DUI Checklanes - Kansas DUI & Missouri DWI Journal

The following information is posted by Kansas DUI lawyer Jay Norton. Please return to this page periodically for new information regarding DUI & DWI laws in Kansas and Missouri.  This page displays all of Mr. Norton's submissions concerning DUI checklanes.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Not One, But Three Failed Check Lanes In One Night

The KCMO Police Department ran three (3) separate DUI checklanes in one single night last week on July 2, 2009, at three separate locations. These three checklanes yielded a whopping total of three (3) DUI arrests. Now, each one of these checklanes was staffed by a minimum of 10 police officers, and often more like 30. So, on July 2, we had somewhere between 30 and 90 police officers manning 3 separate roadblocks, stopping law-abiding citizens in three different locations around the city, all to arrest 3 people. Holy smokes! Every one of those officers was being paid overtime. The police chief likes to say that the money for these checklanes is provided by the federal government as if there is no taxpayer money used to pay for all of the overtime and equipment for these debacles. However, in addition to municipal taxes paid to the city, I pay federal taxes, too, so it doesn't make me feel much better that it was just my federal taxes wasted on this. You cannot tell me that 30 to 90 police officers could not be put to better use than to round up 3 alleged drunk drivers (remember: they are presumed innocent and some or all may acquitted of the DUI accusation). Blocking 3 separate locations, with 30-90 officers, squandering all of the citizenry's money, and then providing almost no benefit to the community seems un-American on weekend that our country celebrates the Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of the King of England.

Monday, July 7, 2008
Effectiveness of DUI Checkpoints Questioned

There was a large, front-page article in the Kansas City Star on July 5, 2008, which went into some depth about the ineffectiveness of DUI checklanes. The article noted that all metro KC checklanes averaged a DUI arrest rate of 1.6%. The article notes that DUI saturation patrols have an arrest rate of 6.1%. Checklanes are costly, time-consuming and ineffective. This is something I have written about over and over again here, but it is good to see that the mainstream press is covering this issue. As also noted in the article, states that do not allow checklanes have seen their alcohol-related fatalities decline over the last 10 years, while half of the states that do allow checklanes have seen an increase in alcohol-related fatalities.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
DUI Saturation Patrol March 14

The Overland Park , Kansas, Police Department is planning a DUI Saturation Patrol on Friday, March 14, 2008. I guess it is that time of year again. I am sure there will be many checklanes to follow. However, a saturation patrol means that there will be more officers out patrolling the streets between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., and they will be pulling motorists in Overland Park over for every little reason they can think of and then sniffing them to see if they have been drinking. I have always advocated the use of saturation patrols instead of checklanes because at least the people getting pulled over have theoretically done SOMETHING wrong to justify the stop. Whereas, in checklanes 98% or so of the people stopped were not violating any laws whatsoever. I would think that saturation patrols would be more effective than checklanes, as well. We'll see. The numbers on this will be interesting. It is no coincidence that this Kansas DUI enforcement effort is being held on a Friday during the Big 12 Tournament here in Kansas City, and during the weekend that St. Patrick's Day celebrations will be underway. I will try to report back when the numbers on this are released. There is more info here.

Monday, September 24, 2007
Checklanes

Jackson County, Missouri had another questionable DUI checklane over the weekend. This one involved 9 different law enforcement agencies. I don't know how many officers were involved, but I would suspect somewhere between 18 and 40. For all of the effort of the 9 agencies and multiple police officers, they arrested only 4 people for DUI. Remember, they may or may not get convictions on all 4 cases. This checklane had about a 1.3% success rate.

I missed a story about an Overland Park, Kansas DUI checklane from August. I don't have the numbers from that checklane, but I recall hearing that it had around a 2% success rate. The reporter of the story linked above was invited out to witness the checklane. There were 40 different law enforcement officers there and they arrested 11 people for DUI. The reporter describes the scene as disorganized. Having handled a lot of DUI cases in Kansas that come from checklanes, I know that not all 11 of these cases will end in a conviction.

So, again, considering that 40 officers were paid overtime to staff the Overland Park DUI checklane, there was a lot of police equipment put to use (cars, video recorders, breath test machines, PBT's, lights, flashlights, etc), jail staff was also likely involved, and not to mention the inconvenience to the 97% or more who were following the law completely, was it really worth it?

In the Kansas City, Missouri DUI checklane there were 9 different agencies paying a lot of officers overtime, again using all of the equipment necessary to run a checklane and involving other staff (and later prosecutors and court staff), all for 4 misdemeanor DUI cases. Certainly, if you sent 20 officers out with instructions to look for drunk drivers there would be more than 4 people arrested. Certainly, they would have more than a 1.3% success rate. Something smells funny here and I think it must be the money that law enforcement is receiving from MADD and NHTSA to run these things. Otherwise, what would the point be?

