Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.When the young driver was stopped at the sobriety checkpoint, La Vista Police Sgt. Bryan Waugh couldn't help noticing the Bud Light bottle sitting in the center console.
"Whose beer is that?'' Waugh asked.
"Oh, that's mine, but it's old,'' the driver said, despite the fact it was half full and cold.
Not surprisingly, he tested over the limit and was hauled off in cuffs.
How could he have been so brazen? Maybe he was just drunk and stupid.
But there's another likely explanation, too: He never believed he'd be caught.
Indeed, the chances of any drunken driver getting arrested are very slim, and most know it. As state policymakers look to end the tragedy and loss of life from DUIs, stepped-up enforcement is one area that often has received scant attention.
Sobriety checkpoints such as the recent one in La Vista are rarely used in Nebraska or most parts of the country, despite repeated studies over two decades that have labeled them one of the most effective deterrents to getting behind the wheel drunk.
All the tougher penalties passed by lawmakers earlier this year make little difference if drinking drivers don't ever believe they'll be arrested. According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistical study, the average drunken driver arrested for the first time had driven over the limit 87 times before.
"If you drive drunk 100 times and don't get caught, you don't think you'll ever be caught,'' said Jim Fell, a former research administrator at the safety administration.
Fell and other safety experts say sustained, well-publicized and visible enforcement is key to changing drivers' thinking about the threat of apprehension. And high-profile sobriety checkpoints such as the La Vista one can be a big part of that.
During checkpoints, officers stop either all vehicles or systematically select them — say, every third car — to check drivers for evidence of drinking. Those who show signs of drunkenness are pulled out of line for more testing; those who don't are waved on their way.
Advocates say checkpoints have proven to markedly influence public perceptions and behavior, sending a message that even if a drunken driver thought he could get to his destination by just driving carefully, he still could suddenly find himself rolling into a checkpoint.
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of 23 separate checkpoints found the strategy reduced alcohol-related deaths and injuries by an average of 20 percent. In Nebraska, that would amount to 10 to 15 lives every year, and in Iowa, 15 to 20 lives.
"If you do checkpoints a lot and do them right, publicize them and create a lot of buzz, you have changed the norm in the community,'' said University of Florida researcher Alexander Wagenaar. "People realize it's not worth the risk.''
Of course, increasing any type of law enforcement is difficult when a tough economy has stretched city and county finances thin.
State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, head of the committee of the Nebraska Legislature that passed a tough new DUI bill this year, agrees there needs to be more focus on enforcement. He plans to explore ways to get more dollars for checkpoints or other anti-DUI operations.
La Vista Police Chief Bob Lausten said he'd like to see the Omaha metropolitan area form a DUI law enforcement task force, something that's common in other big cities around the country. The agencies could combine forces and regularly run checkpoints and major "saturation patrol'' operations — perhaps several every month — and then send a message by publicizing the results.
"It is doable,'' he said. "It's just getting all the players to say OK.''
Fred Zwonechek, director of the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety, has few complaints overall with Nebraska law enforcement's commitment to stopping drunken driving. Indeed, a World-Herald analysis suggests that the number of drunken drivers the state's officers arrest annually — 13,000 — ranks as the fourth-highest in the nation on a per-capita basis.
But Zwonechek thinks increased use of sobriety checkpoints, in addition to the roving DUI patrols most agencies currently use, would further bring down the state's alcohol-related fatal crash rate.
On their face, checkpoints strike some as a violation of civil liberties. "To stop you and look at your papers, to me, is such an intrusive thing,'' said Mike Kelley, an Omaha attorney and bar owner who lobbies on behalf of the Responsible Beverage Operators of Nebraska.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court and most state courts — including Nebraska's — have upheld their legality. The law is somewhat murkier in Iowa, where courts have held officers can't do sobriety checkpoints because they aren't specifically authorized by law.
Iowa officers, though, can do "safety checkpoints'' to look for seat belt use or other safety violations, and if they suspect drunkenness in the course of those stops, they have cause to make arrests. Council Bluffs has conducted such checkpoints in the past.
Either way, in both Nebraska and Iowa, checkpoint use is, at best, sporadic. No local law enforcement agencies in Nebraska conduct them regularly. Most checkpoints that do happen are funded by federal highway safety grants awarded by the state. The grants pay the officers overtime to staff them.
City and county officers occasionally run checkpoints in Lancaster and Sarpy Counties. Lincoln now runs a couple a year after a long period of not doing checkpoints.
They also have been run by the Nebraska State Patrol and smaller agencies in less-populous counties around the state, including nearly two dozen run by the patrol last year across 11 Panhandle counties.
Omaha has been Nebraska's most notable exception on checkpoints. The Omaha Police Department — the state's largest law enforcement agency — doesn't run checkpoints. World-Herald files suggest the department last ran one a decade ago.
