Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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Our Orange County DUI lawyers have learned that Andrew Bremer, an Orange police officer, was awarded the 2010 Cavanaugh Award on March 3 at the 24th annual MADD Orange County Law Enforcement and Prosecutor Recognition Luncheon.

The Cavanaugh Award is presented to the officer who makes the most DUI arrests for the year in Orange County.

Last year, Bremer arrested 309 offenders who were driving under the influence in the city of Orange, which is the most by an individual officer in Orange County in 2010.

The Orange Police Department made 1,091 DUI arrests in 2010, said Sgt. Dan Adams, public information officer for the department.

The department has been home to a couple of state record holders in the past five years.

In 2006, Officer Armando Plascencia set the state record at 325 DUI arrests.

In 2007, Officer Kirk Salmon set a new record with a total of 341 arrests. The record was surpassed in 2007 and is still held by a Huntington Beach police officer.

Bremer has been a police officer with the department for 4 ½ years. He has been assigned to the DUI team since July 2009.

Many other officers, as well as prosecutors from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, were also recognized for their outstanding efforts in combating drunken driving.

Other officers from the Orange Police Department who were recognized this year include Officer Justin McGowan, Officer Kevin Plog, Officer Steven Jenks, Motor Officer Martin Suarez, Officer Michael Osborn, Officer Armando Plascencia and Officer Kirk Salmon.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

As I’ve said, as a DUI Specialist Orange County, before during many of my blog posts, many DUI checkpoints don’t even find a single drunk driver, but they tie up traffic, and make money for officers and police agencies, through grants and impound fees. Law enforcement agencies last year impounded six cars for every drunk driving arrest at sobriety checkpoints – and most of those cars belonged to unlicensed illegal immigrants, according to a California Watch investigation.

State-funded sobriety checkpoints during the holidays nearly doubled last year, to 1,050. That combined with non-holiday checkpoints for a total of about 2,500 such operations, according to the investigation.

A total of 17,419 vehicles were impounded, with a rough estimate that 70 percent of those belonged to unlicensed illegal immigrants. Under state law, motorists who don’t have a license or who have had their driving privileges suspended or revoked can have their cars impounded for 30 days.

“Local governments often charge unlicensed drivers a fine to get their vehicles released from impound – on average more than $150, finance records show. Cities, increasingly, also get a cut of the fees that tow operators charge vehicle owners, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” according to California Watch.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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Our Orange County DUI Lawyers have learned that the Costa Mesa Police Department Traffic Safety Bureau will be conducting a DUI/Drivers License checkpoint on Saturday, March 26, 2011, on Newport Boulevard at 17 th  Street between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m.  DUI checkpoints have not been proven to be an effective enforcement tool effective in reducing the number of persons killed and injured in alcohol involved crashes, (at least compared to saturation patrols), but police departments love the funding from federal and state grants, overtime, contributions from MADD, and the substantial impound fees they generate.

Costa Mesa was ranked 20 th  on the list of “Top 50 DUI Cities” in California in 2008, based upon the number of alcohol related fatalities and injuries.  In 2010, each of the eight officers on the DUI enforcement team made at least 100 DUI arrests.

Statewide, DUIs are declining, and overall traffic deaths declined by 23 percent, from 3,995 in 2007 to 3,081 in 2009.  Total traffic fatalities are at their lowest levels in six decades, when the federal government began compiling figures.  DUI deaths declined by 16 percent, from 1,132 in 2007 to 950 in 2009, according to federal statistics.

“Everyone in California should be heartened with these figures,” said Christopher J. Murphy, Director of  the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS).

Funding for this and other DUI checkpoints is provided to Costa Mesa Police Department by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and to schedule an interview regarding the Costa Mesa Traffic Safety Bureau checkpoints, please contact Sergeant Dave Makiyama at (714) 754-4963 or via email at dmakiyama@ci.costa-mesa.ca.us.  To schedule an interview regarding impaired driving efforts and programs in California please contact Chris Cochran, California Office of Traffic Safety at (916) 905-3063 or via email at ccochran@ots.ca.gov.

