Checkpoint

Howard County police reported stopping 800 vehicles and arresting five people for driving under the influence of alcohol at a checkpoint on Route 175 early yesterday.The action was part of a continuing campaign to reduce alcohol-related deaths by the Police Department and the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose members were present at the checkpoint yesterday, police said.Officers set up barricades after midnight near the intersection of Columbia Gateway Drive and Route 175. More checkpoints will be set up around the county through the summer, police said.

WASHINGTON -- Kate Chabala of Mansfield, Pa., was stunned as she stood outside the Capitol, minutes after a gunbattle had erupted inside."How can a thing like this happen here?" asked the 42-year-old teacher. "The times we visited we always felt secure. It really gives you pause."She may never want to return to the Capitol, Chabala said. "Maybe next time we'll stick to the museums instead of anything that has to do with politics."In the wake of the fatal shooting at the U.S. Capitol building, many were asking the same questions: How could this happen?

Michael Collins, a West Friendship volunteer firefighter, has responded to serious accidents involving people not wearing seat belts.But yesterday afternoon, while driving down Frederick Road in his pickup truck, Collins wasn't strapped in -- and he got a $25 ticket for it."I know it's the law," the 21-year-old Ellicott City resident said. "This makes me think a little more."Collins and 43 others were ticketed yesterday at a safety-belt checkpoint that was run by Howard County police from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Frederick Road in Ellicott City.

An unidentified man breached a security checkpoint at Baltimore-Washington International Airport about 6 p.m. yesterday, forcing the closing of a concourse that serves at least eight commercial airlines.All passengers, flight crews and airport personnel in Pier C, which serves Southwest, Northwest, Continental, American and four other airlines, were evacuated from the area after a man set off one metal detector and failed to go through another, said Lori A. Vidil, spokeswoman for Maryland Transportation Authority Police at the airport.

Sixteen people were arrested on charges of drunken driving late Friday and early yesterday as county officers stopped cars at a checkpoint on Ritchie Highway in Brooklyn Park.Police said officers also arrested three people for drug possession and seized two vehicles -- a 1996 Pontiac and a 1993 Dodge pickup truck -- in connection with those cases.A total of 1,517 vehicles were stopped between 10: 40 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. yesterday at Ritchie Highway and 11th Avenue in the continuing DWI checkpoint program, police said.

County police will check for drunken and drugged drivers Friday in Edgewater during their fifth DWI sobriety checkpoint this year.Officers will begin stopping motorists about 11 p.m. Friday and continue through 3 a.m. Saturday. They did not say where they will set up the checkpoint.Police arrested 46 people on charges of driving while intoxicated and seven on drug charges in the first four checkpoints in Annapolis, Brooklyn Park, Maryland City and Pasadena. The program is part of an effort to reduce the number of traffic accidents caused by drunken and drugged drivers by getting them off the streets.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Palestinians desperate for work rioted yesterday, drawing Israeli soldiers and the new Palestinian police into a gunbattle for the first time.At least two Palestinian civilians were killed. Palestinian police were among at least 70 wounded. One Israeli soldier was seriously injured; several others were hurt by stones.Both sides blamed the other for the bloodshed."The Palestinian police lost control," said Israel's defense adviser, Oded Ben-Ami. "The Palestinian police are the element responsible," added the Israeli chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak.

In the heart of Baltimore's downtown, every vehicle got stopped, from the limousines to the buses to the beat-up pickup trucks.The location for Thursday night's drunken-driving roadblock on Lombard Street near Market Place was a prime spot to catch all kinds of people -- from the tipsy businessman coming from a Christmas party to the drunken factory worker on his way home after too many nightcaps."

Howard County police arrested 16 people on a variety of alcohol-related offenses at a sobriety checkpoint in North Laurel on Friday night and early Saturday.About a dozen officers were posted in the 10000 block of U.S. Route 1 from 10:30 p.m. Friday to 2:30 a.m. Saturday, when 534 vehicles passed through the checkpoint.Drivers were asked if they had been drinking and those who had slurred speech or who smelled of alcohol were ordered to the side of the road for field sobriety checks, police said.

Howard County police will conduct a sobriety checkpoint this weekend to help curb drunken drivers. The checkpoint is the second this year.The first, on U.S. Route 1 in North Laurel on Jan. 30, led to the arrests of 13 people who were charged with driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.Last year there were three checkpoints, which netted 42 arrests, police said.Since the program started five years ago, almost 300 people have been charged with drunken or drugged driving, police said.

