CAMDEN COUNTY DEPUTY Richard Poole stopped a Ford Explorer at a routine checkpoint Tuesday, set up minutes earlier on N.C. 34. // The well-dressed woman who was driving had a valid license and current registration, but her safety inspection sticker was out of date by five months.
As a line of cars and trucks behind her got longer, Poole asked her to pull over to the side. Poole went to back to his patrol car and wrote her a ticket. She didn't look happy.
"It does everything," said Camden County Sheriff Tony Perry. "There are some people who don't like us working traffic, but it's effective."
Camden County held 48 checkpoints from October 2006 through November 2007, issuing more than 500 citations, said Jon Worthington, Camden County's chief deputy and coordinator of the checkpoint program.
Camden County ranks 11th out of 495 law enforcement agencies for points in traffic enforcement
awarded and tracked by the North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Program, according to an online chart on the agency's Web site.
Based on arrests from checkpoints, Perry won the eastern DWI Hero A ward from Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 2007. Camden County deputy Max Robeson won the award in 2006.
Using checkpoints in a county with a few main highways, a small number of deputies can still manage crime, Worthington said.
"They've got to go from point A to point B," Worthington said. "When we work traffic, we know who's coming through this county. If Osama bin Laden were hiding in Camden County, we would find him."
During Tuesday's checkpoint, set up for two hours in the middle of the afternoon on a lightly traveled highway in Camden, four officers, including Worthington, head Detective Tami Williams
and a North Carolina State Highway Patrol trooper, issued 26 citations, including three on charges of marijuana possession, and arrested a Portsmouth woman wanted on drug charges.
The county began using checkpoints to get grants through the North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Program, Worthington said. The agency sponsors programs such as "Booze It and Lose It" and "Click It Or Ticket," which depend on local and state agencies conducting highway checkpoints.
Camden County hired a new traffic deputy and obtained a fully equipped patrol car with a $90,000 grant last year, Worthington said.
Due mostly to grants, Camden patrol cars carry a portable breath tester that costs $600 and a tint meter that costs $100, Worthington said. Mounted within an arm's reach is a $3,000 computer for looking up criminal and registration records and a $1,200 radar. Five patrol cars have $5,000 cameras attached inside.
"They have participated in everything that we require and go well beyond on their own," said John Stokes, traffic records and special projects coordinator for North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Program. "They've learned the value of the tool."
Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com
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please explain
Requiring citizens to stop and "identify" themselves when they've commited no apparent crime reminds me of something. You know those old World War 2 movies when jack booted Nazi's set up "checkpoints" to find "Jews" or "collaborators". YOUR PAPERS PLEEZE!!! If the police can stop you on the highway for no apparent reason other than to poke around doesn't it stand to reason that searching homes without reason is next??
Chesapeake should take note!
"Using checkpoints in a county with a few main highways, a small number of deputies can still manage crime, Worthington said." The more high density urban sprawl (Mixed-Use zoning) Chesapeake creates the more crime rates soar. The marginal tax revenues gained will fall far short of the true cost. MANAGE GROWTH!
Golly....
impressive equipment. Do Virginia State Troopers have this stuff? I'm all for our roads being safer and getting riff-raff, druggies, drunks, drivers with no brain and law breakers off our roads.