DC RESUMES ILLEGAL CHECKPOINTS

After a spate of shootings in DC's Trinidad neighborhood, the police have reestablished illegal checkpoints through which drivers must pass before entering the area. One will have to convince police officers of a "liegitimate reason" before you can enter the neighborhood. he checkpoints are similar to those used during South African apartheid and by various fascist regimes and, should they be found legal by the courts, would amount to one of the greatest assaults on the Constitution in American history as it would effectively end free travel in the country. In addition, as a police matter, they are replication of an enforcement technique that helped to triple the number of murders in DC during the early days of the drug wars. Since Washington's crime is not mob controlled, chasing criminals out of one neighborhood simply sends them to another where they infringe on someone else's territory with the inevitable violence in its wake.