Police will conduct a traffic checkpoint on Phillips Avenue from 10 a.m. to noon today. Police will be checking driver licenses between Drexel Road and Lombardy Street.This checkpoint is between public housing Claremont Courts (and homes north) and those residents' voting place at Peeler Recreation Center to the south.
[This would be a bad move in any neighborhood on election day. That it is adjacent to a minority occupied public housing project makes it more odious as reminiscent of Jim Crow voter intimidation tactics]
Great question, Roch. I would like the opportunity to pose it to the supervisor in charge.
ReplyDeleteShades of Hege in Davidson County.
ReplyDeleteFascist pigs.
ReplyDeleteCops do these checkpoints all the time and why would this stop anyone from voting?
ReplyDeleteThey do not do them all the time, but thanks for standing up for democracy.
ReplyDeleteThey do actually do them all the time -- I used to get caught in one pretty regularly coming home from downtown toward my apartment near the university on Fridays and weekends.
ReplyDeleteBut it's about where and when.
Checkpoint between the downtown clubs and bars and the university on the weekends? Pretty common.
Checkpoint in the morning of election day and during a primary -- at the very least you'd have to say extremely poor planning that could suppress voter turnout even if that's not its intention.
"They do actually do them all the time.."
ReplyDeleteNo. They actually don't.
GPD does targeted traffic enforcement, and they announce it ahead of time. Examples: Holden Road and Wendover Avenue. The traffic enforcement seems routine to me. The date doesn't. You'd think that at some point during the planning, somebody would have said, "Isn't that election day?" But apparently, no one did. Still, I don't smell a conspiracy. Just poor planning.
ReplyDeleteI guess it depends on your definition of "all the time" -- everything's relative.
ReplyDeleteBut I myself have been caught in these checkpoints so many times -- especially right off of Aycock when I used to live over there -- that I feel comfortable saying that it's pretty common. It was common enough then that I changed my route home because they were doubling my commuting time.
Whether it's common in this spot is another matter altogether and I'm certainly not defending the decision to do it on election or primary days near voting sites.
This is a common theme of our conversations lately, Joe, about a willingness to substitute speculation and anecdotes for empirical data. As far as I can determine, these kinds of daytime, license checkpoints happen about once a month or less -- or all the time, however you want to put it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a cop reporter anymore and was just sharing anecdotal information, not making an argument or writing a story.
ReplyDeleteBut to my mind a police action that happens even once a month isn't a rare thing.
I'm certainly not saying "and that's a good thing" or "I'm glad it happened in this case" but when I was a cop reporter they were common enough that I wasn't surprised by them.
As a citizen, however I may personally chafe at them or feel that they're a personal invasion based on my own principles, I find them common enough that I'm not surprised when I see them or get caught in one.
There should certainly be a follow-up story in this case and I'm sure there will be.
Good cop bad cop. Good reporter bad reporter. It happens all the time.
ReplyDelete"But to my mind a police action that happens even once a month isn't a rare thing."
ReplyDeleteAnd off you go with your straw men, Joe. The do not happen "all the time;" they appear to happen once a month or less, leaving us to understand that yesterday was not chosen out of necessity or even likelihood, as one might conclude if they happened all the time. Skepticism is not out of order knowing the circumstances.
I'd like to know where and when they supposedly announce these illegal stops.
ReplyDelete