Costa Mesa DUI arrests end up in court in Newport Beach, at the Harbor Justice Center.  If you need a lawyer, well known there, with 16 years experience in that courthouse, contact the Newport Beach DUI Lawyers at Robert Miller and Associates, at (877) 568-2977.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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Our Orange County DUI Lawyers There’s a lot of folks out there drinking and driving, and Congress sees DUI checkpoint location apps as enablers of all that cruising and boozing. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats have decided to use their powers of political persuasion to address the issue and ask Google, Apple, andRIM to pull such apps from their respective stores. The letter didn’t name names, but Reid and co. want offending software yanked or “altered to remove the DUI checkpoint functionality” to prevent checkpoint circumvention. Of course, the creators of one such app, PhantomAlert, claim it provides such information to deter drunk driving by letting users know the risk of getting caught (yeah, right). RIM agreed to comply with the congressional request while Google said no thanks, but mum’s the word out of Cupertino — time will tell if Apple gets on the banning bandwagon too.

Four democratic senators have banded together to pressure mobile app sellers — specifically Apple, Google and Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry — to remove apps from their various app marketplaces that identify police DUI checkpoints. According to Ars Technica’s story, “Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Harry Reid (D-NV), Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Tom Udall (D-NM) have written an open letter to Apple, Google, and RIM asking the companies to stop peddling apps that help drunk drivers avoid the police, calling the software ‘harmful to public safety.’”

The senators claim the apps are specifically marketed at people looking to break the law and help them do it. The apps have a range of functions: some cause checkpoints to show up on a Google map, while others allow users to share information about checkpoints social network-style. There are apps available on all three platforms, with some sending push notifications to a device as the driver nears a checkpoint, and others identifying things like school zones in addition to the checkpoint areas.

Here’s another quote from the senators’ letter:

“We appreciate the technology that has allowed millions of Americans to have information at their fingertips, but giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern. We know that your companies share our desire to end the scourge of drunk driving and we therefore would ask you to remove these applications from your store unless they are altered to remove the DUI/DWI checkpoint functionality.”

It’s hard to side with potential drunk drivers on this one — the senators’ letter states that 10,000 Americans die per year in drunk driving-related accidents — but as eWeek points out, these senators are pressuring app sellers to pull apps they don’t like without actually having the law to back them up. Technically, reporting public government activity to people, even DUI checkpoints meant to surprise drivers, is protected under the First Amendment. Plenty of print publications, such as L.A. Weekly, do it every weekend.

What’s underhanded about the whole situation is that the open letter is a form of coercion, eWeek’s article says, and it’s already working. RIM has already pulled its DUI checkpoint apps, and Apple’s reputation of, more or less, quietly shying away from any potential conflict is pretty well-documented. These companies rely on the government for contracts and licensing, and sending this open letter “urging” them to action could be seen as somewhat threatening. Legislation limiting these apps from doing what they do would never hold up in court, eWeek reasons, so these senators have to get their way by some other means.

While not everyone will agree with eWeek’s take on the situation, it does raise some good points about freedom of speech and government pressure on businesses.

The outcome of this whole situation should be rather interesting. Apple, for its part, will likely pull the apps and side with the government, because in the App Store, no one has any rights that Apple doesn’t give them. That’s the model the company is going with and it’s the price of admission into the walled garden that is the iTunes App Store.

Meanwhile, Google is in a position to stand up to these senators and fight on the side of free speech, should it find it has a case. It’s in that company’s interest to provide a more free and open environment for app makers. Whether either system is good or bad, however, is a decision left up to the apps’ users.

On Tuesday, Apple, Google, and RIM opened up a letter from four democratic senators imploring the companies to remove applications that provide information on DUI checkpoints. Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Frank Laurenberg, and Mark Udall all signed the letter asking the mobile giants to remove the applications, excepting only applications that remove their DUI or DWI checkpoint functionality.

“With more than 10,000 Americans dying in drunk-driving crashes every year, providing access to applications that alert users to DUI checkpoints is harmful to public safety,” stated the Senator-signed letter. “Giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern.” The most disconcerting part of this situation remains to be the applications themselves. These are highly-downloaded, incredibly useful applications, some of which boast over 10 million users.

