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Repeat DUI Offenders
I was looking at our county jail roster this morning. Of 100 inmates, 13 are in for driving under the influence. Three of those are for the third offense, two for a second offense, and four for intoxication manslaughter. Here in South Texas, multiple DUI offenses are somewhat common; they certainly aren’t unusual. I’m sure there are people who get one DUI and then enter a 12-step program, or simply have the willpower to never do it again. But a second offense needs to come with significant jail time; it’s proof that someone simply can’t control themselves. Last year, a guy driving a concrete pumper truck managed to kill a 5-year-old child on a school bus as well as a passerby in an SUV. Read some of the lurid details:
During an interview with DPS troopers after the Bastrop County crash, Hernandez admitted to smoking marijuana the night before the crash, sleeping only three hours and using cocaine after waking up the day of the crash. He also told troopers he took a 15 minute nap in his truck prior to leaving the job site before the crash.
Court documents show Hernandez was arrested in Travis County in 2006 for driving on a suspended license. He was later arrested twice in Hays County in 2023 by San Marcos police for domestic violence (family violence assault) in August and by Hays County deputies for criminal mischief in November, involving a fight with his estranged wife.
According to court records, Hernandez also failed two drug tests in the past, testing positive for marijuana in Dec. 2022 and cocaine in April 2023.
Court records say Hernandez’s commercial driving status is currently prohibited, but the state’s driver’s licensing agencies are not required to downgrade CDL Statuses until Nov. 2024 according to changes in the federal register.
Court documents also state the owner of the company Hernandez was working for, FJM Concrete LLC, told DPS he had not verified the status of Hernandez’s commercial driver’s license with the federal drug and alcohol clearing house database before hiring him.
I mean, that’s a massive failure at more than one level of government (and private industry). But I firmly believe that someone like Mr. Hernandez will only stop driving drunk and/or stoned if he is incarcerated. In my county, every DUI suspect gets a mandatory blood draw (judges are set up to sign a warrant 24/7 on rotation).
Would that just be a massive intrusion by government? Or a necessary response to a serious problem? I’ve read about cases where people get DUIs when they intentionally sleep in their car rather than driving drunk. The temptation to pick low-hanging fruit could easily make a more draconian program unworkable.
The photo is from a crash we worked on Valentine’s Day of 2020. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to get both occupants out of the car and the passenger died at the hospital. The driver was later charged with intoxication and manslaughter. I posted a conversation at the time about the massive hidden costs associated with those sorts of incidents.
The driver’s family bristled at any suggestion that he had been drinking. As it turns out, he sat in the car with his legs pinned, drinking alcohol from a red solo cup with blood and broken glass in it, talking to us the entire time.
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And how many of the DUI offenders are ILLEGAL ALIENS? These people shouldn’t be here in the first place! Throw their a$$es out of the country now!
Drinking from a red solo cup with blood and broken glass in it, while people worked to remove him and his passenger from the wreckage? If I’d been there, I’d slapped the cup from his hand! I’d been hard-pressed not to slap HIM, then scream at him, “Look what you did! Look at your passenger!” And his family take umbrage at him being accused of being a drunk? I think they might be in need of breathalyzer tests, don’t you?
Every DUII arrest I made involved repeat offenders. Oregon is one of 12 states that does not allow sobriety check points, but impaired drivers are easy to spot. One of my arrests involved a prescription drug. Unfortunately for the driver his name was not on the bottle of pills he was using.
I have been involved in two fatalities involving an impaired driver. That does not count the times I was called to provide traffic control for accidents for another officer’s arrest of an impaired driver. I have stopped drivers that were so intoxicated they could not stand up without my help when I got them out of the car.
The short version of the Oregon statute: “Is under the influence of intoxicating liquor, cannabis, psilocybin, a controlled substance or an inhalant;”
“Is under the influence of any combination of intoxicating liquor, cannabis, psilocybin, a controlled substance and an inhalant.”
Separating an alcoholic, or drug user from their vehicle is difficult. Repeat offenders will buy a cheap vehicle or junker and will keep driving while intoxicated. Real prison time doesn’t come until they cause serious physical injury, or a death with a vehicle.
I personally know someone that this happened to. There is always going to be overreach by somebody in government. However, My guess is these folks are not going to be your repeat offenders. Seems the bad accidents are mostly caused by those who have already been sited more than a few times, just like your example.
A friend of mine is a cop in Asheville, NC. He told me that a majority of his DUI’s these days are marijuana, not alcohol.
As gummys etc get more popular, it’s creating it’s own flood of DUI’s.
This is one reason that I think self-driving cars can’t get here soon enough.
Somebody has a gummy – they feel ok, but they’re not sure – just get in their car and tell it to take them home.
I’ll take my chances with the computer – I don’t want them driving.
