I live in Trinidad, and I never asked anyone to block off the streets in my neighborhood and stop innocent people who are trying to get home from work or from the grocery store. I never asked anyone to make my family and friends give my phone number to a cop so that they can come and visit me. Yes, I'd like to see the area 'cleaned up', but this is not the way to do it. Have more patrols there on a daily basis, and you might see the level of violence and crime lowered; having checkpoints there AFTER the crimes are committed and having them for just a couple of days isn't going to do anything but put the violence and drugs on hold for a minute.

I think you need to check your own hat.

Trinidad has been compared to Bagdad over these checkpoints by the ACLU-and even by FOX news!

Checkpoints encircling a community are the hallmark of an occupying army trying to suppress a hostile indigenous population. That's not my words, but rather those of a speaker on an edition of WPFW's Spirit in Action that went out last time checkpoints were imposed on Trinidad.

Such checkpoints are ubiquitous in occupation regimes and extremely rare in communities NOT under occupation! We are not talking here about members of a community erecting their OWN checkpoints to keep out those they don't know, BTW. That is sometimes seen in civil wars and places without a functioning government, but in that case those manning the checkpoints know the people whose homes they are trying to protect-and a visitor with a name should be able to get through.

Again using Iraq as an example, if the Madhi Army set a checkpoint to exclude Al Qaeda from a Shiite neighborhood, the Madhi Army fighters were drawn from the community and presumably were expected to know local residents on sight and wave them through!

For MPD to manage this in Trinidad would be damned difficult, as it would require that enough of MPD's officers live in Trinidad as true members of the community(knowing their neighbors) to staff the checkpoints and wave locals and their visitors(upon hearing the name of a resident) through.

As a result, what Trinidad residents and their visitors have been saying to the ACLU is that cops are treating everyone as a criminal suspect and are degrading people.

I am NOT trying to second guess Trinidad residents! Instead I am listening to what some Trinidad residents are saying on WPFW and to the ACLU. As for the Bagdad comparison, I am not the first to say this-and heard it even of FOX news before ever being able to set up a broadcast and use it on WSQT.

I didn't hide the previous post. But complaints to editorial go here: imc-dc-editorial (at) lists.indymedia.org

The WPFW show was "Spirit in Action," from sometime last month during the previous round of checkpoints. If you care to search for it, you can find the file in the media gallery here.

Also, nobody is saying that NOBODY in Trinidad has a phone, only that some people there, (and in nearly all DC communities) cannot afford phone bills. Most residents have phones, and can call WPFW to complain when a less well-off neighbor without a phone cannot receive visitors.

These checkpoints are offensive to human dignity and I cannot believe anyone would have the nerve to defend them on a progressive website!

COPS, BTW are breaking MPD's own internal computer use policy if they comment here from machines located in DC police facilities.

I am guessing the level of outrage about the radio pieces from supporters of the checkpoints shows that ACLU , WPFW, and WSQT attacks on rthe legality and morality of this disgusting program are hitting home.

Also, when the checkpoints first went up in June, the Baghdad comparison was on news show after news show. Anyone who never heard a mainstream news broadcast compare the Trinidad checkpoints to those in Baghdad(even just quoting the ACLU) must not read, watch, or listen to much news.

In Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, I believe the solution was to start paying the shooters, give them guns, and have them man the checkpoints in their neighborhoods. Those that refused the US paycheck were then labeled as "bad guys". The result of this is that violence is now down, as the ethnic cleansing is almost complete.

A closer analogy might be Israel, where Arab communities even within Israel proper are being isolated and walled in.