Blue Oregon- the defender of addicts and killers. Sheesh....There's no constitutional right to operate a motor vehicle without proper regulation. How did it become a progressive cause to defend alcohol addicts and killers from being stopped before they kill or maim someone?

Bill R - After comparing your comment to Kari's what I hear you saying is... "Don't confuse me with your facts, I already have an opinion."

Thanks Kari for great facts. I don't think anyone on either side of this issue is in support of drunk driving. The issue is how to reduce it. If sobriety check points don't work, then let's find out what does.

A few ideas: A:) Stricter sentencing for 1st offenders

B:) Progressive punishments for higher blood alcohol readings. Starting at .05, and as your blood alcohol climbs, so does the consequence.

C:) Breathalyzers in new cars to start them. We have added plenty of safety items to new cars over the years. Seatbelts save lives, so why not a breathalyzer?

D:) Bars become required to have the bouncer at the door administer a breathalyzer before you leave. This is a tough one because it puts the responsibility on the bar owner.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. I'm sure there are flaws in all of them, but there's some merit in each one as well.

No one supports driving intoxicated but many people believe the government is walking all over the rights of it's citizens. That being said there are now only 10 states that don't have checkpoints (Texas just voted them in yesterday). The Supreme Court has also refused to overturn them. So if your state decides to allow them you need to be aware of them. The more publicity they get the less intoxicated drivers you will have at these checkpoints. Sign up for www.DUISPY.com. We send text messages directly to your phone when there are checkpoints scheduled for your area.

Since most DUIIs are at the misdemeanor level the punishment of incarceration is determined by the local jail space and generally is standardized at the county level per an informal agreement between DAs, Judges and the Local Defense Bar.

There are DUII sentences of 30 days jail in parts of Eastern Oregon and a few days of work crew for the same offense in the Valley. Like everythingelse the issue is one of local resources, particularly jail beds.

At the State Prison level, Felony DUII (a 4th Duii having three prior convictions within a 10 year period) could probably be stronger. If 3 prior DUIIs and a new Felony DUII is all that is all you have on your record it is 14 months (6-D) but this is not mandatory and judges can still put you on probation instead of prison. However, Oregon would rather spend unlimited money on continually "treating" people whose actions show they have no desire to change than funding prisons to protect the decent- so felony Duii is unlikely to change.

Good work, Kari.

Thanks Kari! Abandoning civil rights is not a matter to take lightly. And it's astounding that people would treat them so cavalierly when presented with such good information.

I'm all for increasing penalties for DUII. I'm all for law enforcement using tactics that work and help take DD's off the road.

But I'm not for abandoning Oregon's Bill of Rights.

Nice to see people who never lets facts get in the way of a good rant.

I "burp!" agree!

SAB, you're sad, and I'm MAD (Most people Against Dumb shits).

Kari, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,!!!

I accept these stats. Can we please also see the stats that show long prison terms do reduce crime and save lives?

I've been seeing lots of arguments for DUI checkpoints... none of the arguments make much sense, though.

Blocking off an area and checking everyone who comes into or out of that area doesn't get you much of anything except a lot of officers who are now occupied with checking the papers of anyone who happens to go through that checkpoint.

Assume that, to effectively check everyone going through an area, you of course have to make it impossible to get into the area except via designated routes. There's 2 officers for every potential entrance - spike strips don't do anything except make it so that you have to get out of your vehicle; roadblocks are similar, unless you put up massively heavy roadblocks, or park police cars in the roads you're blocking - plus at least half a dozen at each designated entry / exit point. For 25 square blocks (5x5, which seems to be a reasonable value), with 2 entry points, you've just put 32 officers out (with the officers inside the border: 3 roads in per side, 4 sides, 2 officers per road, plus another 4 at the 2 entry points; if you move them to outside the border, there's another 16 to cover the other 8 potential entries), most of them doing nothing but making sure people don't go through the area any way you don't want them to.

