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DUI checkpoints are making too much money and not doing enough to stop drunken driving, according to some lawmakers in California.

Those  lawmakers pushed legislation — bills AB-1389 and AB-353 — that aims to curb the millions of dollars that are made off the cars that are impounded at DUI checkpoints.

10News learned police are impounding more cars from sober drivers than drunken drivers at sobriety checkpoints, which earn tens of millions of dollars for California cities and law enforcement agencies.

A recent audit of state police agencies that receive grant money to run checkpoints found a discrepancy between the number of cars that are impounded and number of drivers arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.
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The head of a company that makes a downloadable application enabling users to pinpoint police drunken-driving checkpoints says his sales have doubled after efforts by four senators to restrict such apps.

Steve Croke, CEO of Fuzz Alert, also said he might remove the checkpoint locating capability to prove that the app is not designed to help people drive drunk.

“It’s like an electrical version of the warning signs you see for curves ahead and so forth,” said Croke, 42. “This is nothing but a warning device, to let people know that they potentially are in an area where you should watch your speed.”
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A Santa Rosa assemblyman is pushing a bill that would set rules for how police run DUI/license checkpoints, particularly targeting the impoundment of vehicles and being more specific about where the checkpoints will be.

But the bill is generating some waves in the state’s law enforcement community.

Assemblyman Michael Allen, a Democrat, said he was approached by social action committees from local churches about the fear Latinos have at the checkpoints and the possible impoundment of their cars for not having licenses. He said he did some research and found police around the state were inconsistent in their checkpoint policies and some were using checkpoints to generate income for their cities.

As a result, he said, he introduced Assembly Bill 1389 to impose uniform regulations for the checkpoints. U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court rulings now generally govern how checkpoints work.

A key element of the bill, which earlier this month passed the Assembly Transportation Committee 11-3 and now goes to the full Assembly, would be to change the law covering impoundment of cars at checkpoints.

Now, state law allows a police officer to immediately arrest a driver and impound her/her car if the driver doesn’t have a driver’s license or is driving with a suspended or invalid license. Allen’s bill would forbid police from impounding cars, except in very limited cases, such as the car was used to commit a crime or contains evidence of a crime.

Instead of impoundment, an officer under Allen’s bill would have to allow the driver to turn the car over to a friend, relative, neighbor or someone else with a valid license; allow the driver to park the car in a safe place for a licensed driver to come; or permit the officer “to readily and lawfully remove the vehicle to a place that does not impede traffic or threaten public safety.” If none of these can be achieved, then the bill allows the car to be impounded.
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Defying senators who asked them not to do it, Apple is selling another DUI checkpoint app.

Though Apple did not respond to a request for comment on my first article, perhaps now we have the company’s answer to four senators who requested Apple, Google and RIM remove apps that “allow drunk drivers to evade police checkpoints.”

Instead of removing DUI checkpoint apps Apple approved a new one.

DUI Dodger, a $0.99 app for iPhone, was the brainchild of Anaheim Hills resident Geno Rose and built by San Diego-based Examp.com. It was approved by Apple like all apps sold in the company’s App Store are and went on sale last week.
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The young woman in the sexy pirate costume, wrists handcuffed behind her back, is bawling. Black smears of mascara and tears streak her cheeks.

“Please, can you take these off of me? Pleaaaase!” Cathrine begs about the handcuffs. “Can I please call my husband!?”

She’ll get to call her lawyer. Soon, she’ll be taken to jail with 16 drunken strangers, such as Heather, who, on this freaky Friday before Halloween, is dressed as a superhero in her husband’s underwear with a towel pinned around her neck. Heather’s blood alcohol: .189, way past the .08 legal limit.

Nearby sits Bob, hollow-eyed, staring into space behind the metal caging of the yellow Police Arrest Bus. Lit on beer and tequila at a bonfire in Holt, Mo., he’d ignored his friend’s offer to drive.

The cold and wind-whipped Kansas City police wondered if it might be slow for nabbing the inebriated of the night. Warmer at home, cheaper, too.

But with drunks wobbling out of Westport, the Power & Light District, and a Union Station costume party, the first massive sobriety checkpoint of a new fiscal year was bearing some very fermented fruit.

