L.A. DUI Checkpoints: Now With More Saliva in Your Questionable Fourth Amendment Practices

Bad news from the open-air prison we call America today out of
L.A., where cops are going to start demanding saliva samples from
citizens it stops at DUI checkpoints who it finds suspiciously
suspicious. 

Details from
SoCal public radio station KPCC website:

Starting this weekend, law enforcement in Los Angeles will begin
expanded use of saliva swab test
kits on drivers suspected of driving under the influence
of drugs…..

The testing is already used at some LAPD DUI checkpoints
and at three stations that have jails. A $520,000 grant
awarded to the L.A. City Attorney’s Office will expand the regular
use of the test next year…

Do you gotta give them your spit? No. Legally, just your blood.
God bless America!

State law requires drivers suspected of driving under the
influence to submit to a blood test but they have the right to
refuse the swab. The oral test is voluntary, said deputy city
attorney Michelle DeCasas…

Feuer said the rise of medical marijuana dispensaries has led
more drivers, including lawful card-carrying users, to get behind
the wheel under the influence of the drug.

The oral swab tests can detect tetrahydrocannabinol or THC – the
active impairing ingredient in marijuana – that is in a person’s
system up to three hours after ingestion.

As the LA Times reports,
it isn’t just pot these tests allege they can detect:

The test screens for cocaine, benzodiazepine (Xanax), methamphetamine, amphetamines,
narcotic analgesics, methadone and THC representative
of marijuana usage within the past few hours. City prosecutors have
yet to use results from the test as evidence in a case.

That’s because, as prosecutors always hope, citizens tend to
plead out under the pressure.

Does any of these test results amount to actual, real, reckless
driving? Who knows, and the law apparently doesn’t care.

Scott Shackford blogged last month about a National Highway
Traffic Administration study doing the same sort of
highly invasive bodily fluid sampling merely in the name of
“research.”