Searching for “DUI checkpoint” in the Apple App Store will pull up three different checkpoint apps. Buzzed, a paid app priced at $0.99, gives users information on DUI checkpoints within 100 miles of their current location. The Checkpointer app aggregates information posted by a bail bonds company and offers data on Orange County checkpoints. “The super small, one time fee of $4.99 spent today on Checkpointer could potentially save you thousands of dollars by helping you avoid an arrest for DUI,” claims the app description. The third App Store checkpoint application is called .Tipsy, which offers weekly updates on Los Angeles checkpoints.

Apparently, the Android clan enjoys its booze a bit more than Apple fans, as the same search in the Android Market brought up four checkpoint applications. In Android’s defense, one of those four apps is merely a Lit version of a paid application called Checkpoint Wingman, priced at $1.99. Both Checkpoint Wingman and its Lit counterpart post user-uploaded information on DUI checkpoints and even sends alerts to the phone when the user gets close to a checkpoint. If texting-while-driving hasn’t already caused enough damage, alerts-while-drunk-driving sounds like a not-so-accidental accident waiting to happen. PhantomALERT, which is also available in the BlackBerry App World, offers up much more than just DUI checkpoints, including speed traps, red light cameras, speed cameras, school zones, and dangerous intersections.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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As Los Angeles DUI lawyers, We see celebrity DUI cases play out in the media, often with seemingly light or no criminal penalties. You may wonder what the potential criminal penalties for a DUI in California and what is the likelihood of such charges being brought?

Driving under the influence (DUI) sentencing occurs primarily within an alternative sentencing scheme under which offenders receive progressively more severe penalties for each successive DUI-related conviction.

Absent special circumstances, anyone arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or both is charged with violating Veh C §23152(a), commonly referred to as the “DUI count,” and is prosecuted for a misdemeanor. Veh C §§23536-23552. If the arrestee submitted to a blood-alcohol test and the results show a blood-alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08 percent or more, he or she will also be charged with violating Veh C §23152(b), commonly called the “0.08 per se count.”

Depending on the circumstances, other potential charges include:

• Driving a commercial vehicle by a person with a BAC of 0.04 percent or more. Veh C §23152(d). See Veh C §23153(d).
• Driving while addicted to any drug other than methadone. Veh C §23152(c). See Health & S C §11550 (being under influence of narcotic).
• Illegally or negligently causing bodily injury to others while DUI. Veh C §23153(a)-(b). This section is a “wobbler,” i.e., chargeable, at the prosecuting agency’s discretion, as either a misdemeanor or a felony.
• Child endangerment if a child was in the vehicle. See Pen C §273a.
• Driving with.01 or greater BAC if on probation for a DUI-related offense; the arrest will trigger an administrative hearing and possible suspension of license. Veh C §23154.

When a DUI results in a homicide, other statutes may come into play, with obviously much more serious penalties, including:

• Pen C §192(c)(1)-(3) (vehicular manslaughter), a wobbler, when death resulted from gross or ordinary negligence;
• Pen C §191.5(a) (vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence), a felony, when death resulted from criminal negligence; or
• Pen C §§187-189 (second degree murder), a felony with an indeterminate life sentence, when the defendant acted with implied malice. (note that second degree murder is normally not charged in DUI cases because it is difficult to establish implied malice; however, when the defendant has prior DUI convictions, they can be used to show that the defendant knew the dangers of drunk driving. See People v Marlin (2004) 124 CA4th 559, 21 CR3d 470).

Don’t think that kids can get away with a DUI. In fact, juveniles who drive while under the influence are subject to prosecution, as are adults who lend their cars to such juveniles. See Veh C §23140; Pen C §193.8. The minimum required BAC for a person under age 21 to be DUI is even lower — at only 0.05. Veh C §23140.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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Typically, when a person is convicted of DUI as Ms. Lohan was, the judge does not impose the full jail sentence permitted for the offense and instead imposes certain terms of probation and reduced or no jail time. For example, the maximum sentence permitted for a first DUI is 180 days in county jail; the maximum sentence permitted for a second DUI that occurred within 10 years of the first is 1 year in county jail.

