Archives

Riverside police will participate with other Missouri law enforcement agencies this weekend in a statewide crackdown on drunken driving.

Law enforcement agencies across the state will increase their enforcement of the state’s DUI laws beginning Friday and ending Sunday.

“It’s never worth the risk to drive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Drivers could lose their license, pay large fines, go to jail, or worst of all, cause a tragic loss of life,” said Riverside Officer Brent Holland.

Find a Missouri DUI Lawyer at the Law Firm Directory.

Source

Law enforcement will be on the lookout for drunken drivers during the coming Cinco de Mayo and Memorial Day weekends.

Avoid the 21, Alameda county’s multijurisdictional crackdown on impaired drivers, joins 40 other similar campaigns in the state in the effort to crack down on drunken drivers during the holiday weekends.

Ninety-eight people were arrested during a St. Patrick’s Day weekend crackdown.

Police are asking drivers to make mobile 911 calls when they see dangerous drivers on the road.

The campaign intends to have saturation patrols in six cities, as well as one DUI checkpoint during the Cinco de Mayo weekend.

Source

Recently Lance Platt, a certified NHTSA SFST practitioner, instructor and trainer, published a paper in the DWI Journal: Law & Science that examined the differences between the manner in which officer are trained to perform field sobriety tests and the manner in which they actually administer them.

For the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test, Mr. Platt recognized 16 elements that make up the test. After examining 360 recorded evaluations, he found only 24 were performed correctly per the NHTSA Manual. Those 24 represent only 7% of the tests administered, meaning that officers administered the test incorrectly 93% of the time.

Source

“Going out this week to party?” a press release from the Jackson County Sheriff’s office asks.

If so, be forewarned that law enforcement officers throughout Missouri will crack down on drunken driving this weekend with increased enforcement.

The enforcement will take place sometime between Friday and Sunday. No location was disclosed or the type of enforcement — checkpoints or saturation patrols — that would take place.

The Cass County Safety Traffic Enforcement Program and Jackson County Traffic Safety Task Force will participate in the enforcement efforts looking for drivers under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.

“It’s never worth the risk to drive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol,” Cass county Sheriff Dwight Diehl said in a release. “Drivers could lose their license, pay large fines, or worst of all, cause a tragic loss of life.”

Both departments encourage people who drink, not to drive. They also suggest choosing a designated driver before going out.

Source

A Denver Post analysis has found that about 10,000 drunken drivers arrested in Colorado each year are repeat offenders.

Police arrest roughly 31,000 drunken drivers a year, so about one in three has at least one previous DUI.

The Post examined records of arrests made from 2005 to 2007.

From 2005 to 2007, an average of 31,011 suspected drunken drivers were arrested each year in Colorado, according to statistics from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. An average of 10,835 drunken drivers each year had at least one prior DUI arrest, according to Division of Behavioral Health data from probation-department evaluations of drivers facing DUI charges.

Of those with prior DUIs, 5,679 Colorado had at least three prior offenses, 84 had been stopped for driving drunk at least 10 times and five had more than 20 prior offenses.

“This is out of control, and I don’t know if the general public knows this,” said Carolyn DeVries of Denver, one of 17 members of a statewide DUI task force exploring ways to attack the problem.

The numbers come a generation after a national crackdown on drunken driving. Colorado legislators made it tougher to plea-bargain drunken-driving cases and increased sentences for both driving while under the influence of alcohol, or DUI, and driving while ability impaired by alcohol, DWAI.

A 2004 law lowered the threshold for DUI, to 0.08 minimum blood alcohol content from 0.10.

But hundreds of people are still killed and injured in drunken-driving crashes each year in Colorado. Since 2005, at least 224 Colorado drivers have been accused of vehicular homicide while driving drunk, and more than 1,000 have been charged with injuring others while driving drunk.

“If people continue to drive drunk, it’s only a matter of time before they hurt someone,” said Larimer County District Attorney Larry Abrahamson. “They are a definite and serious risk to the public.”

Finding answers to the problem won’t be easy. Colorado struggles with crowded jails, full court dockets, an overwhelmed probation system and a tight budget.

Colorado is one of four states where the fifth, sixth or 10th DUI charge is not necessarily a felony. There is no limit on the number of drunken-driving charges that an individual can amass in a lifetime.

In many other states, a motorist with three DUI convictions faces a felony conviction and a prison term. An effort to pass a felony DUI law died in the Colorado Legislature in 2007 due to budget concerns.

Source

North Carolina reported that six police officers were arrested on charges related to changing DWI records and charges.

Each of the officers faces multiple felony charges. One officer is facing 65 felong counts!

So what does this mean for your DUI trial? It means that there may be challenge to the evidence in your DUI case. There are strict procedures that poilce must follow during a DUI stop and during collection of evidence. If these procedures aren’t followed – accidentally or purposefully – you may be able to challenge your case.

