Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neal-rodriguez/driving-while-texting-mor_b_480287.html

DUI vs TWD

Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

California Watch, one of the few remaining bastions of investigative reporting, had a description about their week’s workflow, and what happens when there’s a busy story, like their s DUI checkpoint story about profits for police.

The important story last week regarding Los Angeles DUI checkpoints, Orange County DUI checkpoints, and Long Beach DUI Checkpoints, was an important one.  The following is their day-by-day breakdown of how their collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, KQED Radio and other news outlets came together last week:

Monday: We started contacting news partners about the checkpoint story, first giving them a several paragraph “budget line.” It pretty closely mirrored the top of the story as written:

California police departments are increasingly turning sobriety checkpoints into profitable operations that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed minority motorists than catch drunken drivers on the state’s roadways.

Many of the drivers losing their cars at checkpoints are illegal immigrants, an examination by the University of California, Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program in collaboration with California Watch has found.

These unlicensed motorists rarely challenge the impounds, or have the cash to recover their cars.

Impounds at checkpoints in 2009 generated tens of millions of dollars in towing fees and police fines. Additionally, police officers collected checks for about more than $25 million in overtime pay for the DUI crackdowns, funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

In the course of its examination, The Investigative Reporting Program reviewed hundreds of pages of city financial records and police reports, and analyzed data documenting the results from checkpoints the past two years. Other findings include:

• Sobriety checkpoints frequently screen traffic within, or near, Hispanic neighborhoods.

• The seizures appear to defy a 2005 federal appellate court ruling that determined police cannot impound cars solely because the driver is unlicensed.

• Departments frequently overstaff checkpoints with officers, all earning overtime pay.

Every day in newsrooms across the country, editors and reporters try to capture the interest of their bosses with tantalizing budget lines. Our situation is unique. We pitch our work to multiple outlets at the same time. Will they want our story? And if so, how will they play it?

Robert Rosenthal, the executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Louis Freedberg, the California Watch director who oversees our distribution efforts, began drumming up interest. They sent the budget line to numerous news organizations and followed up with e-mails and phone calls.

In the meantime, our copy editor William Cooley was looking over the story. Copy editors are a rare breed. The best ones are pains in the behind. And they consider it the highest possible compliment to be labeled as such. That’s what I love about Cooley. He is a talented intern from San Jose State. But he carries himself like a veteran.

He has not shied away from asking major prize-winning veteran reporters and editors to explain their methods or their premise. He asks uncomfortable but important questions. And he’s made some outstanding catches that have saved us from potentially embarrassing moments.

Tuesday: The reporter on the project, Ryan Gabrielson, sat down to go over Cooley’s comments and final questions from Rosenthal and me. Gabrielson is a fellow at the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program. He won both the Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award in 2009.

Last summer, he was offered a fellowship at UC Berkeley under the direction of the legendary Lowell Bergman. Soon after arriving in California, he began working on the checkpoint story. Bergman and Gabrielson started talking to us about it late last year and a first draft was submitted in January. I started editing it during our “Open Newsroom” on January 21.

We went back and forth on several drafts and were feeling really good about it. But there was work to do. Cooley had thought we needed more attribution and additional context. Gabrielson and I agreed. I also asked to have his methodology reviewed, so Gabrielson sent it to Steve Doig, a Pulitzer-winning journalism professor at Arizona State University and former board member at Investigative Reporters and Editors.

In the meantime, Data analyst Agustin Armendariz and multimedia producer Lisa Pickoff-White polished a snazzy interactive map of all the cities that got federal funding for checkpoints in 2008 and 2009. They built the map with data Gabrielson had gathered during his reporting.

Wednesday: Time to cut the story. The full-length version of Gabrielson’s draft was about 4,500 words – well over 150 inches. No daily newspaper in California would likely print a story of that length. We trimmed it to about 3,800 words – an appropriate length for the California Watch Web site.

Once that was done, the hard work began. I cut the story again – this time by more than half – to about 1,800 words. At that length it could fit in the news pages of our newspaper partners.

