Yesterday I ran across something I found interesting, and perhaps a touch worrisome.
Once a week, my travels for my outside (non-writing) job take me down to Virginia, and yesterday was that day as I traveled from Berlin, MD to Chincoteague, VA and points beyond. At the point where Maryland 12 crosses into Virginia I was stopped by a cadre of Accomack County sheriff’s deputies who asked me for my license and upon inspection allowed me to proceed. I thought perhaps there was a manhunt, but I found out through a little research that Virginia conducts a “Border to Border Checkpoint” on the Thursday before Labor Day each year. I even found some photos from the very intersection I traveled through, from 2008.
I’m curious, though – where are the civil libertarians on this one? Of course, I wasn’t driving drunk or recklessly speeding so people would say I had nothing to fear. But I don’t see a real purpose for this event aside from getting people used to having other, similar harassment operations like sobriety checkpoints. I don’t care much for those because I believe there’s more effective ways to catch drunk drivers like, say, patrolling near watering holes. If you really want to make this work, try a sobriety checkpoint just outside Crisfield on Tawes day or after a Ravens game, when you actually might need it. I guarantee neither will ever happen because the “wrong” people would be stopped and the public would complain vehemently.
I have nothing against the Accomack County deputy who stopped me, since he was doing the job assigned to him. It was only a momentary delay on my way through the workday. But what happens when they decide to do it twice a year, or monthly? We already have the conspiracy theorists who fret about a militarized police, so why add fuel to that fire by continuing this scattershot approach to law enforcement?