First, know your state’s DUI laws. Then, you may want to ask follow-up questions to a local attorney who can offer advice on the some of your options.

Above all, stay on your toes. You never know who was writing your ticket.

Source

A Northwest Side man was charged with a DUI after rear-ending a Chicago Police officer Saturday night.

Emergency crews responded to the accident on the 3800 block of West Lawrence Avenue about 8 p.m., according to Fire Media Affairs Director Larry Langford.

Stefan Gherguta, 33, of the 3900 block of West Argyle Street, was charged with a Chicago DUI after rear-ending an unmarked squad car, police said.

A total of two ambulances were sent to the scene and the officer was taken to Resurrection Medical Center in “stable” condition, police said. Gherguta refused medical treatment.

It is believed the officer worked in a tactical unit.

Source

A teenager who pleaded guilty to hitting and killing a Clarke County woman as she walked along a road with her 3-year-old son has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

At Thursday’s sentencing, prosecutors said Abel Gonzalez-Perez will be held in a youth detention facility until he turns 17 in September, then will be transferred to adult prison.

Prosecutors said the teen is a native of Mexico who was working illegally in the U.S. He earlier pleaded guilty to first-degree vehicular homicide, DUI and hit-and-run.

Nayasheika “Keisha” Cooper, who was 19, died after being hit from behind in the June 14, 2008, accident.

Judge Steve Jones also ordered Gonzalez-Perez to serve seven years of probation after he is released from prison.

Source

Sobriety checkpoints challenged as a waste of tax dollars.

The holidays are a time of year when law enforcement agencies increasingly target drunk drivers. In keeping with that effort, the federal government, along with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, launched a new anti-DUI campaign this week. During a joint news conference, it was stated that one in four fatal automobile accidents occur during the last two weeks of December and that DUI checkpoints were a way of changing that statistic.

The American Beverage Institute has questioned that tactic, saying there are much more effective tools for fighting incidents of driving under the influence. The spokesperson for ABI said that sobriety checkpoints, often paid for with tax dollars distributed through federal grants, are more of a public relations campaign than a truly effective mechanism to catch drunk drivers. The cost of setting up a checkpoint and paying police officers over-time pay can run many thousands of dollars. The ABI goes on to point out that usually checkpoint locations are highly publicized, meaning chronic abusers avoid the area and the police then target socially responsible drinkers who are driving with a blood alcohol content below the legal limit. The actual numbers of DUI arrests from sobriety checkpoints are generally very low. One recent news article from Florida cited 696 motorists being checked or

detained with only one DUI arrest. Many net no arrests.

ABI advocates the more responsible and less expensive approach of conducting roving saturation patrols. That tactic focuses equipment and manpower in high-DUI areas, and offers the flexibility to react to traffic and field conditions. The officers are trained to identify signs of potential impairment in motorists.

Many law enforcement agencies agree with the increased effectiveness of roving patrols, but still conduct sobriety checkpoints because of available federal funds.

Source

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a probable cause case where the defendant was unconscious, and therefore it was not possible for the officers to make any physical observations of his balance, coordination, or to do field sobriety testing.

The honest officers involved in this case admitted that they didn’t smell an odor of alcohol (a staple in most every DUI police report). The appeals court ruled that under Wisconsin DUI and criminal law, they lacked probable cause.

Now the Wisconsin Supreme Court will reconsider it.

Wisconsin supreme court takes on drunk driving evidence – WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports -: “A Madison’s man blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit, when he crashed at bar time.

But an appeals court threw out his drunk driving conviction.

The state supreme court is now poised to make a decision that would affect this case and others.

Justices looked at January 2007, when Madison’s Mitchell Lange’s blood alcohol level was .25, as Lange drove on the wrong side of Sherman avenue at high speed, with police in pursuit, before crashing and being knocked unconscious.

‘Then you put on top of that the fact that this is happening just after bar time,’   assistant Dane County district attorney Tim Kiefer told justices.

‘It’s not just a reasonable inference but a compelling inference that what was going on here was the defendant was driving while impaired.’

‘The officers were unable to find any odor of alcohol,’   Lange’s attorney Steve Cohen said.

The crash and Lange’s unconsciousness prevented standard field sobriety testing.   And Cohen as well as the appeals court said officers lacked sufficient reasons to arrest on drunk driving.

Justice Annette Ziegler questioned that.

‘If you’re going to drive drunk, make sure you really go big, because you need to have an accident, if it’s really bad and there’s a gasoline smell and someone’s almost died, that you’re not going to be able to arrest unless they can smell alcohol or see beer cans, or something like that in the car,’   Ziegler said.

‘That’s the standard you’re asking this court to accept.’”

Any Wisconsin DUI lawyer would have made the same argument, and will be interesting to see what the court does.

Source