I showed it to Gabrielson, and he didn’t have a heart attack. A good sign. Rosenthal and Freedberg continued to work the phones to find media partners and to keep editors informed about our progress.

Based on our budget line, the Sacramento Bee seemed interested. So did the Orange County Register. The Bakersfield Californian and Stockton Record soon came on board. In addition to showing our methodology to an expert in computer-assisted reporting and statistical analysis, such as Doig, Rosenthal thought we needed to write about our methodology so that readers could understand how the reporting process evolved. Gabrielson banged that out.

He also wrote the text for two data pieces that Armendariz helped put together – one focusing on overtime costs and another looking at the UC Berkeley program that helps administer DUI checkpoint money.

Working with Gabrielson was a pleasure. It’s comforting to an editor when a reporter can quickly answer every question you toss their way. Gabrielson had great command of the subject, and he worked quickly and efficiently to turn around all of our requests. By midday, we were ready to distribute both versions of the story.

Even though we didn’t expect any newsroom to publish the full-length story, we made it available in case editors saw things in the longer draft that they wanted in the condensed version. Once the drafts are dispatched to news outlets, we await questions from editors. Because we’re almost always dealing with multiple partners, we end up fielding lots of inquiries from copy editors, project editors and managing editors as the week progresses.

When we launched California Watch last fall, I worried that it might be a little overwhelming to have so many layers of editors. We all know what it’s like to have too many cooks trying to season the soup. So far, knock on wood, it has actually worked. And we saw a perfect example of that just a few hours later. Sacramento Bee Projects Editor Amy Pyle suggested tweaking the first paragraph of our story. It made the top better and tighter. We made a couple of other adjustments and added a new fourth paragraph.

This was the new start (You can see how it differs slightly from the budget line):
Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunken drivers.

And this was the added fourth paragraph:
In dozens of interviews over the past three months, law enforcement officials and tow truck operators say that vehicles are predominantly taken from minority motorists – often illegal immigrants.

Doig, the Arizona State professor, got back to us and said he was comfortable with our methods. In the meantime, Gabrielson was going through an entirely different editing process with the New York Times. Bergman, who had won a Pulitzer Prize working with the Times, had gotten the newspaper’s new Bay Area edition and PBS NewsHour interested months ago.

Gabrielson tailored a tightly focused draft for the Times that contained mostly information about Bay Area checkpoints. And he was going back and forth with editors there about changes to the story. He also prepped for a KQED Radio interview with Michael Montgomery and reviewed final video.

Thursday: La Opinion had begun to translate the story into Spanish. Web production assistant Sarah McHie made sure all our articles and pieces were coming together for our Web site. Pickoff-White produced a cool graphic showing the cities with the highest impound rates. She did this even though she had been laid up in a hospital for two days over the weekend. Now she had been ordered by her doctors to rest at home because she had what appeared to be swine flu. But a little H1N1 wasn’t going to stop her.

Gabrielson, meanwhile, headed over to KQED Radio in the morning to tape his radio interview. Later, he watched the NewsHour piece one last time before it got shipped to New York. He also went over the story line-by-line with the New York Times to make more changes to their draft.

Friday: We prepared a Word document with final fixes – just two revised paragraphs that added context in response to a question from Orange County Register Investigative Editor Chris Knap and another from the Sacramento Bee. Through this editing process, the story kept getting stronger.

Some news organizations were still weighing whether to run it. The Modesto Bee told us they would publish the story the following week. The Fresno Bee said they also would like to run it later. Freedberg got back the translated version from La Opinion.

One more time, we all looked over the final pieces that McHie had loaded into our content management system. We rewrote one headline on a graphic, but otherwise everything looked ready. Just as we were leaving the office, we received word that three more Southern California newspapers were interested.

Saturday: Logging in from home, Pickoff-White made sure everything went live at the right time. We posted the stories, charts, graphics and interactive map around 6 p.m.

