Does Columbus, Ohio Publish DUI Checkpoint Locations in Advance?

No, the Columbus Division of Police does not publish the specific locations of DUI checkpoints in advance. Under Ohio law (ORC § 4511.681), sobriety checkpoints are legal, but law enforcement agencies are only required to give the public advance notice that checkpoints will be conducted — not where they will be set up.

The Columbus Division of Police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol periodically announce checkpoint operations through press releases, typically timed around major holiday weekends: New Year's Eve, St. Patrick's Day (a particularly high-enforcement period given the Short North and downtown bar district activity), Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Those announcements confirm that checkpoints are planned in Franklin County but do not identify specific streets or intersections.

Third-party apps and websites that claim to show real-time checkpoint locations pull from crowdsourced user reports, not official Columbus police data, so their accuracy is unreliable.

If you want to know whether enforcement operations are active on a given night, the Columbus Division of Police posts updates at police.columbus.gov, and the Ohio State Highway Patrol's Columbus post covers Franklin County highways. Neither source lists checkpoint coordinates.

The practical takeaway: if you've been drinking anywhere in Columbus — German Village, the Short North, the Arena District — arrange a ride through Lyft, Uber, or a designated driver regardless of whether a checkpoint has been announced.