It didn't matter whether drivers were drunk for state troopers from Troop I in Bethany to charge them with driving under the influence. Three years ago, drunken-driving arrests were a game for several troopers in Troop I, according to a scathing report released Monday attacking how the agency polices itself.

Pima County Sheriff Department Guidelines

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that any law enforcement agency conducting suspicionless checkpoints must generate guidelines to minimize individual officer discretion at the checkpoint and limit the primary purpose of the checkpoint to issues of immediate public safety. This means government agents can't engage in general crime control absent individual suspicion of wrongdoing but can look for impaired drivers who may pose an immediate danger to the traveling public.

I acquired a copy of checkpoint guidelines from the Pima County Sheriff Department after submitting an Open Records request to the agency. The documentation appearing below is the result of that request. Of interest in this documentation is that individuals can choose to avoid a checkpoint by turning around prior to entering it and driving away. Additionally, individuals can refuse to roll down their window and interact with the police absent reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The documentation indicates the police cannot take action against individuals choosing to exercise their rights in this fashion but does indicate such individuals may be subject to additional scrutiny.

Also of interest is how police officers are paid for participating in these unreasonable searches and seizures. More regarding this issue can be found in the next section.

Governor's Office of Highway Safety

To find out what's really going on, one needs to follow the money. When I first started researching the question of where the money was coming from to pay for suspicionless checkpoint operations in Pima County, I quickly discovered it wasn't originating from local sources. Rather, it was originating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a federal agency that doles out hundreds of millions of dollars annually to states for various traffic related programs.

In Arizona it works like this. The NHTSA funnels money for conducting suspicionless checkpoints against the traveling public through the Governor's Office of Highway Safety (GOHS). The GOHS turns around and redistributes this money to local law enforcement agencies willing to adopt the NHTSA's agenda of proliferating suspicionless checkpoints around the country. Specifically, sheriff deputies participating in roadblock operations are paid overtime from funds provided by the NHTSA and the sheriff's dept. receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money every year from the NHTSA to purchase equipment for conducting these and similar operations.

Below you'll find documentation from the GOHS related to grant proposals from the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Please note the federal control numbers on the forms.