During the probationary period (standard is three years), the person may be required to do certain things and/or may be required to refrain from doing other things. Common DUI probation terms include attending Alcoholic Anonymous classes; attending an alcohol or drug awareness program; spending a day at the morgue; payment of a fine; and agreeing not to drive with any measurable amount of alcohol in your system. As of July 1, 2010, anyone convicted of a DUI for the first time in Los Angeles County (and a few others) must also install an Ignition Interlock Device – a small breathalyzer attached to the car ignition that prevents the car from starting if any alcohol is detected in the driver’s blood.

If a person on DUI probation fails to comply exactly with the terms of probation set by the court, the judge will hold a hearing and may impose some or all of the jail sentence that he chose not to impose originally. So, in Ms. Lohan’s case, because the judge found that she failed to comply with the probation requirement that she attend weekly alcohol classes, the judge sentenced her to 90 days in jail and 90 days of rehab for violating her probation.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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An Orange County sheriff’s DUI task force will conduct roving patrols in the San Juan Capistrano area tonight and in Dana Point and San Clemente.

The DUI teams will target areas that have high incidences of DUI-related arrests and collisions. The specific locations are not being released.

“The goal of the program is to reduce the rate at which the citizens of Orange County are killed or injured in DUI-related collisions,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

The DUI task force is funded with grant money from the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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Our Newport Beach DUI Lawyers have been enjoying St. Patrick’s Day, but we need to warn you of a few checkpoints and saturation patrols this evening and this weekend.

First, in Irvine, The Irvine Police Department will deploy a DUI/Drivers License Checkpoint on Thursday, March 17, 2010 at Jamboree Road and Alton Parkway, in the City of Irvine as part of their ongoing campaign to spend state funds and utilize MADD volunteers to have DUI checkpoints in the city.  Alcohol-impaired fatalities have declined substantially in recent years – down 26 percent since 2006 when the Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) and law enforcement began placing increased emphasis on funding toward sobriety checkpoints.  Driving under the influence related deaths declined by 7.6 percent in California between 2008 and 2009 alone.  However, it’s not due to checkpoints, which are money makers for the police departments.  The unfunded DUI saturation patrols are the current technology that has the highest rates of apprehending persons drunk driving.  The checkpoint will be clearly marked and vehicles will be selected to be checked on a pre-set basis to ensure objectivity.  Motorists will be greeted and given an informational brochure on impaired driving, courtesy of the political action group MADD.  Driver’s licenses will be checked, and trained officers will direct impaired drivers to a secondary check area for further evaluation.  Most motorists will experience little delay, if any at all.

In Long Beach, The Long Beach Police Department will be conducting a citywide DUI Saturation Patrol on Saturday, March 19, 2011, from 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., and throughout Orange County tonight, the coordinated efforts of “Avoid the 38″, will have saturation patrols looking for people driving drunk.

If you have questions for a DUI specialist, call our Orange County DUI Lawyers at (877) 568-2977, and slainte!

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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…if you didn’t show up in court or didn’t do your alcohol school!  Our Orange County DUI Lawyers have learned, via an interesting article in the Orange County Register, that a special Orange County Sheriff’s Department task force on Monday canvassed neighborhoods in three South County cities and arrested seven people wanted on warrants for failing to appear in court on their drunken driving arrests.

An investigator and four deputies made up the “Avoid the 12″ DUI task force. At 6 a.m. they worked their way through a list of 28 people – in Lake Forest, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita – who had either not shown up in court for the DUI-related appearance or had not completed the requirements of the program after being arrested for drunken driving.

The task force arrived in one patrol car and two unmarked cars. At each home, officers in uniforms walked up to the house. While two stood at the front door, two others surrounded the home making sure no one attempted to flee from it. Once the door was opened, deputies asked for the person with the warrant. They also asked to search the house looking in closets and under beds to locate possible suspects.

By 1:30 p.m. all the addresses on the list had been checked off. Seven visits were successful resulting in arrests. Some of the unsuccessful visits resulted in a variety of results: At one house, the individual had moved to Mexico; another person was already in jail, and in a few cases the addresses on the official records appeared to be false.