Omaha police do arrest some 3,500 drunken drivers a year, enough to produce one of the state's highest per-capita arrest rates.
But though alcohol-related fatalities are falling in Douglas County, as they are statewide, the county that is home to Omaha also appears to have a more serious drunken driving problem than Nebraska as a whole. Its rate of alcohol-related fatal crashes runs far above those of Lancaster County, Sarpy County or the state.
Omaha Police Chief Alex Hayes said Omaha doesn't run checkpoints because experience has shown they require more manpower than the department can dedicate, given limited budgets and all the other demands on officers' time.
"We believe our current methods are the most efficient and effective for the resources we have,'' he said.
At the same time, Hayes said, he understands the deterrent value of checkpoints and recently spoke with Lausten about joining in future metro checkpoint operations.
Fell said the argument that checkpoints require too much staffing is a common one. And, indeed, the use of high numbers of officers is the norm in Nebraska and most places. Some 18 La Vista, Sarpy County and State Patrol officers worked the recent La Vista checkpoint.
But Fell said low-staffing checkpoints, utilizing as few as three to five officers, have been shown to be as effective as checkpoints manned by 15 or more. The smaller checkpoints can't stop as many cars, but the increased visibility made possible by more frequent operations sends a strong deterrent message.
Zwonechek said the Crete, Neb., Police Department has done checkpoints with as few as three officers.
Fell said the argument against checkpoints he most often hears from police is that they don't produce enough arrests. But he said that's not the point.
"Law enforcement tends to want to get the bad guys, and I understand that,'' he said. "But you want to change attitudes.''
A study two decades ago in the Washington, D.C., metro area demonstrated how checkpoints can change drivers' perceptions.
Fairfax County in Virginia had a history of vigorously enforcing laws, with heavy patrols and high arrest rates. In Maryland's neighboring Montgomery County, officers made fewer arrests but used highly publicized sobriety checkpoints.
In surveys, people in both counties incorrectly believed their chances of being arrested were higher in Montgomery County.
Since then, Fairfax County has initiated its own checkpoints, running them about 25 times a year. A study by Fell suggested the change helped reduce the county's alcohol-related crashes by 11 percent.
Zwonechek said the state needs to do more to educate law enforcement that it's not the arrests, it's the deterrence.
But he added: "It's amazing how many people they still get in them, even when they announce they're going to do them.''
That was certainly true during La Vista's checkpoint on July 1, a Friday night. The four-hour operation netted seven DUI arrests — about double the typical number.
La Vista's checkpoints started about six years ago, after Lausten attended a Mothers Against Drunk Driving national conference that extolled their value. We can do that, he thought, and La Vista has, about twice a year since then.
In the latest operation, the officers were pulling all eastbound cars off Harrison Street onto 118th Street. There, a line of officers stood along the median like bellhops, approaching the stopped vehicles and asking to see license, registration and proof of insurance.
Those who produced the documents and showed no signs of impairment were thanked for their time — typically ater three minutes or less — and sent off. But it took less than 15 minutes for the operation to net its first drunken driver.
The man was driving with a blood-alcohol level of .17 percent — double the legal limit — even though a passenger riding with him was completely sober.
"It makes you scratch your head,'' said Waugh, who was supervising the operation. "People need to make better decisions.''
Waugh himself later got the driver with the Bud Light. In the backseat: two underage girls and a half bottle of Captain Morgan rum.
The driver was arrested for a litany of offenses: DUI, open container, procuring for minors and possession of marijuana. Both girls had been drinking and were cited for being minors in possession.
Over the course of the night, almost 1,200 drivers went through the checkpoint, and Waugh said he heard of only two complaints. He said many others expressed support, consistent with national surveys that have shown the public supports sobriety checkpoints.
The operation won't be La Vista's last. There's a checkpoint scheduled for this fall, during football season. And Waugh said La Vista is considering low-manpower checkpoints so they can be run more frequently with regular staffing. The more they're run, he said, the more they'll become a deterrent.
Officers were well aware the latest La Vista checkpoint was held less than a mile up the road from the scene of a tragic alcohol-related crash last August — one that claimed the life of a father taking his 8-year-old son to his first day of school.
Waugh was at the scene, and he said it was as difficult as any he's dealt with. The boy was upset, asking if his father was dead. You could smell the alcohol in the air.
Dr. Adam Smith, a 33-year-old physician at Creighton University Medical Center, was pronounced dead at the scene. He left behind a wife and three young sons.
Jason Laware, 28, who was nearly four times over the legal limit at the time of the head-on crash, pleaded guilty to felony motor vehicle homicide and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Waugh said days like that serve as a good reminder of why officers treat drunken driving as the serious crime it is.
"It's so important to try to deter and take these drunk drivers off the road.''
Contact the writer:
444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com
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