Last year, with $119,000 in federal money for overtime pay, Kansas City police — with agencies such as the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department — held 29 checkpoints, the most in its history. They netted 469 people suspected of driving under influence of drugs or alcohol — about a third of all 1,400 DUI arrests in the city.

Armed with a slightly larger grant, police expect a bigger harvest this year.

At 11:39 p.m., orange cones shut off the southbound lanes of 4040 Main St., funneling traffic toward 15 officers working cars in two columns. A giant reflective “Sobriety Checkpoint” sign signals what’s in store.

“Red Ford Number One!” The call echoes from officer to officer down the line, a signal that the car is first of the night.

It and several more are allowed to roll through, drivers fine. No signs of intoxication.

But at 11:50 p.m., the first fish is netted, a fidgeting, middle-aged man with glasses. The window rolls down, releasing the reek of alcohol.

“Good evening sir, we’re conducting a sobriety checkpoint tonight? … Have you had anything to drink this evening?”

“A few,” the man says.

“Can I see your license, please?”

So it begins.

Since massive sobriety checkpoints started in the late 1980s, humiliated drivers have argued that the police have no constitutional right to randomly stop or search them without “probable cause.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, ruled 6 to 3 in 1990 that they were legal.

“I have no remorse for drunk drivers. I really don’t,” says Officer Tim Fillpot, a nine-year veteran of the DUI unit who, as a child, watched his parents mourn the death of an uncle and aunt at the hands of drunken drivers in separate crashes. “Drunk drivers kill.”

Traffic fatalities nationwide are down, but 13,000 people still die every year because of drunks behind the wheel.

By 3:30 a.m., 674 vehicles will roll through this checkpoint — blazing like a movie set with the command center at the Community Blood Center of Greater Kansas City. In its parking lot are two BAT (Blood Alcohol Testing) vans, two computer-packed Mobile Sobriety Test vehicles, the yellow Police Arrest school bus and a black van to shuttle drunks to jail.

Most nights, arrest rates run between 4 to 5 percent — with 15 to 20 officers arresting about 15 to 20 DUIs — feeding arguments that checkpoints waste money. Critics argue it would be more efficient to use single officers on patrol or “wolf packs,” roaming teams of officers in squad cars.

But DUI Squad Supervisor Sgt. Ron Podraza — a 26-year police veteran— counters that utterly misses the point. Single officers and wolf packs work, too. One will roam tonight.

But checkpoints, which he calls the “grand event,” are about the show. They’re about deterrence and education.

Podraza holds that nothing strikes fear faster in a booze-soaked brain than rolling into a checkpoint, knowing that at the end of the line, it may be the end of the line: car towed, hands cuffed, hauled to the hoosegow for fingerprints, mug shots and, if an average $500 bond can’t be posted, a night or more behind bars.

And they work. In March, a checkpoint outside the Power & Light District netted 13 DUI arrests out of 125 cars, meaning one out of 10 drivers was steering a car onto the road impaired. This past Friday, a stop of 257 cars along Eastwood Trafficway would net 17 DUI arrests, and 35 other violations.

Coninue reading Operation Sobriety: Inside a DUI Checkpoint at KansasCity.Com

Going out this weekend?  Be warned. So are state and local law enforcement agencies, as they join thousands of their colleagues across the country in a nationwide DUI crackdown.

The “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest.” mobilization began Friday, Aug. 20 and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 6.

In Delaware this means increased enforcement in the form of 15 sobriety checkpoints and 273 DUI saturation patrols, as well as additional radio and TV ads reminding people that one more drink could be one too many.

“Nearly 12,000 people nationwide die each year due to impaired driving,” Delaware Office of Highway Safety Director Jana Simpler said. “We want everyone to understand that impaired driving is a crime and often has deadly results. If you drive impaired, you will be arrested.”

Ninety-six drivers were arrested for DUI during the 2009 impaired driving crackdown.

During the 2009 crackdown period there were nine traffic fatalities and nearly half were alcohol-related.  Since Jan. 1, 17 of the 63 traffic deaths (27 percent) were alcohol-related compared to this time last year when 20 of the 69 traffic deaths (29 percent) were alcohol-related, OHS spokeswoman Alison Kirk said.