Our California Watch News Alert went out shortly after, and we started sending out our “tweets” announcing the story. We also posted a link on Facebook. As a small startup, these social media tools are especially important to help spread the word about our work.

The New York Times posted their version early Saturday evening. In the meantime, around the state, several newspaper staffs were getting ready to put the story on their front pages for Sunday. KQED Radio would broadcast an interview with Gabrielson on Monday and the PBS NewsHour would devote a segment to the story Monday night.

Sunday: Finally, an opportunity to exhale – but not all of us. Sarah Terry-Cobo, a freelance journalist who also helps with distribution, scoured the Web for newspaper front pages for our own archives. We also kept pushing the story on Twitter and Facebook. Huffington Post picked up the story, driving thousands of new readers to our site. By the time the day was over, we had shattered our record for the most traffic on californiawatch.org in a single day.

Related articles:

• CA Sobriety Checkpoints Are Becoming More About Profit Than Drunk Driving (dvorak.org)
• CA Sobriety Checkpoints Snare Illegals, Pad Tow Companies? (thecarconnection.com)
• Study Examines Statewide DUI Checkpoints, Including LAPD’s (laist.com)
• Car Seizures At DUI Checkpoints Raise Money, Legal Questions (huffingtonpost.com)

Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

LAKE FOREST – A deputy known for exceeding department expectations will be honored as deputy of the year tonight by the City Council.

Hennessey, a 10-year Orange County Sheriff’s Department veteran, in 2008 was honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for having the highest number of arrests among cities that contract with Sheriff’s Department in the county. Since coming to Lake Forest in 2007, Hennessey has been honored for his record arrests three years in a row. In 2008, more than 2,500 drivers were arrested on suspicion of drunken driving countywide.

Hennessey is also part of a special enforcement team identifying and catching suspected vandals in an anti-tagging program. In 1½ years, he and his partners have cleared more than 100 cases and made more than 40 arrests.

“He is very involved and dedicated to the community,” said Lt. Doug Doyle, chief of police services for the city. “He produced an incredible body of work this year and he consistently far exceeds expectations in every area of his responsibilities.”

Brought to you by the Orange County DUI lawyers of Miller & Associates.

Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

From Mother Jones, the following article was a sobering look at the reasons why DUI checkpoints persist, even though, as I’ve said, they don’t work in getting drunk drivers off the road:

Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments—operations that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunk drivers. An investigation by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with California Watch has found that impounds at checkpoints in 2009 generated an estimated $40 million in towing fees and police fines—revenue that cities divide with towing firms. In addition, police officers received about $30 million in overtime pay for the DUI crackdowns, funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

In dozens of interviews over the past three months, law enforcement officials and tow truck operators say that vehicles are predominantly taken from minority drivers, often illegal immigrants. In the course of its examination, the Investigative Reporting Program reviewed hundreds of pages of city financial records and police reports, and analyzed data documenting the results from every checkpoint that received state funding during the past two years. Among the findings:

• Sobriety checkpoints frequently screen traffic within, or near, Hispanic neighborhoods. Cities where Hispanics are a majority of the population are seizing cars at three times the rate of cities with small minority populations. In South Gate, a Los Angeles County city where Hispanics make up 92 percent of the population, police confiscated an average of 86 vehicles per operation last fiscal year.

• The seizures appear to defy a 2005 federal appellate court ruling that determined police cannot impound cars solely because the driver is unlicensed. In fact, police across the state have ratcheted up vehicle seizures. Last year, officers impounded more than 24,000 cars and trucks at checkpoints. That total is roughly seven times higher than the 3,200 drunken driving arrests at roadway operations. The percentage of vehicle seizures has increased 53 percent compared to 2007.

• 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.

To be sure, DUI checkpoints have saved countless lives and have brought thousands of drunken drivers to justice. And by inspecting driver’s licenses, police often catch motorists driving unlawfully, typically without insurance. With support from groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, California has more than doubled its use of sobriety checkpoints the past three years.

