http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/87211/
Summer’s Here and the Time is Right for ... Getting Busted Going to the Festival (If You’re Not Careful)
Music lovers this summer should be prepared to encounter drug checkpoints and undercover cops working inside the festival grounds.
With Memorial Day now just a memory, the summer music festival season is on—and with it, special stuff law enforcement aimed at festival goers in what could be called a form of cultural profiling. If years past are any indicator, music lovers should be prepared to encounter everything from announced “Drug Checkpoints” that aren’t—they are instead traps to lure the freaked out—to real, unconstitutional, highway stuff checkpoints masquerading as “safety checks” (complete with stuff dogs) to undercover cops working inside the festival grounds themselves.
Nationally known festivals like Bonnaroo in Tennessee and Wakarusa in Kansas, as well as countless lesser festivals, especially in rural areas, have drawn special law enforcement efforts in the past. With this year unlikely to be any different, festival goers will need to know their rights and how to exercise them when they encounter the cops.
The police enforcement actions are already getting underway. Last weekend, the 2008 Summer Camp Festival in Chillicothe, Illinois, drew some 13,000 fans to hear a diverse line-up of bands including the Flaming Lips, George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, Blind Melon, the Roots, and the New Pornographers. It also drew city and state police, who claimed 20 stuff arrests—for marijuana, ecstasy, and LSD—between them in and around the festival.
Meanwhile, down in northeast Georgia, some other law enforcement agencies had also gotten together to plan an attack. This one wasn’t aimed directly at concert-goers, but at the highway-traveling public in general. In what the Northeast Georgian described as “one of the county’s largest highway interdiction and safety checks in at least five years,” personnel from the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office, Northeast Georgia stuff Task Force, Georgia National Guard Counter stuff Task Force, Georgia State Patrol, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia Department of Public Safety Motor Carrier Compliance Unit, Lee Arrendale State Prison, Phillips State Prison and Cornelia Police Department participated in a 24-hour checkpoint on a local highway.
Police did write some tickets for traffic offenses, Fincher told WNEG-TV 32 News. “We got a lot of people with no insurance, no driver’s license or suspended license,” he said. And some stuff smokers: “The majority of our cases were marijuana cases; however, we did get several methamphetamine and we got one case of cocaine,” Fincher explained.
But Fincher was open about his constitutionally-suspect highway checkpoint. “We are trying to do everything we can to prevent stuff activity in Habersham County, whether it’s just passing through or stopping here,” he said, noting that stuff arrests in the county were on the rise. “That just means we’ve taken a real aggressive approach to stuff enforcement.”
“In the wake of the Indianapolis case, law enforcement has tried to figure out ways to still conduct stuff checkpoints that comport with that ruling,” said Adam Wolf of the ACLU stuff Law Reform Project. “Intent is the name of the game. If the intent is to conduct a checkpoint basically for law enforcement purposes, that’s not okay. If it’s for public safety purposes, such as sobriety checkpoints, that is okay.”
A constitutional challenge to any given checkpoint would turn on intent, said Wolf. “If it turns out the intent was primarily to be a stuff checkpoint, that would be an unreasonable search and not comply with the Constitution,” he said. “That kind of checkpoint should be shut down, but it would take someone to challenge it.”
Noting Sheriff Fincher’s report of cash and goods seized, Wolf suggested the purpose of the checkpoints could really be about something other than law enforcement or public safety. “So often these things are being done to fund law enforcement agencies. Asset forfeiture is really a cash cow,” he said.
Whether the checkpoints or other special law enforcement tactics are to raise money, wage the stuff war, or indeed for “public safety,” experts consulted by the Chronicle sang a remarkably similar song: Be prepared, don’t be stupid, and don’t give away your rights.
“The most efficient way to get arrested for marijuana possession short of blowing stuff smoke in an officer’s face is to smoke marijuana while driving or parked in your car, especially on the way to a festival,” said Steven Silverman of the civil liberties group Flex Your Rights, which has released a video instructing people how to flex theirs. “You have a minimal expectation of privacy, and it reeks. Officers can smell it, and if they can smell it, that’s probable cause to search you.”
“If you are pulled over by police for any reason, the officers are very likely to ask you to consent to a search,” said Silverman. “Don’t do it. Never, ever consent under any circumstances. It might be couched in terms of a command, but it is a request. If you consent, you are waiving your Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They won’t ‘go easier’ on you; anything they find, they will confiscate, and arrest you and put you in jail. Don’t do their job for them.”
“There is no circumstance I can imagine where you should ever consent to a search,” agreed NORML’s Stroup. “If you give permission, you waive your Fourth Amendment protections. They may say it’ll go easier if you cooperate, but They may say it’ll go easier if you cooperate, but that’s bullshit. Their only reason for being there is to see if you have contraband and arrest you and put you in jail if you do.”
“Just say no to warrant less searches,”