Deputy Wayne Howard, of the sheriff’s South County Traffic Bureau oversees the task force. He called Monday’s effort a good result.

“The biggest reason we do this is to keep people accountable,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize this can happen. But if you take care of your warrant, you won’t have to look over your shoulder and you can start turning your life around.”

Howard said a lot of the drivers that are targeted are often repeat offenders.

The most recent statistics from the State Office of Traffic Safety show that in 2008 there were up to 1,355 people killed statewide in traffic collisions that were alcohol-related. About 28,463 people suffered injuries in alcohol-related crashes. In Orange County there were 66 fatalities that result from alcohol-related crashes. About 2,160 people are injured.

Other components of the “Avoid the 12″ task force include DUI check point, saturation patrols and court stings where people on suspended licenses are followed by undercover officers and cited if they attempt to drive their cars.

In December holiday crackdown on drunken drivers resulted in about 743 arrests in a 17-day period.

“The estimate is that we can only catch about 1 to 2 percent of drunken drivers,” he said. “That means there were 70,000 to 80,000 drivers driving drunk on Orange County streets.”

The “Avoid the 12″ program is funded by the Office of Traffic Safety through a $874,000 grant. The program is in its second of three years.

Archive for March, 2011

City of Orange Police Officer recognized for most DUI arrests in Orange County

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

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As a DUI Specialist Orange County, I’ve written about the problems of police impounds at DUI checkpoints in the past, and what a money maker it can be for police departments.  The Los Angeles Times had an article about how the issue of impounds has become a controversial topic in recent years.  Under criticism that it was unfairly targeting undocumented immigrants, the Los Angeles Police Department on Friday announced changes to its rules for impounding cars of unlicensed drivers at sobriety checkpoints.

Previously, LAPD officers at such checkpoints followed stringent protocols that called for them to impound a car whenever the driver was found not to have a valid license, regardless of whether the driver had been drinking.

Those rules have drawn the ire of immigration advocacy groups that said they disproportionately targeted undocumented immigrants, who are not able to obtain licenses legally in nearly all U.S. states. Once a vehicle is impounded, law enforcement agencies often require it to remain locked up for at least a month and charge the owner hefty fees to release it.

The new LAPD guidelines soften the department’s stance somewhat. Police will be required to make an attempt to contact the registered owner of the stopped vehicle. If the owner is a licensed driver and can respond to the checkpoint in “a reasonable period of time,” the officers will release the car to him or her. If the owner is unlicensed, officers will permit another person who is a licensed driver to take the car.

If no one with a license is available, police will impound a vehicle. In any case, police will issue a citation to the unlicensed driver.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said that since he took over the department more than a year ago, the checkpoint policy had “stuck in my craw as one of the things we weren’t doing the right way.” Beck said he decided to make the change after immigration rights advocates raised the issue with him anew in meetings this week.

“I’m tired of casting the net so wide,” he said. “This is the right thing to do. There is a fairness issue here … and we’re trying to balance the needs of all segments of our community and keep the roads safe.”

The new rules, Beck said, were an attempt to mitigate somewhat “the current reality, which is that for a vast number of people, who are a valuable asset to our community and who have very limited resources, their ability to live and work in L.A. is severely limited by their immigration status.”

The change, which the department announced in a news release late Friday afternoon, is likely to anger groups that support strict enforcement of immigration laws. Efforts to contact representatives of several of those groups for comment were unsuccessful.

Police in the small cities of Bell and Maywood have been accused of systematically targeting undocumented immigrants when impounding cars in an effort to boost municipal revenues.

Ron Gochez, a member of the steering committee for the Southern California Immigration Coalition, expressed limited praise for the LAPD’s change but questioned why the department needed to impound a car if the driver had not been drinking.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but it still falls short of what we’re asking for,” he said. “We’re not against checkpoints. We want checkpoints to happen, we want drunk drivers off our streets. We just don’t want people to be losing their cars who aren’t drunk.”

If you have a question for our Newport Beach DUI Lawyers, call me anytime at (877) 568-2977.