Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Mike Loveland searches the four-lane street, watching for the telltale signs of a drunken driver — hugging the yellow line, driving too slow, swerving, not using the blinker, staring straight ahead.
Ravell Call, Deseret News
Trooper Mike Gerard handcuffs a Utah DUI suspect in the Salt Lake area.
These are the front lines where police try to corral impaired drivers before they add to the statistics with another drunken-driving death.
Loveland spots a late-model truck struggling to stay in its own lane and activates his police lights. Almost two hours later, he leaves the Adult Detention Complex after booking the truck's driver into jail for investigation of driving under the influence.
"We can get drunks every day," Loveland said as he steers his patrol car through an intersection. "There's times when we could not arrest them and bring them in fast enough."
Statistics show police are arresting drunken drivers more often. According to the Administrative Office of the Utah State Courts, there were 14,118 DUI arrests in 1999, compared with 13,100 in 1998 and 12,884 in 1997.
"We are pulling over a lot of people who have prior DUIs," Sandy Police Lt. Kevin Thacker said.
But all too often, police say, things slow down after the arrest. Clogged courts, frequent plea bargains and lenient sentences are frustrating to police who pull over drunken drivers. For all the tough talk, prosecutors and judges aren't keeping drunken motorists from driving again, police say.
"It's hard for the cop on the street," Salt Lake Police Sgt. Dave Askerlund said.
A South Salt Lake officer responding to an informal Deseret News survey said he's never had a DUI case go to trial in the 12 years he's been working. Another said he hadn't been to trial after eight years of pulling over drunken drivers.
A Salt Lake police officer responding to the same survey said of the 200-plus DUI citations he's issued, only three have ever gone to trial.
"It's no secret at the police department that the city prosecutor's office in the past has made a mockery of the police department's attempt to make a difference," one Salt Lake officer said.
(See Tuesday's Deseret News for attorneys' thoughts on Utah's repeat DUI offender problem.)
"I have had DUIs that are three years old and are still in the court system," said South Salt Lake officer Scott Daniels. By the time a case makes it to court, prosecutors usually plea-bargain the case because an officer's account of the incident isn't as good as it was three years ago.
Prosecutors allow plea bargains, and most judges accept them to expedite their crowded calendars, police argue.
"I think the judicial system is caught between a rock and a hard spot because there are so many DUI arrests and the jails are overcrowded already," Thacker said.
And when it's time to sentence repeat offenders, police say too many judges drop the ball.
"I have never had a tough judge on DUIs," one Salt Lakeofficer wrote. "They all talk tough (like a verbal reprimand means anything to these offenders) but never deliver up a decent sentence."
But sometimes even taking the driver's license away doesn't work. The wild card with most repeat drunken drivers is that they seem to think they can still get away with it. Take away their license, they'll drive without it. Impound their car, they'll borrow a friend's.
Repeat offenders know the system too well. Many offenders are not afraid to go to court the second time around and continue to drive drunk because they don't believe they'll go to jail if they're caught, Thacker said.
Although the majority of officers say the problem of allowing repeat offenders on the road lies with attorneys and judges, there are steps law-enforcement officers also need to take to make sure DUI arrests stick.
Most important, officers need to fill out all of their paperwork properly, Thacker said. Even though it sounds simple, if an officer takes shortcuts in filling out a DUI report, the suspect could get off.
A simple mistake by an officer, such as not checking the right box on a police report, can ruin a case.
"People end up getting their license back because of stupid technicalities," Askerlund admitted.
An officer may know every pertinent detail about a DUI incident, but unless that officer fills out his report properly, the defense will probably win in court, Thacker said.
Loveland suggests officers should take a more active interest in DUI legislation.
"I've spent some time up there at the Capitol during the session," Loveland said. "We do have people who work for our department who get involved up there every year."
And during last year's Legislature, the impound fee for drunken driving went from $100 to $200.
Beyond that, officers say, they'll simply keep trying to catch drunks.
Daniels, who specialized in DUI cases for four years, said people who chronically drink and drive will typically drive 80 times a year with a blood-alcohol level over the legal limit, according to statistics he has seen.
Craig Allred, director of the Utah Highway Safety Office, said a person who chronically drinks and drives will drive impaired 200 to 2,000 times before he is detected, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington, D.C.
Statistics from the National Highway Safety Office also show that after midnight, one out of every four drivers on the road is impaired, Allred said.
West Valley officers average about 30 DUI arrests per month, Lt. Steve Sandquist said.
"One girl I stopped said she was overdue (to get caught driving drunk)," Loveland said. "You do get people who say, 'I wasn't going to hurt anybody tonight.' "
But the accidents do happen.
Salt Lake police officer Anthony Brereton arrived on one accident scene to find a mother with several crying children standing on the side of the road, their car demolished in the intersection. The woman who hit them was still dazed when police arrived, and authorities found an empty bottle of vodka in her car, Brereton said.
"She was oblivious to what she had just done," Brereton said.
When the case went before the judge, the woman's attorney pleaded for mercy because the woman had just received her fourth DUI, Brereton said.
"It pretty much requires someone to kill someone before the courts open up their eyes and make any attempt in punishing those offenders," Brereton said.
Whatever the courts' caseload, Sandquist said he believes "some things you can't overlook. Until we take it seriously and stop letting them plead down (to a lesser charge), we are going to have a problem."
