DWI checkpoints in Durham: what the law requires and the 2026 enforcement calendar

What G.S. 20-16.3A requires of a checkpoint

People search 'DUI checkpoint', but the charge that comes out of one in North Carolina is driving while impaired, DWI, under G.S. 20-138.1. The checkpoint itself is governed by G.S. 20-16.3A, last amended in 2011, which sets four operating rules.

• Policy: the agency must “Operate under a written policy that provides guidelines for the pattern, which need not be in writing.”
• Placement: “The placement of checkpoints should be random or statistically indicated, and agencies shall avoid placing checkpoints repeatedly in the same location or proximity.”
• Pattern: the stopping pattern “shall not be based on a particular vehicle type, except that the pattern may designate any type of commercial motor vehicle.”
• Notice: the agency must “Advise the public that an authorized checking station is being operated by having, at a minimum, one law enforcement vehicle with its blue light in operation.”

That blue light is the public-notice requirement in the statute; nothing in the text quoted above requires an agency to publish a checkpoint's date or location in advance. Subsection (b) says a stopped driver “may be requested to submit to an alcohol screening test...if during the course of the stop the officer determines the driver had previously consumed alcohol.” Subsection (c) allows “any type of checking station or roadblock as long as it is established and operated in accordance with the provisions of the United States Constitution and the Constitution of North Carolina.” And the placement rule has no remedy attached: it “shall not be grounds for a motion to suppress or a defense to any offense arising out of the operation of a checking station.”

The roadside screening device is covered by G.S. 20-16.3. No screening test is valid “unless the device used is one approved by the Department” of Health and Human Services, and the number it shows is not evidence. What is admissible is “The fact that a driver showed a positive or negative result on an alcohol screening test, but not the actual alcohol concentration result, or a driver's refusal to submit.” Outside a checkpoint, an officer may require the screening test on reasonable grounds to believe the driver has consumed alcohol and has “Committed a moving traffic violation” or “Been involved in an accident.”

Who runs checkpoints in Durham County

Durham's reported checkpoints have all been joint operations. The Durham Police Department, headquartered at 602 E. Main St., patrols the city through five districts. The Durham County Sheriff's Office has patrol units and a Traffic Unit, and a Governor's Highway Safety Program grant, now in its fifth year, funds “three deputies to work high-visibility traffic safety enforcement.” The State Highway Patrol's Durham office is Troop C, District VII, at 101 S. Miami Blvd., and by statute the Patrol “shall regularly patrol the highways of the State.” No source this guide found assigns the interstates to the Patrol and the streets to the police as a formal rule; Patrol members have the arrest authority of any police officer statewide for crimes committed in their presence. Duke University Police, with roughly 70 officers, and Durham Tech's Campus Police have each taken part in a Durham checkpoint; North Carolina Central University Police, at 1801 Fayetteville St., has full law enforcement authority on its campus.

Two of the three were at North Duke Street and Trinity Avenue. The CBS 17 story carries no date on the page, and this guide could not find a Durham checkpoint news item dated 2024 through 2026; the Sheriff's Office news pages would not load. Read the table as examples of how Durham checkpoints are staffed and what they produce, not as a schedule.

The 2026 Booze It & Lose It calendar

Booze It & Lose It is the Governor's Highway Safety Program's impaired-driving campaign, run through NCDOT. Its 2026 planning calendar lists five enforcement windows. During them, as NCDOT put it for Operation Firecracker, “Law enforcement will conduct checkpoints and an increased number of patrols.”

The same calendar schedules Click It or Ticket for Memorial Day (May 18–31) and Thanksgiving (November 23–29), Speed A Little, Lose A Lot (March 30–April 5), Speeding Slows You Down (July 20–26) and Operation Crash Reduction (October 12–18). Each means more patrols on Durham roads even when DWI is not the stated focus.

The numbers behind the campaigns are statewide. NCDOT posts each campaign's county totals as Excel files that this guide could not read, so Durham's own campaign counts are unverified. In FY2024, 87.4 percent of North Carolina law enforcement agencies took part in Booze It & Lose It, “yielding 8,501 DWI arrests and 301,386 charges.” The 2025 Operation Firecracker period produced 917 DWI arrests, 77 of them drivers under 21, and the 2025 St. Patrick's Day campaign produced 738 DWI citations. NCDOT counts 464 deaths in impaired driving crashes on North Carolina roads in 2025. The 2024 Firecracker campaign was launched with an event at Duke University in Durham.

From the checkpoint to the courthouse

A DWI arrest at a checkpoint follows the same path as any other: the implied-consent rights and breath test, the initial appearance before a magistrate at the jail at 219 S. Mangum St., the 30-day civil revocation under G.S. 20-16.5, and a first date in Durham County District Court at 510 South Dillard Street. What differs is the stop. The placement rule cannot support a motion to suppress, but the constitutional standard in subsection (c) still applies, and a lawyer can tell you whether the checkpoint you went through met it.

Checkpoints are one part of a wider picture. This guide's page on DWI stops on I-40, I-85 and NC-147 covers the roads, the Patrol and Durham's crash numbers. The next post in this series turns to a step every DWI case requires: the North Carolina DWI assessment, what it costs and where to get it in Durham.

G.S. 20-16.3A and 20-16.3 quoted from ncleg.gov, current through S.L. 2026-30; campaign dates from the 2026 GHSP planning calendar.