News

December 28, 2009

Drivers use technology to avoid sobriety checkpoints

Trying to elude a DUI arrest, police say many tweet locations of checkpoints.

BRAD BRANAN McClatchy Newspapers

FRESNO, Calif. — In a ritual nearly as familiar as Santa Claus and crowded stores, police agencies have again stepped up enforcement of drunken-driving laws this holiday season.

Studies have found sobriety checkpoints reduce alcohol-related crashes because they create awareness about the risk of arrest.

But some public-safety officials say that message might be lost on the group most at risk — young drivers. Trying to elude arrest for drunken driving, young people use technology to keep each other informed about the location of sobriety checkpoints, said Sgt. Dave Gibeault, head of the Fresno Police Department’s traffic unit.

Tools include Twitter, text messages and an iPhone application specifically designed to identify checkpoints, Gibeault said.

Statistics provide a cause for concern: The number of people killed or injured in alcohol-related accidents during the holiday season in Fresno County has hovered around 34 for the last four years, according to state figures — stubbornly resisting high-profile enforcement campaigns.

Gibeault thinks young people are drinking more, in part because clubs aimed at that population have proliferated. And young drinkers can check their cell phones to find out where police are stopping motorists, he said.

His own daughter often sends him text messages about where she’s heard he’s running checkpoints.

On Twitter, a free electronic message service that runs on both cell phones and computers, drivers can warn each other with “tweets” listing intersections where police have set up checkpoints.

Fresno attorney Brian Andritch sees nothing wrong with efforts to spread the word about checkpoints. “I don’t see how it’s any different than what police are doing in promoting checkpoints,” he said in an interview.

Gibeault said it’s one thing to spread the word about checkpoints in general, which police want. It’s quite another to provide information that might encourage people to drive drunk, he said.

Wayne Ziese, a spokesman for the California Office of Traffic Safety, said he’s heard a lot of stories about young people using technology to avoid drunken driving arrests.

“Young people continue to be the most dangerous drivers,” he said. “They will continue to drink and drive until they have families and realize they have something to lose.”

Ziese said law enforcement hasn’t figured out how to respond to the more immediate and precise information about checkpoints circulating on the Web and via cell phones. The Office of Traffic Safety provides funding to help with such enforcement, including more than $5 million to Fresno County agencies in the last five years.

“New technology brings us new challenges, whether it’s warfare or DUI,” Ziese said.

Saturation patrols — in which police focus on troubled areas with a lot of officers on the move — are more effective than checkpoints at catching drunken drivers, Gibeault said.

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