Friday, August 10, 2007
Kansas Checklanes No Better Than Missouri

Olathe conducted a checklane on July 28, 2007 and stopped a whopping 1,290 vehicles. They got 14 DUI arrests. That is about 1.1%. Another way to look at it is that they had a 98.9% failure rate. 1,276 people who weren't intoxicated were stopped. I would also estimate that about one-third of the cases will not end in a conviction once they make their way through the court system. So, the actual failure rate will be much higher. I don't often see the results of the Kansas checklanes, so it is interesting to see that these things are just as ineffective in Kansas as they are in Missouri.

Monday, June 25, 2007
I Can't Help It, Another Failed Checklane!

I am going to try to lay off the checklanes. Frankly, it is taxpayers who should be getting outraged. But, I can't help talking about this one. The KCMO police department held a checklane last weekend. They stopped 2,541 vehicles. They got 15 DUI arrests. That is a less than .6% success rate. Remember, all 15 people are presumed innocent. Several of them probably actually are and may beat their case. So, the ultimate success rate may be lower than .6%. 2,526 innocent vehicles were detained. Drunk drivers are dangerous. However, guns kill far more people in Kansas City than drunk drivers ever will. I can't imagine the police raiding 2500 houses for guns without probable cause. Especially if these were the kind of numbers they were producing.


Monday, May 7, 2007
More Checkpoint Number Crunching

There were two checkpoints in KCMO this past Cinco De Mayo weekend. The first one, located at Ward Parkway and West Brush Creek Parkway (right by Pem Day School) stopped a whopping 2,200 cars and arrested a dismal 17 for DUI. The second checklane, located at 103rd and State Line, stopped 530 cars and got 5 DUI arrests. Both of these checklanes had a less than a 1% DUI arrest rate (about .8%). That means that, combined, a total of 2,708 people who were not drunk got stopped and delayed by these checkpoints. Over 99% of the drivers were not intoxicated. Wow.

Monday, March 19, 2007
St. Patrick's Checklanes

On St. Pat's in Kansas City, you can count on a great parade, packed bars in Westport and elsewhere, and a massive DUI checklane set up at about 39th and Southwest Trafficway to snarl traffic in midtown. This year, the checklane ran from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. (7 hours). 1,439 cars were stopped. There were 37 DUI arrests (plus they found an illegal alien). That is a rate of 2.57%. The Independence police also ran a checklane and after stopping 615 cars, got 5 DUI's. That is less than 1%. Combined, the checklanes stopped 2,012 people were NOT intoxicated. Given how easy it is to find intoxicated persons on St. Patrick's Day in Kansas City, these numbers seem abysmal. Then again, maybe the problem is not as bad as they tell us it is. One young driver in Independence tried to flee the checklane, resulting in her crashing into another vehicle and seriously injuring the other driver. There was a similar incident in midtown last year in which the fleeing driver crashed and killed his passenger. So, maybe the checklanes are causing more problems than they are solving? The murder rate in Kansas City is out of control. There are a host of other social problems plaguing the city. Is this the most effective use of law enforcement? These kind of questions about checklanes are nothing new on this blog. Until the money stops flowing in from special interest groups, I suspect we will continue to see the flashing lights and orange cones hidden behind bends in the road and at the bottom of hills and a large concentration of law enforcement resources waiting there to stop the 98% of us who are driving legally.

Monday, August 7, 2006
Cost to Benefit Ratio Part II
See Part I

A Missouri DUI Checkpoint in North Kansas City this past weekend netted a total of 2 DUI arrests out of 1,228 vehicles stopped. That is 1 out of every 614 drivers. Here is a link to the story:

http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2006/08/slowestever_dui.html

So, how long are citizens going to continue to pay the enormous expenses associated with conducting these checklanes? How long will citizens continue to be subjected to long lines of traffic so that they can be subjected to questioning by the police when they have done absolutely nothing wrong? 1,226 innocent people shook down by the police is not acceptable to me. Clearly, more than 2 drunk drivers (assuming those arrested actually were) could have been removed from the streets by normal law enforcement.

