DUI BLOG

As I’ve posted in the past, police agencies across the country are under pressure to make greater numbers of arrests — primarily to raise revenue for local governments and to get federal highway funds.  See “How to Make a Million in the DUI Business” and ”DUI Roadblocks for Fun and Profit”.  The result: DUI quotas.  See “Do Police Have Quotas?” and “Yes, We Have No Quotas”.

Police departments and government officials uniformly deny this, of course.  But last week’s TV broadcast on “Inside Edition” revealed an investigation into the practice.  Some excerpts:

…An Inside Edition investigation found that you don’t have to consume alcohol and drive to be hauled off to jail.  How could that happen?

Randy Wilkinson…was pulled over by a Lakeland (Florida) police officer.  He admits he was a little tired but he’d had nothing to drink.  However, the officer gave him a field sobriety test….He wasn’t worried about taking the test because he’d had nothing to drink, so it came as a surprise to him when he was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail.  Wilkinson couldn’t believe it and immediately asked for a blood test.  “I’d like to go the hospital and get my blood examined” he said.

Back at the station two blood alcohol content breath tests showed he had no alcohol in his system.  Yet, the charges were not dropped.  And the next day…he was paraded before the press.  His record of arrest and mug shot were even placed on a Sheriff’s website….A week later, after his blood test came back negative, the prosecutor dropped the charges.  But his mug shot has yet to be taken down.

But this wasn’t an isolated incident.  Just a few months earlier, the same police officer pulled over 19-year-old Robbie Stout.  And even though he had no alcohol or drugs in his system, just like Wilkinson’s case the officer said he failed the field sobriety test and was arrested for DUI…At the police station he tested negative for alcohol and his blood test came back negative.  But it took several months and $2500 in legal fees to get the charges dropped.  His mug shot is still on the Sheriff’s website also.

We have uncovered documents that suggest that police at Lakeland are under tremendous pressure to arrest people for DUI.  This memo says each Lakeland DUI officer should make 10 DUI arrests a month.  They call it a “performance standard”.

“Whatever you call it, it’s a quota”, says Tony Corrado. 

Corrado is a former DUI officer for the Atlanta Police Department and has conducted thousands of DUI stops.  He says police departments around the country are afraid if they don’t make quotas, they will lose federal funding.

“Police departments won’t admit they have quotas. Every police department has quotas.”

And it’s not just Lakeland, Florida, where this is happening.  Our investigation has found similar documents around the country showing that police departments are under pressure to make DUI arrests.
 

Has the media finally stopped swallowing MADD’s hysterical propaganda and started looking for real facts?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 7:08 am and is filed under Duiblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.