Slashdot Mirror
Texas Drivers Stopped At Roadblock, Asked For Saliva, Blood
schwit1 writes "Some drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at a police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood. It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is spending $7.9 million on the survey over three years, said participation was '100 percent voluntary' and anonymous. The 'participants' hardly agree."
But those come after the semen and stool samples, right?
In Australia it is called a 'Booze Bus'. They don't take blood, but they do the rest and it is 100% involuntary. They will block off freeways to test everyone and park cop cars in all the side streets.
Personally I am mostly OK with this. The next morning when you see the huge line of cars left behind because the drivers were drunk justifies it to me.
It's a shame that this even happened.
I do not consent to living in a police state.
I do not consent to "federal contractors".
I DO NOT CONSENT
OR:
"These are not the droids you're looking for."
Don't let the fact that an armed man and his buddies just forced you off the road, in the dark, convey any kind of misleading impression about the voluntariness of what you are about to do the sensible thing and agree to....
Why not shoot anybody and everybody? That way, you'll certainly get all the rapists, murderers, etc.
The rights of somebody else granted by law should be respected even when they're violating the law.
The police are unwitting participants in this experiment. Gathering data on intoxication is just the cover story. The real experiment is to see whether Texas is as tough as they talk, or if they're going to bitch out and take this shit. If the result is positive, somebody will roll up to the roadblock with an AR-15 and pop a few skulls. But my money's on the pigs not having anything to worry about, 'cause Texas is full of trash-talkin' BITCHEZZZ!
Did we make sure to get blood and saliva samples from the police officers and federal contractors as well?
I'd like to make sure that my samples aren't being mishandled due to drug- or alcohol-induced ineptitude.
I think this study was less to count the number of drunk drivers and more as a test to see how willing people are to give up their precious bodily fluids when demanded to do so by some random authority. Sort of checking to see if the frog has been boiled yet. Fortunately, it sounds as if some of those frogs were willing to still jump a little bit, as at least the named driver refused to everything but a breathalyzer.
I'm an American expat living in Australia, and the first time I was stopped by a 'booze bus' I was quite indignant. A booze bus is a large, mobile drug and alcohol screening facility which set it up at choke points like any police blockade would so you usually can't take a side-street to avoid it. After that, about half the traffic gets funneled through where drivers are breathalyzed, one after the other - you can't say no. My wife and friends can't understand why I feel that they're so invasive, and get angry any time I have to stop for one. Especially when it's 10:30 in the morning. On the edge of town. With no housing or pubs on the other side. Oz must have a lot of farmers who get drunk every morning and drive into town.
Texas and the Feds. What could possibly go wrong?
Table-ized A.I.
The response will be rather reminiscent of MiB, when "Edgar" gave the alien "Bug", in the fresh impact crater on his farm, a similar response when told to drop his weapon.
"Your proposal is acceptable."
LE officers these days no longer accept nearly as much personal risk to avoid injuring/killing subjects. The amount of time, risk, and effort to try and defuse & deescalate situations before tasers and/or firearms are used against subjects has dramatically fallen over the last 25-35 years.
This is largely due to extreme militarization coupled with the "officer safety first" and "*I'm* going home tonight!" mentality culture and training. Also, it seems like the psych-screening and attitude/demeanor suitability culling processes have suffered greatly, judging by the tsunami of YT videos available recording a huge and ever-growing number of over-the-top LE behaviors and actions.
Besides, as long as they don't kill you, you can hurt them much worse and for far longer with paper than with bullets, as long as the court system and rule of law means anything at all. I'll leave that for you to judge.
Check out what DHS will do to one of their own who tries to do their duty. They used a freaking Blackhawk and a military style 27-man SRT to raid her and her husband's house. The 24-year-old neighbor who video-recorded the raid and Blackhawk was found dead in his house of unknown causes. If they'll do that to one of their own, what are they willing to do to you or I if we should happen to attract their anger over something we said, or something we have no clue would have any connection to anything government or cause any kind of reaction by anyone at all?
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1181
http://youtu.be/3LHC-C-ODO0
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
This is not a contract. This is the law. Violating it isn't a contract dispute. It is a criminal offense.
But presumably many/most of the people who were involuntarily detained and intrusively searched weren't committing a criminal offence, so what is the justification for the detention and search?
We shouldn't allow carte blanche intrusions into people's lives in exchange for just doing something that is a normal or even necessary part of those lives such as travelling from place to place or communicating with someone else. It's like saying we should condone arbitrary, abusive security theatre at an airport because terrrsm, and everyone "accepted" that they could be mistreated in those ways by buying a ticket so they have no grounds for complaint.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There were no on-duty police officers involved ...just off-duty officers and government contractors, illegally distrupting traffic, illegally collecting passive sensor data, even when consent was declined, and collecting a bunch of other information if you were willing to give it for free (the breathalyzer) or willing to be paid $10, $50, or $60, depending on how intrusive you let them get in exchange for money.
