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?