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STATE COLLEGE DUI CHECKPOINTS LABOR DAY WEEKEND

In an effort to assist you this weekend while you are out celebrating the end of summer, I have attempted to locate any and all checkpoints in and around the State College and Centre County area. Unfortunately, the closet I came to actually locating a specific time and place of a DUI checkpoint in State College was this four sentence gem in the July 31, 2012 edition of the Centre Daily Times. According the Centre Daily Times, State College police will be,

“conducting a sobriety checkpoint in Centre County in the coming weeks.”

In Pennsylvania, in order for a DUI checkpoint to be lawful, the police officers conducting the checkpoint must provide reasonable notice to the public as to the time, date and location of the checkpoint. Take a minute and re-read the above clip from the July 31, 2012 Centre Daily Times article. Do you consider this reasonable notice as to the time, date and location of the DUI checkpoint in State College and Centre County? It would seem to me that the above article provides the State College police with unfettered discretion to conduct an unlimited number of DUI checkpoints in an unlimited number of areas throughout Centre County for as long as they want. Or, at least, until such time that the State College police decide to notify the Centre Daily Times that they will be conducting another waive of DUI checkpoints “over the coming weeks.” In fact, I would argue that a reasonable reading of the above DUI checkpoint notification permits State College police to conduct DUI checkpoints anywhere they want in Centre County and at anytime they want and is merely window dressing to comply with the public notice requirements of lawful DUI checkpoints. I’d be curious to see the number of DUI checkpoints that were conducted in State College and Centre County from a previous Centre Daily Times DUI notification such as this one and I’d be willing to wager that this blanket notification by State College police was used to conduct more than a few DUI checkpoints. If anyone comes across any information concerning the location, date and time of any checkpoints in and around State College and Centre County this weekend, please feel free to post the location in the comments section and I will do my best to update this post as the information becomes available. Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend, and if you are going to the Penn State game this weekend, here’s to the beginning of the Bill O’Brien era!