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How do you call when police cars block every lane of a given street, except one, and force all cars to funnel through that single lane, in order to pass in front of a line of cops, that are looking for someone or stopping drivers at random?
It that called 'police traffic stop'? I am guessing the term based on what it would be called in my own language.
"Police checkpoint" would seem to be the best expression.
The closing of lanes and forcing cars to stop is called a "roadblock". The purpose of the roadblock is to allow police to run a checkpoint.
(a traffic break is something else, see the relevant wikipage)
