Colorado DUI checkpoints: no authorizing statute, but a funded rulebook and a public report

The framework lives in part 9 of article 4 of title 43, "High-Visibility Drunk Driving Law Enforcement." C.R.S. § 43-4-901, as amended by House Bill 23-1102 effective June 5, 2023, requires the Department of Transportation to coordinate at least twelve high-visibility alcohol and drug impaired driving enforcement episodes every year as a priority within the strategic transportation project investment program. C.R.S. § 43-4-903 pays for it: for state fiscal years beginning on and after July 1, 2023, the transportation commission must allocate one million five hundred thousand dollars annually from the state highway fund to the Office of Transportation Safety at CDOT.

C.R.S. § 43-4-902, added by the same 2023 bill, is where the conditions sit. Any municipality, city and county, or county that establishes a qualified program is eligible for the money. Subsection (2) fixes the split: CDOT must allocate not less than thirty and not more than fifty percent of the Office of Transportation Safety money to counties, and not less than fifty and not more than seventy percent to municipalities and cities and counties. Subsection (3) then tells the Office of Transportation Safety what its rules must contain at a minimum. Three of those requirements shape what a driver actually meets on the road: the checkpoint pattern rule at (3)(g)(II), the siting rule at (3)(g)(III) requiring the operation to sit in a general area where a concentration of impaired-driving crashes is expected to occur or originate, and the quota ban at (3)(f), which forbids an agency or a supervising officer from requiring an officer to write a set number of citations during an episode in a set period.

The rules also import the accountability plumbing built by Senate Bill 20-217. Under § 43-4-902(3)(d) and (3)(e), participating agencies must file with the Office of Transportation Safety the written anti-profiling policies required by C.R.S. § 24-31-309(6) and certify compliance with the body-worn camera reporting duty in § 24-31-903(2), and under (3)(g)(I) officers working an episode must complete the annual in-service training required by § 24-31-315.

Colorado then publishes what happened. Subsection (5) requires the Office of Transportation Safety, working with the Department of Public Safety, to create and publish an annual report listing every participating agency, the time, date, duration, and location of each enforcement episode, the perceived demographic information of each person contacted who was asked to complete further investigation, and the result of each such contact including any arrest and the offense cited. That reporting obligation, rather than a warrant or a supervisory approval requirement, is Colorado's main check on how checkpoints are run.

Nothing in title 42 authorizes a suspicionless stop. C.R.S. § 42-4-1302 says a law enforcement officer "may stop any person who the officer reasonably suspects is committing or has committed a violation of section 42-4-1301 (1) or (2)" and may require name, address, and an explanation, and that the stopping is not an arrest. The official Colorado Revised Statutes Annotated carries a note under that section recording Orr v. People, 803 P.2d 509 (Colo. 1990), to the effect that sobriety checkpoint stops need not be based on reasonable suspicion merely because § 42-4-1302 exists. So checkpoints in Colorado stand on constitutional case law under article II, section 7 of the state constitution and the Fourth Amendment, while the statutes govern the money, the neutral pattern, the siting, the training, and the disclosure.

The sanction in this part runs against the agency, not the driver. § 43-4-902(6), a law enforcement agency that does not comply with the section, with the rules, guidelines, or funding terms issued by the Office of Transportation Safety, or with other applicable law, or that has engaged an officer who does not comply, is subject to suspension of its high-visibility enforcement funding and may be required to return the money already paid. Subsection (7) additionally lets the Attorney General bring a civil action to enforce the section.

Subsection (4) bars any allocation to an agency that is subject to a judicially ordered consent decree. § 24-31-309(4)(a) for anyone detained in a traffic stop but not cited or arrested, which carries the badge number and complaint instructions.