 585 vehicles, said Lt, David Howard, a San Angelo police spokesman.
Citations included 50 tickets for no insurance, 28 for driver’s license violations, 24 for other violations such as expired or missing registration or inspection, and two warnings.
One driver was arrested on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge, Howard said.
Consider: What does it say about the state of overcriminalization on the roadways that when you stop every car on the road, one in six are breaking the law? These are mostly economic crimes. It’s a crime to fail to pay a private company for insurance. Many of those with driver’s license violations likely lost their licenses thanks to onerous Driver Responsibility surcharges. And of course inspection and registration are both government-mandated fees (with inspection often including the cost of getting this or that defect on the car fixed before it will pass muster).
So you stop a bunch of people who already couldn’t pay for insurance, surcharges, registration fees, vehicle repairs, etc., and lard on an added criminal penalty they likely also can’t pay. That makes no sense from any perspective but revenue generation. It’s no wonder they cited one in six drivers stopped, when you think about it. Employing these kind of tactics makes it less likely they can pay all the fees and penalties they already owe, manufacturing ever-more violators and building the pool for additional citations down the line like sort of a grotesque perpetual-motion machine.
Maybe the problem isn’t all the lawbreakers but that there are too many damn laws and too much reliance on the criminal justice system to bleed drivers (read: taxpayers and voters) with citations and fines over economic crimes.
