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St. Patrick’s Checklanes

On St. Pat’s in Kansas City, you can count on a great parade, packed bars in Westport and elsewhere, and a massive DUI checklane set up at about 39th and Southwest Trafficway to snarl traffic in midtown. This year, the checklane ran from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. (7 hours). 1,439 cars were stopped. There were 37 DUI arrests (plus they found an illegal alien). That is a rate of 2.57%. The Independence police also ran a checklane and after stopping 615 cars, got 5 DUI’s. That is less than 1%. Combined, the checklanes stopped 2,012 people were NOT intoxicated. Given how easy it is to find intoxicated persons on St. Patrick’s Day in Kansas City, these numbers seem abysmal. Then again, maybe the problem is not as bad as they tell us it is. One young driver in Independence tried to flee the checklane, resulting in her crashing into another vehicle and seriously injuring the other driver. There was a similar incident in midtown last year in which the fleeing driver crashed and killed his passenger. So, maybe the checklanes are causing more problems than they are solving? The murder rate in Kansas City is out of control. There are a host of other social problems plaguing the city. Is this the most effective use of law enforcement? These kind of questions about checklanes are nothing new on this blog. Until the money stops flowing in from special interest groups, I suspect we will continue to see the flashing lights and orange cones hidden behind bends in the road and at the bottom of hills and a large concentration of law enforcement resources waiting there to stop the 98% of us who are driving legally.

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