Driving Drunk in San Francisco? Maybe You're Weren't
From the nice folks at Slashdot comes a story of police laziness that may end up resulting in the reversal of “hundreds, maybe thousands” of drunk-driving convictions over the past six years.
There’s a billboard near my hometown that says “Drunk Driving: Ohio’s Scarlet Letter”. That’s a bit of hype, since Ohio, like many other states, has turned the low-criminal-penalty, fine-intensive prosecution of drunk driving into a cash cow for many courts. Many attorneys, as well; the first Ferrari 360 I ever saw in the wild belonged to a famous Columbus DUI attorney.
The fiscal rewards of prosecuting drunk drivers, together with the fact that impaired vehicle operation is perhaps one of the few remaining frontiers where significant reductions in vehicular fatalities can be achieved nationwide, mean that very few law-enforcement agencies treat the topic with anything other than the utmost sincerity and seriousness. On the other side of the aisle, we have the SFPD. For at least six years, the SFPD officers in charge of the department’s breathalyzers didn’t bother to test or calibrate the equipment, instead simply entering the suggested control values into the test results.
It is worth noting that “fuel cell” breathalyzers, which are the only types approved for evidentiary use in the United States, require calibration at least every six months to prevent significant drift, so six years without a calibration could mean that a lot of people were wrongly convicted — or that a lot of people went free, depending on the direction of the drift.
The potential for civil damage suits has to be something just barely short of stupdendous; people can and do get fired for DUI (unless you are a “supercitizen”) and the cumulative effect of years’ worth of lost wages, child custody issues, further criminal penalties, increased insurance rates, and so on will likely require a pretty stout calculator to add up.
Could this lead to a decreased reliance on breathalyzers in the field for police departments worried about liability, machine error, and so on? Let’s hope not: as history shows, if the cops can’t Breathalyze you, they may go Twilight on yo’ ass.
Comments
Join the conversation
With all due respect to America, and Americans, you guys have know idea how soft and forgiving your D.U.I laws are. Corrrect me if I'm wrong,but I think Ontario has tougher laws,than any of the US states. British Columbia is even tougher. If I have two regular strength beers and get stopped by a Cop thats having a bad day,I'm in deep ka ka. Make that four beers,and I might as well take 50,000 dollars,and flush it down the toilet. I could probably hold up the local Beer Store,and plea bargain my way out of it. But God forbid I should drink any of my ill gotten beer before I drive my getaway car.
A friend of mine left a bar, drove exactly 2 blocks to his home, got out and was arrested for DUI. He blew the .08 that NC says is the limit. Did he weave or run off the road? No, did he speed or do anything to alert the cops he was "impared"? No. He spent $5,000.00 to go to court, plus hundreds more on increased auto insurance, all because a local town cop followed him home after seeing him leave a bar. I know, you're thinking, why the heck didn't he just walk, and to be honest, I'm sure he wished he would have. But, like this story points out, we're convicting a guy on the basis of a machine that may or may not be calibrated. And also, .08 - really? I know MADD would probably love to see that go lower but jeez man. You want to make the roads safer? Target Jerry the Geezer with his 20-800 cateracts and couldn't hear a RPG if it landed beside him, or Suzi the sexy secretary with the iphone, make-up, and McBreakfast all going at once, or and this one really boils my nuts, Paco the Taco, he's here illegally, got no insurance, license or anything but 5 kids in school, one on the way and can't drive from sh!t. But OMG dat's RAY-CIST, yeah, right cry me a river and I'll introduce you to a neighbor that lost a daughter to Paco in a head on that occured when he crossed the line right in front of her.