Holiday weekends prime time for police DUI checkpoints and this past Memorial Day weekend was no exception. The effectiveness of DUI checkpoints, also known as sobriety checkpoints, is being called into question, though, as statistics for this past weekend come in and are compared to last year's. State-wide, 31 people died in some form of traffic accident this Memorial Day weekend, with 10 of those deaths occurring in Los Angeles County. During the same weekend of last year, 19 traffic-related fatalities occurred, with just one of those deaths occurring in Los Angeles County.
If you look at these numbers in correlation to arrests for driving under the influence of either drugs or alcohol, the gap between sobriety checkpoints and public safety gets even wider: last year, police in Los Angeles County arrested 236 motorists for driving under the influence while that figure went down to 220 this year. If sobriety checkpoints are supposed to take potentially dangerous drivers who have been drinking off Los Angeles roads, then why did traffic fatalities rise this year while DUI arrests went down?
Sobriety checkpoints have long been a contentious battle in a city with millions of drivers such as Los Angeles, and this holiday weekend's new statistics prove very little in their favor. In case you are not familiar with DUI checkpoints, they are temporary roadblocks set up and operated by local law enforcement that are designed to root out drivers that might be driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or to find other violations of Los Angeles vehicle codes. While stopped, a law enforcement official will examine drivers for any signs of impairment. If any are detected, the driver will be directed to a designated area for field sobriety tests or breath analysis to determine sobriety.
To many in the legal field, sobriety checkpoints constitute a violation of our Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure, but in the 1990s, the United States Supreme Court ruled that DUI checkpoints were constitutional as long as police departments warned locals when and where they would be executed, cars and their drivers were checked according to a random formula, they did not create traffic snarls, and drivers were given the option to avoid them by turning out before officers approached their vehicles. Many believe that sobriety checkpoints take impaired drivers off of Los Angeles roadways before they can harm someone, but as we can see from last weekend's statistics, they do not work quite as well as public safety officials would have hoped.
If you have been charged with driving under the influence stemming from a sobriety checkpoint stop, call the attorneys at Kestenbaum, Eisner & Gorin, LLP today. Their combined 50 years of courtroom experience will fight for you.
If you look at these numbers in correlation to arrests for driving under the influence of either drugs or alcohol, the gap between sobriety checkpoints and public safety gets even wider: last year, police in Los Angeles County arrested 236 motorists for driving under the influence while that figure went down to 220 this year. If sobriety checkpoints are supposed to take potentially dangerous drivers who have been drinking off Los Angeles roads, then why did traffic fatalities rise this year while DUI arrests went down?
Sobriety checkpoints have long been a contentious battle in a city with millions of drivers such as Los Angeles, and this holiday weekend's new statistics prove very little in their favor. In case you are not familiar with DUI checkpoints, they are temporary roadblocks set up and operated by local law enforcement that are designed to root out drivers that might be driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or to find other violations of Los Angeles vehicle codes. While stopped, a law enforcement official will examine drivers for any signs of impairment. If any are detected, the driver will be directed to a designated area for field sobriety tests or breath analysis to determine sobriety.
To many in the legal field, sobriety checkpoints constitute a violation of our Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure, but in the 1990s, the United States Supreme Court ruled that DUI checkpoints were constitutional as long as police departments warned locals when and where they would be executed, cars and their drivers were checked according to a random formula, they did not create traffic snarls, and drivers were given the option to avoid them by turning out before officers approached their vehicles. Many believe that sobriety checkpoints take impaired drivers off of Los Angeles roadways before they can harm someone, but as we can see from last weekend's statistics, they do not work quite as well as public safety officials would have hoped.
If you have been charged with driving under the influence stemming from a sobriety checkpoint stop, call the attorneys at Kestenbaum, Eisner & Gorin, LLP today. Their combined 50 years of courtroom experience will fight for you.
