Nov 18, 2008

By Jill Decker

Q: Why do the police print DUI checkpoint locations in the newspaper before they take place? Won’t drunk drivers just go a different way home?

The 411: Well, if they were thinking clearly, they would just avoid the whole mess and get a ride from a sober driver.  That’s the hope, but not always the reality.

The police started announcing DUI checkpoints in the early 1990s, based on a court ruling, though disclosure of the exact location was never required—and the police don’t announce the exact location, ahead of time.

Now the courts don’t mandate that the checkpoints be pre-announced at all, but the Visalia Police Department still does it. It gives people a head’s up so they can make a different choice—hopefully to get a designated driver or stay sober, Traffic Sgt. Bill Blankenship told me.

The police department has a zero tolerance policy for driving under the influence, he said. If a police officer stops someone who has been drinking, that driver will be checked to see if he’s intoxicated.

Driving under the influence “is a significant problem,” Blankenship said. Visalia’s “ranked high in the state for DUI crashes,” compared to other cities our size.

The location and time of the checkpoints aren’t specified in the newspaper. The police announce that a checkpoint is coming, the day it will take place and that’s all the head’s up you get, according to Blankenship.

But the word gets out fast—thanks to cell phones and texting—about where the checkpoints are and where drunk drivers should avoid on their way home.

Blankenship also said that on checkpoint nights there are enough officers on the streets of the Visalia with their eyes open for signs of intoxication in drivers, that even avoiding a checkpoint itself isn’t a sure bet that a tipsy driver will stay out of the law’s reach.

Aside from the dozen or so officers at the checkpoint, he said, the police typically “saturate” the city with personnel looking for unsafe drivers.

And they find those unsafe drivers—at and away from the checkpoints. Blankenship said that at one summer DUI checkpoint, the Visalia Police Department stopped 399 vehicles, gave 39 tickets, and made four arrests for driving under the influence. They also made four warrant arrests that night and found about 18 unlicensed drivers or drivers on a suspended license.

Plus one Visalia resident was arrested for hitting an officer in the face with a stylus—you know, the pointer for a personal digital assistant. And that citizen wasn’t even drunk!

Most people who are stopped at the checkpoint are more agreeable, Blankenship told me. He said that 90 percent of them are happy that the police are working to keep the streets safe.

Of course, not all are happy to be stopped, Blankenship said, but the unhappy ones are typically the ones the police are looking for—the intoxicated ones.

These checkpoints also net a lot of drivers with either suspended licenses or no license at all. Blankenship told me that alcohol is a factor when most suspended licenses are suspended, so it’s all related.

Q: How does the police department decide where a DUI checkpoint will be?

The 411: Traffic Sergeant Bill Blankenship navigated the answer to this question for me.

“We look at the routes DUI drivers take,” he said. These are the streets that have the most crashes, the most collisions, the most arrests involving drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

From there, the road is evaluated on whether the checkpoint can be done safely. If the road’s speed limit is too high, it may not be suitable. If there’s not enough room on the sides for officers to conduct field sobriety tests and to hold intoxicated drivers—or to keep their cars until they are towed—then it wouldn’t be a suitable place for a DUI checkpoint, Blankenship said.

The police are required to post a sign that announces the DUI checkpoint ahead of it and in front of a turnoff that a driver can take to avoid the stop.

Blankenship said it’s not illegal to turn off to avoid the checkpoint, but if you do, expect that there are lots of cops in the area and they’ll pull you over if you give them a valid reason to. Blankenship said sometimes people turn off from the checkpoint and then toss alcohol containers out of their cars. I bet that’s probable cause to stop them.

Some drivers take even more extreme measures to avoid the checkpoint, like abandoning their car and running. Blankenship said that this summer a driver apparently didn’t notice the sign announcing the checkpoint, but soon realized what he was heading into. So he put his car into reverse and backed up for close to a block before plowing into a utility pole. Not good decision-making for someone who wants to stay out of custody.

What’s the 411?
The 411 checks out the answers to your questions on local law enforcement, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. So if there’s a question weaving erratically across the lanes in your mind, send it to me at tk tk tk, I’ll be the designated fact finder. 
(Read the full article in our premier issue coming out November 2008)