Posted on 03/08/2006 6:12:23 AM PST by Enterprise
"Fresno police are taking enforcement of drunken driving laws to a new level — which officers expect will bring both success and outrage. Saturday night, the traffic unit unveiled a new operation in which plainclothes police officers stake out bars and target drunk patrons. If the heavy drinkers get behind the wheel, officers in unmarked cars follow them and call in marked police cars to pull them over."
(Excerpt) Read more at fresnobee.com ...
I tend to agree about keeping drunks from behind the wheel. I have seen a few people who died as the result of a drunk driver. Tough break in life.
You're comparing suicide bombers to drunk drivers? alrighty then.
Me thinks thou dost protest too much!
I think you're right. The amount of business police generate for lawyers is endless and priceless.
An oldy but a goody!
I used to wonder why the cops didn't do such stake-outs more often. Then I found out that bar owners pay off cops to leave the patrons alone; as a matter of fact, some bar employees are just cops being paid handsomely, such as doormen, bouncers, etc.
I guess some Fresno bar owners have fallen behind in their payments.
I'm sorry, you are wrong. The average social drinker is not going to be a hazard at 0.08.
If you think noone crashes at .08 , well I guess you live in a place other than planet earth.
Please provide one documented example.
If you think our laws are the most strict on this issue you also live in a place other than planet earth.
I never said that. I said that 0.08 is not a reasonable limit. The real problem is people who drive with much higher BACs. They should be the target of law enforcement, not the average man who had 3 beers after work a little too quickly and got stopped for a "safety checkpoint."
SD
I am inclined to believe it is a revenue thing. You want to catch a criminal, open a precinct in public housing. (NOOOOO WAIT A MINUTE!!!)
That probably doesn't apply in Fresberg. Their own officers get arrested for DUI by fellow officers.
LOL. 0.08 was strongarmed to the states by Congress as part of MADD's incremental plan towards "zero tolerance."
SD
ping
In most states, you can be arrested for DUI if you are in the vehicles driver seat with the key in the ignition. No need to wait for them to swerve at a few targets.
I would be more in favor of a proactive approach like if the undercover guy sees someone that is obviously drunk head for the door, stop them. Sitting in wait smacks of entrapment.
My advice for people out drinking and dining in bars and restaurants is to HALT all alcohol consumption for at least an hour prior to departure. Use that time to allow your body to metabolize any remaining alcohol in the bloodstream. Have a nice dessert and hot coffee before leaving so that your brain is nice and perky for the drive home.
Mallardx, did you fail the field sobriety test such as touching your nose or walking along a painted line?
~ Blue Jays ~
I'm skeptical that bar owners pay Fresno Cops to not target their customers. Anything is possible of course, but I don't think that is what is going on here.
You bet I am comparing them. Both make a personal decision to do something they know ( or at least should know) harms and kills people. Will you claim they do not have that in common?
It's a hysterical climate of fear. The puritanical fascists on both the left and the right, the hysterical MADD crowd, the revenue raisers, and all sort of evildoers are strange political bedfellows in the DUI industry.
That is how I reason it because it is a public safety issue. If the police knew someone was going to abduct a child, commit a rape, rob a store, or commit a murder they would stop him. It's public safety. I think that if someone is obviously impaired the police have an obligation not to let him get behind the wheel and drive.
I suspect that there's a "dirty little secret" that MADD was - and is - a creation of the bar association. Lawyers NEED crime.
What are the results of lowering the drinking limit from .10 to .08? Did it save lives? Does it justify the excess cost of policing and courts and does it justify the damage done to an individual's reputation when he was functioning quite well but slightly over the limit? Yet, under the old limit?
The answers are no and no. There was no need to drop the limit from sober to slightly more sober.
I know they passed this in New Jersey with absolutely no science to support it, the state cops said as much, but rather to satisfy the harpies.
Unless you are in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and a handful of other old style central cities with convenient mass transit and roaming cab service, it is impossible to get to a restaurant or a bar by any means other than driving or on foot.
Drinking and driving is a choice.
Funny, I thought this nation was based on personal freedom, not nanny state coercion.
Personal responsibility is indeed, the the crux of this.
You are right. Persons should be responsible for their actions. However, at night, many police stops are made for motor vehicle actions that have nothing to do with unsafe driving, such as a "broken tail light" (which often isn't broken).
People have had beer, wine, and liquor with their meals for millennia. The majority of these people do not abuse alcohol, nor do they drink to a point to which they would become legally intoxicated. Yet the excessive enforcement of DUI laws places a person who is under the legal limit for intoxication at risk of arrest and trial.
When people start using their heads and do not drive when they have been drinking there will be no money for the coffers that you like to center your opposition around.
If the intent were to end consumption of alcohol in public places, it would be easier simply to prohibit its sale in restaurants and bars. In a like vein, it would be easier to ban the sale of tobacco entirely if government is so concerned about the health effects of smoking or chewing tobacco.
However, neither action, though it would be a common sense reaction if the risks of DUI and tobacco are as high as MADD and the public health community say, will ever take place. State and local governments are too dependent on alcohol and tobacco taxes. The states recently fleeced the tobacco companies of billions of dollars. Local governments receive huge amounts of fine money from DUI cases. Defense attorneys rake in several thousand dollars per case for DUI trials.
The strategy for combating alcohol and tobacco appears to be geared to maximize revenues for politicians and attorneys, rather than end the problems. At least the Prohibitionists of the early 1900s were upfront and honest. That is more than can be said for MADD and anti-tobacco groups.
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