Everything about it was illegal; this was not a standard DUI checkpoint which contractors "embraced and extended", this was private citizens pulling over private citizens and collecting at least a minimum amount of data without consent.
This is a civil rights violation, and for each count where consent was not given after the fact, worth 20 years in a Federal prison.
Isn't this called kidnapping?
It was a running (bad) joke in TV/films of the 1970s/80s that muggers would frequently 'suggest' in very moderate and 'reasonable' language that their victims might like to consider giving them a 'donation'. The idea was that the situation was so clear, that the actual threat could be left implicit, as if this somehow reduced the criminality, or made the victim some kind of accomplice.
Of course, the mugger would ensure the victim was aware that he had a weapon (frequently dual use, like a screw-driver), so that a classic power game played out.
Now we see the police in the USA using the SAME tactic, but with one more refinement- the use of proxies/mercenaries/'contractors' to do the actual 'mugging' of citizens Human Rights, while the uniformed goons themselves stand to the side as 'back-up'.
Let me ask you all a question. Would you prefer your police-state to be upfront and honest, like say Stalinist East Germany, or Obama style, where everyone pretends the man with the gun and uniform who is forcing you do act against your will is just a friendly, harmless 'servant' of the people.
Would you prefer your mugger to be some lone pathetic loser, or a member of a well organised gang whose power and influence reaches into ever aspect of your city's administration and law enforcement? Team Obama not only abuses you, it pays massive amounts to PR operations so stories of the abuse are ignored or dismissed as untrue by your fellow sheeple.
I ride motorcycles. Over the past few years, it's become 'normal' for the police to stop a motorcyclist for no other reason than the fact that he's on 2 wheels. I'm not talking about random here and there stops, this is an organized troop of LEO's that wave every single motorcycle coming down an interstate into a rest area and taking the opportunity to 'educate' the detainees. In the process of having the luxury of this captive audience, they look for and prosecute every violation they can see. The impetus for this is largely enforcing a totally ridiculous helmet law. Regardless of your thoughts on helmet use the practice of singling out a subset of all motor vehicles for 'education' is or SHOULD be illegal. This would be no different than the cops saying ' studies show that cars painted red speed .0025% more than other colored cars' and proceed to pull over and do a 'safety check' on all red vehicles. This is the very definition of the slippery slope.
Right now this blood, saliva and breath test is supposedly voluntary. I would imagine having gone through the 'education' experience on motorcycles the experience is anything but when you're sitting there talking to the officers. I'm sure that there will be a 'positive' result from this test as well. Why not do it more often? More places.. look at all the 'bad guys' we can catch this way! You as a private citizen cannot avoid breaking the law. A prominent law professor and a retired 30 year detective did a very interesting lecutre I watched on youtube.. there are simply too many laws to be aware of all of them, so the opportunity to have cause to LOOK for a reason to cite someone at one of these random stops is egregious. Anyone that doesn't see the bad precedent this sets deserves the police state we are heading for.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
To a TSA line near you; especially the DNA sampling part. #Gattica
Yeah, I know that this is what the first paragraph in the article says, but I have to wonder why KXAS even wrote that. The rest of the article specifically says the Fort Worth Police had no involvement - it was ran by the federal government, and they hired a few off-duty police officers - and that the Fort Worth Police was conducting an internal investigation about it.
This is again about the Federal Government overstepping their authority, and the federal government closing down a city road without consulting local law enforcement is horrible. The cities should really sue the federal government over this.
Moreso, Beach Street is an extreamely busy street, expecially now with all the construction in the area. The video says this is on the border of Fort Worth and Haltom City, and the video seems to confirm that area. This is a very busy area - I am usually over here a few times a month. The federal government closing off this area is inexcusable. I am sure that if someone had of called the FWPD about this when it was happening, the NHTSA contractors would have been arrested, and the off-duty officers placed on administrative leave - Fort Worth doesn't put up with that kind of crap.
stopped in these situations. What do they know their plates and let them pass? Or do they have a special sticker in their window?
I'm almost afraid he means the 3rd...
Now some Vodka to get that picture out of my mind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You might want to take a look at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation http://www.pire.org/index.asp . They appear to be an advocacy group against the use of any kind of drugs or alcohol. Their own literature notes that they want to promote "...expansion of laws and programs that will result in a substantial reduction in alcohol and drug related traffic fatalities." That's a fine goal but way too often these kinds of things come at a huge cost to civil liberties (TSA, NSA, etc). In any case it's hard to believe such a group would have real objectivism with their research and are probably fine with drivers being sent off to jail for the least bit of alcohol these road blocks might uncover.
It all starts at 0