Law enforcement officials say demographics play no role in determining where those checkpoints are established. Indeed, the Investigative Reporting Program’s analysis did not find evidence that police departments set up checkpoints to specifically target Hispanic neighborhoods. The operations typically take place on major thoroughfares near highways, and minority motorists are often caught in the checkpoints’ net. “All we’re looking for is to screen for sobriety and if you have a licensed driver,” said Capt. Ralph Newcomb of the Montebello Police Department, southeast of Los Angeles. “Where you’re from, what your status is, that never comes up.”

California police have seized the cars of unlicensed drivers for 15 years under the state law that allows such vehicles to be impounded for 30 days. But in 2005, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in an Oregon case that law enforcement can’t impound a vehicle if the only offense is unlicensed driving. To do so would violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone within the United States, whether they are legal residents or not.

One exception is called the “community caretaker” doctrine, which permits police to impound a car if it poses a threat to public safety, is parked illegally or would be vandalized imminently if left in place. But reporters attending checkpoints in Sacramento, Hayward and Los Angeles observed officers impounding cars that appeared to pose no danger. Many of the drivers who lost their cars at these checkpoints were illegal immigrants, based on interviews with the drivers and police. They rarely challenge vehicle seizures or have the cash to recover their cars, studies and interviews show.

Some tow truck company officials relayed stories of immigrant mothers arriving at impound lots to remove baby car seats and children’s toys before leaving the vehicle to the tow firm. “I have to stand here for days and watch them take their whole life out of their vehicles,” said Mattea Ezgar, an office manager at Terra Linda Towing in San Rafael. By contrast, police do not typically seize the cars of motorists arrested for drunken driving, meaning the owners can retrieve their vehicles the next day, according to law enforcement officials.

The city of Montebello, southeast of Los Angeles, runs checkpoints that are among California’s least effective at getting drunks off the road, the Investigative Reporting Program found. Last year, officers there failed to conduct a single field sobriety test at three of the city’s five roadway operations, state records show. Yet the city 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.

The state does not consistently collect data on where local police departments set up checkpoints. A majority of California law enforcement agencies declined to release records showing which intersections they target, or what transpired at checkpoints, making it difficult to perform a statistical analysis of seizures in heavily minority communities. But cities across the state operate checkpoints in communities with high minority populations, the Investigative Reporting Program found. Checkpoints in cities where Hispanics are the largest share of the population seized 34 cars per operation, a rate three times higher than cities with the smallest Hispanic populations, the analysis shows. The disparity between vehicles impounds and DUI arrests exist in virtually every region of California.

In San Rafael, near San Francisco, 10 of the city’s 12 sobriety checkpoints the past two years took place on streets surrounding the city’s heavily Hispanic neighborhoods. Those operations resulted in four DUI arrests and 121 impounded cars for driver’s license violations. The Los Angeles Police Department averaged six DUI arrests per checkpoint in 2009, state data shows, more than most California departments. But the LAPD’s driver’s license impounds doubled the past two years. One operation in December netted 64 vehicle seizures and just four drunken driving arrests.

The federal government provides the California Office of Traffic Safety about $100 million each year to promote responsible driving that reduces roadway deaths. Of that, $30 million goes into programs that fund drunken driving crackdowns, particularly checkpoints. Police overtime accounts for more than 90 percent of the expense of sobriety checkpoints. Statewide, police departments on average deployed 18 officers at each checkpoint, according to state data. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration advises that police can set up checkpoints with as few as six officers. The additional dozen officers typical at a California roadway operation cost state and federal taxpayers an extra $5.5 million during the 2008-2009 fiscal year, according to the Investigative Reporting Program’s analysis. And the LAPD assigned 35 officers, on average, to every sobriety crackdown.

At least a dozen officers spent hours sitting and chatting at an operation in early January in downtown Los Angeles. A couple of officers smoked cigars as they watched cars go through the screening. Officers seized 22 cars that evening and made one DUI arrest. The state data shows that last fiscal year, the LAPD spent $16,200 per checkpoint, all of it on officer overtime. And the trend shows to no sign of letting up. State officials have declared that 2010 will be the “year of the checkpoint,” and police are scheduling 2,500 of the operations throughout California.

