Small DUI checks net good results

Fifty-one smaller checkpoints have resulted in 235 arrests since May.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Ohio State Highway Patrol has started operating some DUI checkpoints with fewer troopers, enabling the state to staff more sites and resulting in more drunken-driving arrests since May than in all of 2005.
The patrol is operating "low-manpower" checkpoints with five to 10 troopers each, in addition to the full-blown checkpoints that use 25 to 30 officers.
Law enforcement agencies use DUI checkpoints to stop traffic over a given period of time in an attempt to detect motorists who have been drinking.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been pushing low-manpower checkpoints and, in April, issued guidelines on how to implement them.
Reason for change
"This move to low-manpower checkpoints is actually a pragmatic effort to get more agencies to do them and in particular to encourage law enforcement agencies in smaller communities to do them," said Rob Foss, senior research scientist for the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center.
But the switch also enables larger police agencies to hold more checkpoints.
In Ohio, the patrol conducted 30 full-blown checkpoints in 2005 and arrested 139 motorists for operating a vehicle under the influence.
Since May of this year, the patrol has held 51 low-manpower checkpoints, resulting in 235 arrests. Of those arrests, 108 were made at the checkpoints and the rest were made by officers patrolling near the checkpoints.
"It's absolutely working for us," said Sgt. Jon Gray, a patrol spokesman.
One patrol post, in Wilmington, has held 10 checkpoints since Memorial Day and plans to set up checkpoints weekly, a dramatic jump over the six to 10 checkpoints it has done each year in the past.
"The bigger checkpoints involve a lot of overtime and a lot of manpower and are cumbersome to put together. So they are not done as often or as frequently," said Lt. Jeff Greene, who spearheaded the low-manpower checkpoint effort at the Wilmington post.
He said troopers in his district of 10 southwest Ohio counties will continue to take part in full-blown checkpoints for the patrol as well as full-blown checkpoints with other law enforcement agencies.
Big effect
Foss said low-manpower checkpoints are just as effective as those that are more highly staff, as long as the efforts are publicized.
"There is ample evidence that sobriety checkpoints are an effective way of reducing drinking and driving if they are done right," Foss said. "It doesn't matter how many officers you have there. What you really need is the presence."
West Virginia, where 70 percent of police departments have fewer than 10 officers, began using low-manpower checkpoints three years ago.
J.D. Meadows, law enforcement liaison for the West Virginia Governor's Highway Safety Program, said more smaller police agencies are now doing checkpoints.
"It's working out really well," Meadows said. "And we cut the cost of a DUI checkpoint in half."
Meadows said low-manpower checkpoints are more mobile and unpredictable and can be moved to several different locations on the same night.
Although not attributable to checkpoints alone, the number of people killed in West Virginia crashes in which at least one person had been drinking fell from 179 in 2002 to 127 last year.
Meadows said low-manpower checkpoints are often shorter in duration than traditional ones since the officers must transport drunken drivers to jail as they are arrested. And, he said, sometimes the officers will only stop motorists on one lane of the highway.
"One would think you are getting half as many drunk drivers with half the people for half the cost," he said. "But you're still informing and making aware all of the people."
Support
Doug Scoles, executive director of the Ohio chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, believes checkpoints deter drunken driving and that low-manpower checkpoints work just as well as the full-blown ones.
Jeff Gamso, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, has no problem with the checkpoints as long as they are done properly and not discriminatory.
"What you can't do, for instance, is set up a DUI checkpoint and then only pull over people who look Hispanic," Gamso said.
Candi Jones, 42, of the Dayton suburb of Trotwood, has never been stopped at a checkpoint, but favors them, even if it means being inconvenienced.
"Given the fact that it's being done for the greater good, I personally would be willing to be stopped more often," she said.