In an editorial published today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board wrote:
Attorney general candidates Paul Bucher and Kathleen Falk got it mostly right. J.B. Van Hollen got it wrong. And incumbent Peg Lautenschlager is needlessly silent. The issue is drunken driving and two exceedingly reasonable steps to combat it. The Legislature should criminalize the first offense for driving while intoxicated, now prosecuted under local ordinances rather than as a criminal violation. And it should give law enforcement the ability to operate sobriety checkpoints.
That position today, saying the Legislature should authorize checkpoints and calling them an “exceedingly reasonable step,” is a far cry from what the Editorial Board believed just six short years ago. When Paul Bucher headed a task force that suggested sobriety checkpoints, the Editorial Board wrote:
However, the use of security checkpoints is troubling. While they could be an effective tool to stop some drunken drivers, they represent a sledgehammer approach.
Christopher Ahmuty, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, points out that checkpoints can be easily abused and risk harassing sober, innocent drivers along with the drunks. Besides, the problem isn’t so much one of catching drunken drivers as it is of dealing effectively with them once they are caught. Police – and alert motorists – generally have no trouble spotting drunken drivers. Hundreds are arrested every year.
The recommendations to make the first arrest for drunken driving a misdemeanor rather than a civil forfeiture and to suspend driver’s licenses for underage drinkers after the first offense are much better ideas.
There are better ideas than sobriety checkpoints, which are troubling from a civil liberties perspective and represent a sledgehammer approach that experience has shown isn’t that effective. The Journal Sentinel show revert to its old position opposing sobriety checkpoints.
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