I’m a DUI specialist in Orange County, but I am experienced in all Los Angeles DUI and Orange County DUI matters – call me at (877) 568-2977 toll free, anytime.

Related articles:

• CA Sobriety Checkpoints Are Becoming More About Profit Than Drunk Driving (dvorak.org)
• Car Seizures At DUI Checkpoints Raise Money, Legal Questions (huffingtonpost.com)
• Seal Beach: DUI Checkpoint On February 13th (cehwiedel.com)

Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

As someone that handles Los Angeles DUI and Orange County DUI cases daily, I see DUI from the front lines, and I’ve mentioned over and over again that DUI checkpoints don’t work.

Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments, which are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunken drivers, according to an investigation by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with California Watch.

In 2009, impounds at checkpoints generated some $40 million in towing fees and police fines (revenue that cities divide with towing firms). Police officers received about $30 million in overtime pay for the DUI crackdowns, the investigation found.

Vehicles are predominantly taken from minority motorists – often illegal immigrants, the investigation found:

• Sobriety checkpoints frequently screen traffic within, or near, Hispanic neighborhoods. Cities where Hispanics represent a majority of the population are seizing cars at three times the rate of cities with small minority populations. In South Gate, where Hispanics make up 92 percent of the population, police confiscated an average of 86 vehicles per operation last fiscal year.
• The seizures appear to defy a 2005 federal appellate court ruling that determined police cannot impound cars solely because the driver is unlicensed. In fact, police across the state have ratcheted up vehicle seizures. Last year, officers impounded more than 24,000 cars and trucks at checkpoints. The percentage of vehicle seizures has increased 53 percent compared to 2007.
• 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 agencies averaged 20 or more officers per checkpoint – operations that averaged three DUI arrests a night.

Law enforcement officials say demographics play no role in determining where police establish checkpoints. Read the full story here.

Related articles

• Car Seizures At DUI Checkpoints Raise Money, Legal Questions (huffingtonpost.com)
• CA Sobriety Checkpoints Are Becoming More About Profit Than Drunk Driving (dvorak.org)
• Seal Beach: Results of DUI Checkpoint (cehwiedel.com)

Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

The California DUI Lawyers Association is the premiere organization for DUI lawyers who are the top in their field. The CDLA offers educational programs on the cutting edge of DUI caselaw, practice, and has an email list, where real world, practicing DUI attorneys, share information from court appearances, and trials, towards gathering information on the tactics of judges and prosecutors, and how to handle situations as they come up. Like the National College of DUI Defense, which puts on the Trial Skills College at Harvard University Law School, Orange County DUI Lawyer Robert Miller has been a member of both the NCDD, and the CDLA, almost since its inception, and continues to work hard to uphold the ideals, and the great value of this organization. Membership is the sign of a DUI attorney dedicated to knowledge and skills defending persons charge with DUI, and shows that the DUI Defense lawyer is dedicated to his craft.

Related articles

• Half Tuition or Less for a Law School’s Second Class (nytimes.com)
• Pretty Tough Already (eschatonblog.com)
• When the Prosecutor Gets Charged (thisisthelaw.wordpress.com)

Archive for the ‘DUI politics’ Category

What causes more deaths – drunk driving, or driving while texting? Which is illegal?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

I received an email which led me to the following site:

www.udadd.com

As you’ll see, it’s a website dedicated to the proposition that the government should not mandate what adults (that is, persons over the age of 18) do regarding alcohol.  It’s interesting that a person can be old enough to vote, to die for one’s country, but not have an “adult” beverage.  I’m not necessarily promoting this site, but I think the webmaster is onto something – and it is another example of how politics infects the discussion about drinking and driving.

Related articles

• Singapore Will Give Free Drinks To People With Boobs (manolith.com)
• Problem Drinkers Finding More Help Online (time.com)
• Is a minimum alcohol price now more likely? (leftfootforward.org)