The New York Times reports that a Utah Highway Patrolwoman, Lisa Steed, has been fired and a lawsuit claims that she falsified dozens of DUI arrests in order to “burnish her credentials” with her superiors. The lawyers representing some of the falsely arrested said that they alone had been contacted by over 40 individuals who had been arrested for DUI, locked up overnight, had their cars towed and had to pay hefty legal bills despite the fact that blood tests eventually showed that they were completely drug and alcohol free. The number of actual victims is unknown, but presumed to be in the hundreds.
Trooper Steed apparently “made a career” of pulling people over and giving them DUI citations, and was named “Trooper of the Year” in 2007. She would say the people smelled like alcohol and that they failed field “sobriety” tests and cuff them for a DUI. Turns out, many of those people didn’t drink anything, at all, or had not had enough to drink to be impaired. She was also arresting people for driving under the influence of drugs, like marijuana, but blood tests showed that those people had no drugs in their systems, whatsoever.
This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, this kind of story comes up quite frequently, and often in the DUI realm. The majority of police officers are honest and are doing a difficult job, often under difficult circumstances, and they are doing it for the right reasons. Police officers have enormous power in our society. A lot of times, all it takes is the word of an officer to get someone locked up and convicted. Judges, prosecutors and jurors tend to take officers at their word and want to believe that they are always honest are completely disinterested witnesses in DUI cases. This leaves a lot of room for the minority of officers who are less than honest, or who might be self-interested, to abuse that authority and the wide lattitude that we give officers. This is particurly dangerous in the DUI world.
Most Kansas DUI cases rest to a large extent on the subjective opinions of police officers. An officer can say that someone smelled like alcohol and there is no way to disprove that. Bloodshot eyes is a subjective call, and you generally can’t see a person’s eyes on a video, if there is a video of the arrest, at all. The field sobriety tests are almost completely subjective and what some officers would consider “passing”, another one will consider “failing”. The other evidence in DUI cases – slurred speech, slow to pull over, fumbling for the driver’s license, lethargy, etc – is often completely subjective.
Probably no other area of law enforcement offers more opportunity for self-promotion and carries the potential for self-interest than does DUI enforcement. Kansas DUI cases provide a quick means for officers to rise in the ranks of the police. A “Top Gun” DUI officer can rack up a lot of arrests, which means a lot of money for their city court which engenders a lot of goodwill from those in power in the city. They get their picture taken with plaques like Trooper Sneed up there. Kansas DUI cases, as well as DUI cases in every other state, include not only the criminal case, but also the administrative driver’s license case, and that means a whole lot more court time. DUI officers work nights. Court is during the day. Thus, there is a lot more overtime pay for the officers associated with DUI cases. In many police agencies, the DUI officers make a lot more money than any other department of the police department. In fact, some police officer positions are entirely funded by grants, the renewal of which is completely dependent upon proving that the officer is getting a lot of DUI arrests. In other words, the officer’s job literally depends on arresting a lot of people for DUI. Kansas DUI checklanes are almost always completely funded by grants which, to obtain, require the demonstration of the ability to make a lot of DUI arrests. The money involved in DUI enforcement has given rise in some quarters to a level of predation that is shocking.
This is story from Utah is the exception, not the rule. But, the danger posed by those who would abuse the immense authority vested in them is great. It takes vigilance on behalf of police administration, courts, prosecutors and, of course, defense attorneys to root it out. Defense attorneys are often the only people policing the police, and criminal defense attorneys have been responsible for stopping a lot of abuse in America. This is rarely acknowledged and we never see the mayor of a city handing a plaque to a defense attorney for the good that they are doing for the community. A Kansas DUI lawyer has to be willing to flip over every rock, know what to look for, and what to do with it when he finds something – whether it be intentional misconduct or just a simple police mistake with no bad faith involved.