A police dog shot by a city officer during a foot pursuit of a motorist who authorities say drove through a speed checkpoint was expected to make a full recovery after undergoing surgery Monday, according to staff at the Baltimore animal hospital where the German shepherd was being treated. The dog, named Blade, should be released this week from Falls Road Animal Hospital in Mount Washington, said Dr. Keisha Adkins, who performed the surgery. The dog faces four weeks to six weeks of restricted movement but should be able to comfortably walk after that, according to Adkins.

A checkpoint to examine truckers' identification is set to begin tomorrow for access to the Dundalk Marine Terminal, according to city transportation workers. To accommodate the checkpoint, the left lane of Keith Avenue will be closed from the bottom of the exit ramp off Interstate 95 southbound to Vail Street. The checkpoint, set to run from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, will enable Maryland Transportation Authority police to ensure truck drivers have identification cards. Truck drivers without cards will be directed to follow a detour to a lot on Broening Highway, where Maryland Transportation Authority Police will conduct a background check on drivers and issue temporary identification cards, according to city transportation officials.

FAA called slow to make copters safe WASHINGTON : A federal safety panel says aviation officials are not acting quickly enough on proposals to prevent crashes of emergency medical helicopters. The five-member National Transportation Safety Board urged the Federal Aviation Administration in January 2006 to take steps to improve the safety of emergency medical helicopter flights. The safety board wanted the FAA to improve procedures for medical helicopters, evaluate flight risks, require onboard crash-warning technology and set policies for securing weather updates.

The homeland security secretary unveiled yesterday a new checkpoint screening system being tested at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and announced other measures to make providing identification at check-in less hectic for travelers. The $2.1 million pilot program at BWI, called Checkpoint Evolution,travelers' includes new X-ray machines to better scan carry-ons and "whole body imaging" machines that show potentially hazardous objects that may be concealed under a passenger's clothing.

Soothing blue and purple lights, ambient music, free Ziploc bags for liquid toiletries - these are the government's latest tactic for better safeguarding the nation's passenger planes. Beginning in May, one of Southwest Airlines' checkpoints at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport will pilot a new passenger screening concept that Transportation Security Administration officials say will make it easier to spot would-be terrorists. Calming panels of cool light and a low decibel level will make it harder for jittery perpetrators to blend in with the hectic environment that typically accompanies long lines of passengers waiting to pass through security screening.

WASHINGTON -- The helicopter was hovering over a Baghdad checkpoint to the Green Zone, one typically crowded with cars, Iraqi civilians and U.S. military personnel. Suddenly, on that May 2005 day, the copter dropped CS gas, a riot-control substance the U.S. military in Iraq can use only under the strictest conditions and with the approval of top military commanders. An armored vehicle on the ground also released the gas, temporarily blinding drivers, passers-by and at least 10 U.S. soldiers operating the checkpoint.

Two motorists were charged with driving while impaired by Anne Arundel County police who set up two sobriety checkpoints in Brooklyn Park. Authorities said 733 drivers were questioned. The first checkpoint was set up Friday night in the northbound lanes of Ritchie Highway near Townsend Avenue from about 10 p.m. until about midnight. Police said 606 drivers were stopped, and one was arrested. On Saturday, police set up another checkpoint in the southbound lanes of Ritchie Highway near 10th Avenue from 12:20 a.m. to 1:20 a.m. They said 127 drivers were stopped, and one was arrested.

Passengers breezed through the security checkpoint. No fumbling to pull laptops out of carry-ons. No dumping those quart baggies of liquids and gels into plastic bins. Shoes still had to come off, but otherwise it was just a matter of putting packed bags through a futuristic MRI-like scanner and going on their way. Dozens of randomly selected Southwest Airlines passengers were sent yesterday through a checkpoint at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that had a new automatic explosives-detection system being tested by the federal Transportation Security Administration.

BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint near a planned meeting site of tribal leaders yesterday in a village north of the capital, killing at least three people and wounding 13, the U.S. military said. Local police said at least five people were killed in the attack, mostly young men who had volunteered to defend the area as part of the Taji Tribes Awakening Council, a partnership formed in recent months between tribal leaders and U.S. and Iraqi security forces. Two men detonated a truck about 11 a.m. at the checkpoint in Jurf al-Mileh, 12 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. soldiers arrested a police lieutenant suspected of working for an Iranian-backed militia after a firefight in Baghdad yesterday that left six Iraqi police officers and seven gunmen dead. The troops were ambushed from rooftops, a church and a police checkpoint during their pre-dawn raid in eastern Baghdad meant to apprehend the lieutenant, who American authorities believe was funded by an Iranian security force. The soldiers called in fire from a fixed-wing aircraft, aiming directly in front of a police checkpoint that was the source of a small-arms barrage.