Anti-Crime Checkpoints in Jackson, Mississippi, Blatantly Violate the Fourth Amendment

“We’re checking driver’s license, proof of insurance,” a Jackson, Mississippi, police officer tells Wayne Halcomb, a local resident who is waiting in a long line of cars at an anti-crime checkpoint. “Why?” Halcomb asks. “Have I committed a crime?” The officer, who has stopped Halcomb without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, is puzzled by his resistance but eventually lets him go after he repeatedly refuses to produce his license or proof of insurance. “Am I being detained?” Halcomb asks. “No,” the officer responds, and Halcomb drives off.

“That’s how you deal with checkpoints, people,” Halcomb adds in his video of the encounter, which he posted on Facebook. The incident illustrates the intrusiveness of the blatantly unconstitutional traffic stops that the Jackson Police Department has been conducting in the state capital since last month in an effort to catch people with outstanding warrants. “People should be outraged at what happened,” Halcomb told WLBT, the NBC station in Jackson. “I definitely recognize that I have white privilege, and I try to use my white privilege to shine a light on some of the issues going on.”

The Supreme Court explained those issues in a 2000 decision that said Indianapolis checkpoints aimed at disrupting drug trafficking were unconstitutional. “We suggested in [the 1979 case Delaware v. Prouse] that we would not credit the ‘general interest in crime control’ as justification for a regime of suspicionless stops,” the Court said in Indianapolis v. Edmond. “Consistent with this suggestion, each of the checkpoint programs that we have approved was designed primarily to serve purposes closely related to the problems of policing the border or the necessity of ensuring roadway safety. Because the primary purpose of the Indianapolis narcotics checkpoint program is to uncover evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing, the program contravenes the Fourth Amendment.”

According to Jackson Police Chief James Davis, his department’s “Ticket, Arrest, Tow” (TAT) program has precisely the aim that the Supreme Court said was constitutionally unacceptable. Davis, who says the program involves “administrative checkpoint[s] where we are looking for wanted individuals,” bragged last week that “we done made over 100 felony arrests since we started in January.”

Davis’ response to complaints about the TAT checkpoints, which have disproportionately affected black drivers, suggests he is oblivious to the constraints imposed by the Fourth Amendment. “They took it wrong, like it’s something that we are targeting a certain group of people,” he said. “Our intent is to get wanted individuals off the streets.” But according to the Supreme Court, that intent cannot justify stopp