Whipped Cream Difficulties

We haven’t checked in with our old friend, Austin police chief Art Acevedo, recently. What’s he been up to?

Oh, look, he’s been down at the Capitol, pushing for new legislation. What’s on Art’s mind?

…the idea behind a new offense of “driving while ability impaired” — DWAI — would cover drivers whose blood-alcohol content is between 0.05 and 0.07.

Yes. Our chief of police is unhappy that DWI arrests have dropped (6,963 in 2008 to 6,166 in 2009, according to the Statesman) even though enforcement has been stepped up, and wants to create a brand new offense that the APD can charge folks with.

In addition…

…Acevedo also supported mandatory blood samples for many repeat offenders, allowing police to operate DWI checkpoints and adding a new offense of aggravated DWI for drivers who are found to have a breath-alcohol reading of 0.18 or higher.

Question: is there any evidence that a large number of accidents are caused by people who are at or above a 0.05 BAC, but below a 0.08 BAC?

Data on how many of the drivers arrested in Austin were found with a 0.05 to 0.07 blood-alcohol level was not immediately available from Austin police.

Question: doesn’t Texas state law allow the police to arrest drivers who show evidence of impairment, no matter what their BAC is?

And here’s an interesting pull quote:

While enforcement is generally up over just a few years ago, police and prosecutors have increasingly complained that Texas’ system of punishing drunken drivers is overloaded — perhaps even broken.

The reason is that thousands of drivers arrested for DWI are being allowed to plead guilty to lesser crimes such as reckless driving or obstructing a roadway. Such plea deals allow them to escape alcohol counseling and driver’s license restrictions, according to testimony before the Senate panel in July by police officials, prosecutors and judges.

So, basically, we’re not even effectively prosecuting many of the people we do arrest, and the answer is to create a brand new category of offense that we can prosecute even more people for?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Clippings, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.