If you choose to drive impaired, you could face jail time, loss of driver license, and mandatory use of an ignition interlock device, installed in your vehicle at your own expense.  If you are convicted of a DUI you will have a criminal record for the rest of your life, your insurance premiums will significantly increase, and you will have to pay for and attend a mandatory eight-week DUI treatment classes with drug testing.

More than 30 state and local police agencies, representing most of Delaware’s law enforcement community, are participating in the crackdown in combination with Checkpoint Strikeforce including: Blades Police, Bethany Beach Police, Camden Police, Clayton Police, Cheswold Police, Delaware City Police, Delaware State Police, Dewey Beach Police, Dover Police, Elsmere Police, Felton Police, Georgetown Police, Harrington Police, Laurel Police, Lewes Police, Middletown Police, Milford Police, Millsboro Police, Milton Police, New Castle City Police, New Castle County Police, Newark Police, Newport Police, Ocean View Police, Rehoboth Beach Police, Seaford Police, Smyrna Police and Wyoming Police.

For more information on the drunk driving visit www.Stopimpaireddriving.org or visit the Governor’s Highway Safety Association website at www.ghsa.org.

Delaware’s participation in the national mobilization is part of its 2010 Checkpoint Strikeforce and is the final enforcement effort in the OHS’ 120 Days of Summer HEAT campaign.  For more information about Checkpoint Strikeforce and all of OHS’ campaigns visit www.ohs.delaware.gov and www.twitter.com/DEHighwaySafe.

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An investigation by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with California Watch has found that impounds at checkpoints in 2009 generated an estimated $40 million in towing fees and police fines – revenue that cities divide with towing firms.

Additionally, police officers received about $30 million in overtime pay for the DUI crackdowns, funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

In dozens of interviews over the past three months, law enforcement officials and tow truck operators say that vehicles are predominantly taken from minority motorists – often illegal immigrants.

In the course of its examination, the Investigative Reporting Program reviewed hundreds of pages of city financial records and police reports, and analyzed data documenting the results from every checkpoint that received state funding during the past two years. Among the findings:

• Sobriety checkpoints frequently screen traffic within, or near, Hispanic neighborhoods. Cities where Hispanics represent a majority of the population are seizing cars at three times the rate of cities with small minority populations. In South Gate, a Los Angeles County city where Hispanics make up 92 percent of the population, police confiscated an average of 86 vehicles per operation last fiscal year.

• The seizures appear to defy a 2005 federal appellate court ruling that determined police cannot impound cars solely because the driver is unlicensed. In fact, police across the state have ratcheted up vehicle seizures. Last year, officers impounded more than 24,000 cars and trucks at checkpoints. That total is roughly seven times higher than the 3,200 drunken driving arrests at roadway operations. The percentage of vehicle seizures has increased 53 percent statewide compared to 2007.

• Departments frequently overstaff checkpoints with officers, all earning overtime. The Moreno Valley Police Department in Riverside County averaged 38 officers at each operation last year, six times more than federal guidelines say is required. Nearly 50 other local police and sheriff’s departments averaged 20 or more officers per checkpoint – operations that averaged three DUI arrests a night.

Law enforcement officials say demographics play no role in determining where police establish checkpoints.

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With Super Bowl Sunday right around the corner, police everywhere are setting up to catch drunk drivers, but in actuality will mainly be pestering the innocent. Because of this, I offer this post as a fair warning.

Remember, police cannot setup a DUI or sobriety Checkpoint unannounced so check your local news if you intend to avoid the bother. Some found on Google News Include:

• Lake Tahoe, NV Checkpoint
• Buffalo Grove Checkpoint
• Denver DUI Checkpoints

Have a Great SBS and GO SAINTS!

Visalia police officers will be stopping cars at two DUI checkpoints in Visalia this weekend, according to a department news release.

Police will be checking all vehicles at the undisclosed locations and arresting drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

The operation is financed by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety.

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Nearly $40,000 in state grant money has been awarded to the Tucson Police Department to help enforce traffic laws and prevent drunk driving, including a sobriety checkpoint scheduled for Friday.

The $39,690 grant from the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety will help TPD with selective traffic enforcement efforts through September, according to a news release.

The release said TPD reinstituted DUI checkpoints in 2007 and in the first period of enforcement saw an 18 percent decrease in impairment-related crashes.

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