re: Walker PD to conduct DWI checkpoints.

Reminder.

DWI checkpoints are all about public awareness campaigns and nothing more. Terribly ineffective use of resources. Oftentimes the officers are working from grant money, so they don't care about effective/ineffective - they're making detail rates. I remember one checkpoint made contact with close to 1,000 people and made 3 arrests, dumb.

Far better to have a DWI Task force with 4 or 5 roving units, specifically targeting DWI stops in known hot spots. The Intoxilizer van could rove around and travel to the location of the stop. If your jail is nearby, the AO could do the transport. If not, bring out a transport van and load the arrestees up and bring several to jail at once.

In this age of cell phones, once the roadblock is set up, people call their friends coming from bars and tell them where to avoid it. It's just stupid. Oh, and most departments do not pursue turnarounds. So, if you're drunk out your mind and see what looks like a roadblock up ahead, you are way better off saying frick dat and hooking a u-turn.

quote:

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BS, there is 1 reason dept's do checkpoints. They get money. Far and away the most tickets written at dwi checkpoints are for expired inspection stickers and lapsed insurance, they almost never nab any drunk drivers.
The cops that run them are paid extra duty wages to be there and many times the Depts will get federal money also.

It's a money grab, nothing more.

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Yeah, but you could just have regular grant funded traffic task forces to get ticket revenue. If a DWI task force is writing tons of minor traffic tickets, it's going to slow up traffic pretty bad. Maybe if you are in a rural area, they do this. I've only seen them in JP on highways and major streets and the backups are already real bad. Never been asked for DL, registration, or insurance and once I even had an expired brake tag and the deputy didn't even look. Every time I've been through one, they just ask 'have you been drinking'...it's obvious when you haven't been...then just got waived through.

Yeah the Bulldog was a hotspot. As well as taking Dalrymple to East Shore Dr to get back on to the interstate after game days. It’s almost been 10 years since the last DWI checkpoint in BR. But yeah, it’s all about funding, which appears to have run out.