Good for Oregon. I am not sympathetic to drunk driving, but sobriety checkpoints ought to be considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
That kind of stuff happens pretty often, especially when there are incentives for DUI arrests, not convictions. Tennessee has been in the news recently for over 600 cases over a short period of time of DUI arrests of people who blew/blood-tested 0.00. The numbers could easily be higher in other states, but they just haven’t made the news yet. Fortunately, at least sometimes the cops responsible get fired. But not often enough.
Is that a big county? Currently having four people in jail who caused DUI-caused deaths seems like a lot. Or maybe the drivers weren’t all residents of that county, or something.
And he starts to argue against it himself, doesn’t he? If impaired drivers are easy to spot, why would checkpoints be important?
No. Under 50 thousand people. But about 25 miles of I10 pass through. Typically 70 percent of inmates are not county residents.
I have a sister who will soon be convicted and sentenced for her fifth DUI. You will not be surprised to learn that she insists it wasn’t her fault – it was her on-again, off-again boyfriend’s fault. I don’t absolve him of responsibility, as he might have bought her drinks (I don’t actually know, but it is possible), but unless he held her down and poured the alcohol down her throat, she is to blame, not him. I expect she’ll get at least six months in jail, but she might get up to a year, and I believe she loses her license for good. We remaining sisters are relieved, because unless she’s institutionalized, she simply does not have the impulse control to stop.
50,000 I would consider on the big side. My county is about 3000.
Unfortunately that seems to mean she’ll only stop for 6 months, perhaps a year.
Frankly, that seems light for a 5-time offender.
And losing the license doesn’t seem to stop most people, even those without DUI.
Bastrop county. Where we will soon be living. I hope he’s not related to the Hernandezes I know.
I’m afraid you’re right.
I think the reason it seems light is that some of the DUIs go back a while, and some are in different states.
Is this a problem with public, instead of private, roads?
I guess I just wonder about the marijuana thing. I don’t smoke or ingest it but I have always heard that it stays testable in the system for a month or more. How do they determine that someone is actually impaired with it? Alcohol is straight forward. You have this much in your blood and you are impaired. I want impaired people off the road. I don’t want some poor schlub that swerved out of the way of a cat being screwed over because he had a gummy 3 weeks ago.
Alcohol can have some… unintended consequences… too. For example, someone may test over the limit for alcohol by the time they get to the police station, but they weren’t while driving and may have gotten home beforehand if left alone.
The reverse could happen too, but I’m less concerned with false-negatives than with false-positives.
Hmm, good question. Let’s say that police decide they want to search every car in a public parking lot. They have no reason to suspect any individual car of having any evidence of a crime in it, but odds are, if you search 100 cars you’re going to find something. Maybe an illegal weapon, drugs, an unsealed bottle of booze, something stolen, a stuffed bald eagle, something. Would you say they are free to do that because the cars are parked in public?
Randy, I think thats an oxymoron.
It would seem the same as randomly/whatever searching PEOPLE in public.
When we lived in Mississippi (82-87) they were ubiquitous. Out in the boonies and you would crest a hill and there would be a half dozen police cruisers. Never had an issue but it was pretty annoying. At that time the USAF base where we were stationed had road blocks on weekend nights at the exits, but if you seemed questionable you’d get a free ride home on Uncle Sam, no questions or further action.
Link
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6761697/
https://health.cornell.edu/sites/health/files/pdf-library/Why-Biology-Matters-Drinking.pdf
As far as the hypotheticals of a vehicle search there are premises open to the public such as a shopping mall or grocery store. Then there are private gated communities that maintain their roads. Add into that the difference between violations versus a crime that apply to a vehicle search. Valid Search and Seizure actions are more complex than you might realize.
Just to clarify something.
Having a blood alcohol level less than the legal limit does not mean you aren’t (and can’t be convicted for) being impaired.
The legal limit just means there is a legal presumption you are impaired without requiring other evidence. You can still be judged to be impaired when your BAC is lower if you demonstrate certain driving behaviors.
True. But something needs to happen to cops who arrest people for DUI after “blowing” 0.00. And for not apologizing etc when they get a 0.00 blood test too, not only for alcohol but also drugs. None of these competitions for most DUI arrests, etc. FALSE arrests, and not just for DUI, need to be punished severely.
One never knows; I had a friend who got silly-drunk on one beer. He wouldn’t have triggered the blood alcohol test, but would definitely be impaired. Fortunately, he had the good sense not to drive after having a beer.
“Triggering” over the .08 isn’t really the issue in many cases. As has been mentioned already, .08 is just a presumptive thing. The problem is when people get arrested for “having glassy eyes” etc with no other evidence or even with CONTRARY evidence. Perhaps because there’s a contest for who gets the most DUI ARRESTS in a month, doesn’t matter if they’re actually impaired.