Marine Patrol, Friday Night (4rth) at Weirs

[sa meredith]

OK, this is what I watched (and heard) last night on the Weirs Beach Public docks...
At roughly 10:30 PM I was taking a walk with a friend and we decided to walk down the stairs off of the strip onto the docks, and then ventured out to sit at the very end of the last "finger" (closest to the beach). We sat there from 10:45 until 12:15/12:30 and watched the marine patrol pull over EVERY BOAT that left the docks, and as many as they could grad heading from Meredith into the channel. The only exception was when both Patrol boats (there were only two) were already busy with stops, then the occasional night boater slipped thru. Although I am a regular boater on the lake, I have never taken up the sport of "night boating" so I figured, at first, they must be in violation of some infractrion....although everything looked good to me. Both stern and bow lights on, docking lights off, no wake, and so forth. But the blue lights just kept clicking on EVERY TIME. And it occured to me they were stopping everyone, when, at about 11:50 one of the MP boats had drifted in to roughly 25/30 yards of me, and the other pulled up along side of him after coming back from a stop near the channel entrance, and yelled to the first boat "Hey, did you grab that one yet?" The reply, "No, you take 'em." And with the that the second boat powered up and stopped a pontoon boat that had just left the docks. (I heard this as plain as day...no mistake)
My guess would be that, as it was the 4rth of July, what was happening was similar to a State Police "Checkpoint" on the raod, where cars are stopped randomly to check for DWI. Can someone tell us, is this an acceptable practice?
And lastly, of all the boats stopped, only one was detained. The MP seemed to tie off to him in the channel, and after some time tow him in to very near the beach. It was a 32/36 foot cabin cruiser that had just left the Weirs.
3 guys on the boat, and they did not look very happy. Did not look like they were going anywhere for at while.