NYT: Checkpoint Near Canada (75 miles away) Called Unsafe

[Newsjock]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/nyregion/23crashes.html?oref=login&th

By AL BAKER
Published: October 23, 2004

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal border patrol agents have been stepping up their use of checkpoints on highways near the country's borders to inspect vehicles for illegal immigrants, narcotics, terrorists and terrorist weapons.

But on Interstate 87 north of here there have been two major crashes on the southbound approach to one of those checkpoints, including a pileup on Sept. 19, which killed four people as drivers failed to slow down for the lines of stopped cars.

After reviewing those crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board issued an urgent recommendation Thursday saying that the warning signs and flashing lights posted along the approach to the immigration checkpoint at North Hudson, N.Y., in Essex County, about 75 miles south of the Canadian border, gave either too little specific information for drivers to know what to do or a dizzying array of directions that could be confusing.

... "We know that these checkpoints are going to continue; it's just the nature of the environment of the day, so to speak, with terrorists, 9/11 and the work that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to do in stopping these people," said Joseph Osterman, the director of the Office of Highway Safety for the national safety board, on Friday. "But we want to make sure that we are not harming the highway population while we are trying to interdict terrorists."

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[Old and In the Way]

1. Wait a minute.....don't we have border patrols at the border to do this

stuff? Here's a thought....properly fund and staff the existing border security.

With this kind of logic, we'll be having concentric rings of pre-border security stations located throughout the country in no time.