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Published on Thursday, July 25, 2002
in the Tampa Tribune
TAMPA - The Florida Highway Patrol has put the brakes on using off-duty troopers to flag unwitting motorists off Interstate 4 to take a survey about a proposed bullet train.
Patrol Director Col. Christopher Knight refused to authorize troopers to participate in the survey, which has become the focus of angry letters to Gov. Jeb Bush and howls about constitutional violations on conservative talk shows from Tampa to Texas.
``We're not going to do that,'' Patrol Chief Ken Howes said. ``Traffic down there is bad enough as it is without coning the road off and pulling people off.''
On Sunday and Monday, troopers randomly selected about 2,500 motorists and ordered them to pull off the highway and into an I-4 rest stop, where interviewers hired by the Florida High Speed Rail Authority waited to ask them about everything from travel habits to their salaries.
The reaction of one Ohio motorist, who fired off an angry e-mail to Bush, was typical.
``Using police to assist a `survey' by stopping traffic on interstate highways will deter my traveling in your state,'' wrote Paul Fitzgerald of Cincinnati.
Another writer, Lee Campbell, raised a common theme: ``This crosses the line of voluntary and seems to border on illegal search and seizure.''
Under a constitutional amendment passed two years ago, Florida must begin building a high-speed rail network, with trains exceeding 120 mph, by November 2003. One line might run down the median of I-4.
Knight said he approved off-duty troopers to work with interviewers at I-4 exit ramps last week. There, motorists stopped on the ramps were asked if they wanted to take part in a survey on the bullet train, and, if willing, were directed onto the road shoulder.
The troopers' only role was to make sure traffic did not back up on the ramp, Knight said.
But when interviewers set up shop at an I-4 rest stop Sunday, they had troopers flag randomly selected vehicles traveling down the highway and funnel them into the rest area.
``After we found out about it, certainly it wasn't in our best interests to pull people over,'' Howes said. ``It's a safety concern. With rubberneckers, people slowing down, you could potentially cause problems out there.''
Nazih Haddad, staff director for the rail authority, said 7,000 motorists had been interviewed by Monday, including 2,500 at the rest stop. That was sufficient to scrap Wednesday's planned rest-stop survey.
``That's their decision. They can do that,'' he said of the patrol's pullout. ``They have to look at the safety elements of this thing.''
Such roadside pullovers are legal, survey officials say. The Florida Department of Transportation did the same thing in surveys in 1992 and 1997, Haddad said.
``This is nothing new, not just in Florida but across the country,'' he said.