DHS Backs Away from Proposed Permanent Southern Arizona Checkpoint

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According to the Arizona Daily Star article included below, The Department of Homeland Security is temporarily backing off from plans to build a permanent suspicionless federal roadblock on a Southern Arizona highway.

Initially, the Border Patrol had proposed placing an interim four million dollar roadblock facility just North of Arivaca near kilometer post 50 on I-19. After a huge uproar from local residents and governing bodies, including the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Border Patrol is now stating they will maintain their temporary facility near kilometer post 42 for the indefinite future while plans for a permanent facility are re-assessd.

I’ve included a link to the article below, along with the full text. While reading the article, keep the following points in mind:

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Cops Continue To Harass Law Abiding Motorist

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A Missouri motorist who recorded a St. George cop’s threats to falsify charges against him in order to throw him in jail & teach him a lesson, is now being hounded & harrassed by other area cops after his videotape resulted in the first officer’s firing.

I first heard about Brett Darrow in 2006 while conducting online research regarding sobriety checkpoints. At the time, Brett was a 19 year old teenager who had already had a troubling run-in with an off duty cop who had assaulted him a year earlier. The cop, who turned out to be drunk at the time, lied about the incident and falsified charges that were later dropped by a grand jury. When Darrow threatened to sue for violations of his rights, the City of St. Louis settled to keep the lawsuit from going forward.

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Pima County Supervisors Oppose Permanent Checkpoint

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The controversy surrounding a proposed permanent Homeland Security checkpoint in Southern Arizona continues to grow as people begin to understand the true costs associated with such an installation. For background information, I first reported on this proposed checkpoint on July 6, 2007.

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August ’07 Photos of Southern Arizona’s Gauntlet

sr8610Selected photos from Southern Arizona’s State Route 86 from August 2007 are now available.

Unlike last month, August showed a marked increase in Border Patrol profiling activity along Southern Arizona’s State Route 86. In fact, these so-called Border Protection agents could be seen using cameras to spy on unsuspecting occupants of vehicles along a state highway forty miles North of the border:

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Appeals Court Opening Brief Filed in ‘Right To Travel’ Lawsuit

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On September 4, 2007, my Federal Appeal’s Court Opening Brief was hand delivered to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. This appeal, from final rulings made in District Court Case No. CV-04-264-JMR in the District of Arizona, marks the forty-fifth month of litigation regarding a civil rights lawsuit filed in December 2003 against four tribal police officers from the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Those unfamiliar with the incident and associated legal action leading up to this appeal should go to Checkpoint USA for a comprehensive overview.

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Circuit City Customer Arrested For Failure To Show ID

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The story of a man arrested in a Circuit City parking lot for refusing to provide his driver’s license to a local cop caught my attention the other day.

From the link above, it looks like Michael Righi was accosted in the Brooklyn, Ohio Circuit City parking lot by store employees after refusing to allow store security to randomly search his bag or inspect his receipt absent reasonable suspicion prior to leaving the store. The employees blocked his family vehicle and refused to allow him to leave after following him outside the store.

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