DUI Checkpoint In Los Angeles: Welcome To The Weekend

Born to run.

How about we just don't drink and drive. Better yet, let's all just go to las Vegas and get drunk and not drive at all :). Happy solution to a shitty problem.

Persnickety Cricket

"It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest." Justice William O. Douglas, Henry v. United States 1959

orangecountyatty

Just because the city puts up a checkpoint, doesn't mean the checkpoint is legal. For more information about DUI checkpoints or more information about the consequences of a DUI arrest in Orange County, Newport Beach, or Irvine, please see http://dui-attorney-newport-be... or if you have a second DUI offense, please see http://2nd-dui.com/

uyny

tinyurl.com/2c7p8hm

yhyhg

tinyurl.com/2c7p8hm

Persnickety Cricket

"You'd have to be a real idiot to have been warned about a checkpoint..."

Quite frankly, police departments have made "real idiots" out of all us as they've lead us to believe it is perfectly constitutional (it is not) to stop drivers without first having what the law calls "probable cause." In other words, police officers in the state of California must first have a legal reason to stop you before detaining you and consequently conducting an investigation. It is yet another protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the government. Legal scholars long ago decided it was not ok for police officers to stop drivers "just because they felt like it" and agreed there had to be a justifiable reason why a driver was pulled over in the first place. Examples such as having a broken tail light, expired tags, or a cracked windshield would satisfy the probable cause or PC requirement. An officer posted at a DUI check point cannot justify why he or she stopped you given that they have yet to observe a violation of the law in the first place. At a check point an officer stops you. For what? where is the probable cause? PC demands the officer observe the violation first, then detain the driver afterwards, and then conduct an investigation. To quote Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas regarding checkpoints, "....I rather doubt that the Framers of the 4th Amendment would have considered "reasonable" a program of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of wrongdoing." (City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 2000)

morecheckpointsplease

Oh my goodness to persnickety cricket You are the real idiot. Drivers here are reckless to begin with , after a few drinks even more so . There are multiple fatal accidents daily- more on the weekend due to drunk driving. These random checkpoints work in other countries to rapidly reduce the number of unsafe drunks (and deaths) on the roads. They need way more than just one to be effective but it's a start.

Persnickety Cricket

Which other Constitutional protections are you also in favor of eliminating? After all, this pesky 4th Amendment protection sure gets in the way of efficient and effective California law enforcement. So efficient and effective are these checkpoints you so desperately demand, even after they've completely ignored the 4th amendment, that in 2009 an investigation by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley found that, "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." 3 DUI arrests per night! And how about this, "....Montebello's DUI checkpoints rank among California's least effective at getting drunks off the road. Last year, officers there failed to conduct a single field sobriety test at three of the city's five roadway operations, state records show. Montebello collected upward of $95,000 during the last fiscal year from checkpoints, including grant money for police overtime. The California Office of Traffic Safety, which is administered in part by officials at UC Berkeley, continues to fund Montebello's operations, providing a fresh $37,000 grant for this year."

So we need more checkpoints you say? Really?....tell you what, you can pay for all of these "effective and extremely efficient" checkpoints out of your own pocket, while the rest of us can spend our hard earned money and time on more effective and efficient worthwhile causes.....like donating to the American Cancer Society, volunteering for the Red Cross or participating in AIDS Walk.

Hey, lets eliminate the 1st Amendment too while we're at it, this way neither you nor me nor anyone else can direct insults at each other in an open forum, lest we get hauled off to prison along with those other undesirables, the "unsafe drunks." No thanks, I'll take my country as good or as bad as it currently is, and you're welcome to leave and live in these "other countries" that you claim have "reduced number of unsafe drunks." You'll be in good company, living in countries that I'm sure have no respect for whatever semblance of a constitution they may have.

Morecheckpointsplease

Unfortunately we will have to agree to disagree.All I'm hearing from you revolves around the Constitution and MoneyWe're talking about Americans LIVES here I take it you have not lost a loved one in a MV accident.Why does funding checkpoints come at the expense of an AIDS walk or CANCER SOCIETY? It doesn't. That is pretty stupid."living in countries that I'm sure have no respect for whatever semblance of a constitution they may have."This is the narrow minded pov that plagues many Americans today (read Tea Partiers/baggers)Comparing being breath tested for alcohol like other freethinking, democratic Western Countries to eliminating the 1st amendment is ridiculous.. but there is no changing your view on this issue I will not waste my time further.

Society Against D-Bags

So, you celebrate drunk driving, just not amateurish drunk driving...

Classy angle, LA Weekly.

booze party! vote 2012!

hell fools this ain't the fricken DailyNews, get a grip you ernest boors

dre

Your article sounds like you are implying that "professional" drunk drivers are okay to drive? Nobody is a professional drunk driver. If you think you are that makes you an idiot. Yes, some people are worse when they drive drunk than others. But your article sounds dangerously close to some bad advice here. For sure if I was a an officer of the peace I would be finding out where you live and posting a dui checkpoint outside your driveway to see how "professional" you are about driving drunk.And yes, announcing where checkpoints are going to be is moronic.