The DUI arrest percentage at this checklane was something like 0.2%. Most checklanes average between 1 and 3% of drivers being DUI. Are there any other government programs that are 97% inneffective that we will continue to support month after month, year after year? The numbers just don't add up.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Cost to Benefit Ratio Part I

The stats are in from a Johnson County, Kansas DUI checklane last weekend. 1,226 cars were stopped and 11 DUI arrests were made. That is less than 1%. Here is a link to the KC Crime Scene Blog's entry on this issue: http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2006/05/joco_dui_991_of.html

This checklane involved officers from 6 different agencies, including the Sheriff's Department and Highway Patrol. 99.1% of the drivers detained and delayed in this checklane were sober. Considering the manpower required to stop that many cars, and the fact that most of the officers were probably being paid overtime to work this roadblock, you've got to wonder whether this is effective law enforcement or not. Considering that the Johnson County Sheriff's Department just got a Mobile DUI van to take to future checklanes, for the sum of about $86,000.00, I assume the checklanes won't stop any time soon.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006
DUI Checklane Results

Apparently, the DUI checklane scheduled for Feb. 17 , 2006 was cancelled because it was cold that night. March 6, 2006, however, was a gorgeous night and a much more pleasant climate for conducting Kansas City's first DUI checklane of the year. In my last post I remarked that out of the hundreds of vehicles stopped, there was usually a 1-2% DUI arrest rate. The results of the March 6 DUI checklane were apparently 476 vehicles stopped and 12 DUI arrests. That is about a 2.5% rate for DUI arrests. We will never know how many of those 12 actually get convicted of DUI. I am sure the KCMO police will do better with their St. Patrick's Day checklane, but still, I think that law enforcement could be more effective using other tools at their disposal.

As I suggested last time, a saturation patrol might be more effective. In a saturation patrol, the police go out and strictly enforce the traffic laws. Lo an behold, they often find that people breaking the traffic laws also happen to be intoxicated. In fact, the police scrapped their February 17 checkland and conducted a saturation patrol instead. The numbers on that were 15 stopped cars for 4 DUI's. Thus, the percentage for the saturation patrol was about 26%. What is more, all of the people who were obeying the law and driving safely were allowed to proceed on their way without being delayed in a constitutionally dubious checklane.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Checklanes (AKA Roadblocks)

You know spring is upon us when local police departments start to set up drunk driving checklanes (aka roadblocks) around the Kansas City metropolitan area. The Kansas City, Missouri Police Department has announced that there will be such a DUI checklane in midtown KCMO on Friday, February 17, 2006, between 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. These DUI checklanes are popular with law enforcement in Kansas and Missouri. I have never really understood why. The police force will have dozens of officers on duty, many getting paid overtime, stopping hundreds if not thousands of cars and backing up traffic for blocks. Usually, there are only a handful of arrests. Recent DUI checklanes in Johnson County, Kansas that I am aware of have yielded about a 1 or 2% arrest rate, and those were the good ones. Compare those statistics with the statistics from MADD that say something like 50% of the vehicles on the road after midnight are driven by persons who are under the influence of alcohol. I don't think so. Read the Metro Section of the KC Star on Saturday, February 18, and do the numbers. That won't add up.

Checklanes are also problematic because there is no evidence that the driver was having any difficulty operating their car, since they were not stopped for any traffic violations. This means the case will be harder for the prosecutor to prove in court. Also, checklanes are a constitutionally thorny subject since, in the "Land of Freedom", we don't expect to be randomly stopped by the police when we have done nothing wrong. Checklanes almost always draw ltiigation concerning whether they were set up in a constitutionally acceptable manner. This requires more time and money of our courts.

If the police force took the same number of officers theysend to the DUI checklane (probably 30 to 40) and sent them out on a drunk driving "saturation patrol" in Kansas or Missouri, they could probably each make at least one, if not more, arrests each for DUI just by enforcing the traffic laws between 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. They would certainly arrest more intoxicated drivers than they will ever find by doing a checklane. This would seem to increase public safety and remove more allegedly drunk drivers from the road.

So why do the police undertake the massive DUI roadblocks that jam up traffic, tie up courts, cost a lot of money, and have low yields for arrests? Law enforcement officers will say that it is an important part of educating the public and deterring potential drunk drivers. However, the 98% who are sober going through the checklane obviously don't need educating or deterring. The popularity of the DUI checklane may be because the agencies are given large federal grants to conduct the checklanes. There is a lot of money given away by the government for these things and everyone likes money.

I don't really know why DUI checklanes have remained popular with the police despite the growing evidence that they are not very effective. But, they won't go away anytime soon. The almost legendary St. Patrick's Day checklane in midtown KCMO will be set up next month right next to the place where everyone is encouraged to come and drink themselves silly. At least the odds of catching drunk drivers in a checklane go up in that situation to the point where it can almost be justified when weighed against the time, money and inconvenience that will also be required of the law-abiding tax payers.

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