DPS checkpoints aiding local law enforcement but raising concerns with some
Posted: Sunday, September 22, 2013 7:27 pm
The Monitor




NEAR EDINBURG – An abandoned gas station on Monte Cristo Road appeared to turn into a local law enforcement parking lot for about four hours Thursday as officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and Hidalgo County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office worked a compliance checkpoint as part of a DPS-led initiative that began last week.
That checkpoint and others like it throughout the Rio Grande Valley are part of a short-term multi-agency enforcement surge to crack down on unsafe driving and other criminal activity, according to a DPS news release issued prior to the initiative’s beginning. The initiative has sparked concern among some who worry it might lead to violations of civil liberties.




A LITTLE HELP FROM DPS FRIENDS
While none of the several DPS troopers at the Monte Cristo location could speak on the record, an officer with the Constable’s Office confirmed the checkpoint’s mission.
“Texas DPS has identified this area as an area for increased traffic accidents,” said Joel Rivera, the chief deputy for Constable Precinct 4. “So as a result of that, they’ve come here and set up this checkpoint and they’re looking for things like driver’s licenses, insurance, things of that nature.”
The Constable’s Office’s role in Thursday’s checkpoint was to serve outstanding warrants and collect on unpaid tickets, Rivera said.
Deputies detained one person on a federal warrant and “various persons” on traffic warrants, Rivera said. Hidalgo County has more than $1 million in outstanding traffic violations, and operations like this help the county collect those fines, he added. And it comes at no cost to the county.
Through a grant program called Border Star, DPS pays for constable deputies to work the checkpoints, while routine constable patrols remain in effect.
“What this is is a surge in operations,” Rivera said. “We’ve been given grant money by the Texas Department of Public Safety for operations such as this one. So the deputies that were out here were out here working grants.”
Elsewhere, the initiative – which also assigned an unspecified number of additional highway patrolmen to the Valley – is freeing up law enforcement agencies’ resources, allowing them to work elsewhere.
“To me, that’s a big plus,” La Joya police Chief Julian Gutierrez said. “While they’re on the highway, we can concentrate on neighborhoods.”
And they’re making their own arrests, too. DPS troopers – whom Gutierrez sees in groups of six to 10 patrols – busted three suspected marijuana traffickers in the past week in the La Joya area, the police chief said.

LEGAL QUESTIONS?
But the initiative, for which an end date has not been announced, is not universally popular. The checkpoints in particular have raised concerns of immigration activists, civil libertarians and other Valley residents.
“We’ve been receiving calls from people who are very worried,” said Martha Sanchez, the coordinator of organizing work for La Union del Pueblo Entero. “Checkpoints are scary.”
Representatives with both LUPE and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said they will continue to monitor the initiative and work to ensure the checkpoints are conducted legally.
“This is the first we’ve heard of this multi-agency initiative, and we are of course concerned,” wrote Tom Hargis, a spokesman with ACLU of Texas, in an email statement Saturday in response to a Monitor inquiry. “When law enforcement announces a ‘crackdown,’ civil liberties violations often follow… We will be monitoring implementation of this initiative closely.”
Though immigration enforcement is not their stated goal, the checkpoints still concern Sanchez.
“I’m hoping and praying that there is a legitimate reason that they’re doing this,” she said, adding that she hoped officers would limit the scope of the program to unpaid tickets and the like.
The stated purpose of the checkpoints is to enforce driver’s license and insurance checks, as well as “other obvious criminal violations… for example, driving while intoxicated,” DPS spokesman Tom Vinger wrote in an email.
Troopers are not stopping every vehicle that drives through a checkpoint. Deciding which ones to stop may raise more legal concerns related to profiling, which DPS is guarding against in part by simply having supervisors present at each checkpoint.
“There are various safeguards in place to make sure that vehicles are not stopped selectively, including having a supervisor present,” Vinger wrote.

CHECKPOINT SNITCH
As of Sunday, 74 people had joined a Facebook group that seeks to inform followers where checkpoints are located. The 42-year-old Weslaco man who started the group said he did so to guard against what he called actions that resembled a police state.
“It’s beginning to feel more like the Gestapo,” he said in a phone interview with The Monitor. “Just random checkpoints? Random stops?”
The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of police retaliation, said he considers the checkpoints illegal.
“We don’t live in Germany,” he said. “We don’t live in Russia, man. We have rights, man. We have a constitution.”
The objective of the Facebook group is to allow people to avoid the checkpoints, thereby undermining their effectiveness. The founder said he would claim success if the initiative ended within a month.
For its part, DPS was more vague when asked about the specific metrics by which the initiative would be judged.
“The initiative is continuing as planned,” Vinger wrote when asked what how the initiative progressed toward its goals in its first week. “We will assess the effort after its conclusion.”

‘WE HAVE TO RESPECT THE LAW’
One woman who was traveling in a car that troopers stopped said she understood why.
Mary Alaniz of Palmview and another woman – who was driving with an expired license – were headed to visit a friend in Edinburg when they were stopped and ticketed at the Monte Cristo Road checkpoint Thursday.
“It’s the law, and we have to respect the law,” Alaniz said as she waited for her niece to arrive and pick up the car. “I know they do it for our own security, so I understand. It’s their job to do it, so I have nothing against it.”


jfischler@themonitor.com

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