Basically - even just by sheer numbers - checkpoints make no sense, unless maybe you're blocking off a very large area, like, say, downtown Portland, including the Pearl district, Old Town, PSU, Goose Hollow, etc.

But even that doesn't work out - now you're cordoning off an area that amounts to about a square mile, and you still have to have officers on patrol inside the area, with the larger it is, the more you need, not to mention some way for emergency services to get in and out.

And since any checkpoint doesn't work out at all unless the only way to go is through the checkpoint - if you can go around the checkpoint and not get stopped, then the checkpoint has no purpose since the people you want to check will go a different route that doesn't involve the checkpoint.

So... logically speaking, sobriety checkpoints are worse than useless. The civil rights issues have already been mentioned elsewhere: without reasonable suspicion, you have no excuse to stop me. Add to this the resources involved in setting up such a checkpoint - massive numbers of officers for the area that they're blocking off, who since they're manning checkpoints, can't be available for other things that they might potentially be needed for - and there's not any point whatsoever except to throw money into the proverbial toilet.

Sure - they might catch one or two drunks - but it seems more logical to me that putting enough officers on patrol would catch the same one or two drunks at a far smaller expenditure of resources.

Greatful Fred

I want to be a memeber of F.A.R.T

Fathers against rebellious teenagers

One relatively easy way to cut down on drunk driving:

Have a heavy police presence, mostly on foot, in areas with lots of bars, such as lower downtown, on Friday and Saturday nights.

Have the cops monitor folks who are obviously drunk, then radio license plate numbers of drunks who are getting behind the wheel.

Potential pitfalls:

People would start going to other areas to get drunk.

Bar owners would get upset.

I think of utilizing sobriety check points in a number of ways that would be benficial for our community:

Leaving Autzen Stadium after a football game...

Leaving Reser Stadium after a football game...

Leaving PGE Park after a "Thirsty Thursday" Portland Beavers Baseball game...

Leaving Rose Garden after a blazer game...

The list could go on but I hope folks get the point.

Checkpoints like this would shrink the number of drunk drivers at peak times and that might save lives.

What happened to the designated driver, cab or friend?

Here are the MADD issues. I can support number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6

I could support number 5, but the auto industry needs all the help they can get!

Hey MADD is trying to save lives. They are putting energy into bettering society. Who am I to stand in their way.

After looking at the frequency of their checkpoint requests, I have come to a better conclusion. I dont drink and drive so it is no skin off of my nose. It is a state issue!

Strict laws, very steep fines, and extended community service for offenders is a good thing!

1. Mandatory ignition interlocks for ALL convicted drunk drivers

2. Increased law enforcement efforts including crackdowns during holiday weekends,

3. sobriety checkpoints

4. saturation patrols

5. Advanced vehicle technology that would make it impossible for a drunk person to start a vehicle

6. Public support – led by you and other concerned citizens nationwide Roll over the dates for a Campaign timeline.

I guess i waffled a bit on this one. Oh well!

Karol: are you certain a person is allowed to refuse an order to be tested? Are we allowed to refuse to be searched in a routine stop? I've not heard that. Am I a hopeless April Fool viz authority?

rlw: On the topic of the sobriety test, see ORS 813.135-136. You can refuse to take the field sobriety test, but the consequences of refusal are basically the same as admitting that you're intoxicated in the first place: your refusal is admissible in court, and when presented to a judge or jury, most likely has similar weight to a failed field sobriety test; I'd say based on the statues in question, that refusal to take a sobriety test is equivalent to failure on the sobriety test, since you've given implicit consent by operating a vehicle in the first place.

As far as a search at a routine stop goes - unless the officer has reason to suspect you of something prior to requesting to search you or any of your possessions, and then only if they believe there's something to be found. ("Defendant’s person, residence, vehicle and property each represent distinct privacy interest and, although parole officer observed things in defendant’s house that made him suspect defendant was selling drugs, search of defendant’s cars was valid only if officer had reasonable grounds to believe evidence of parole violation would be found therein. State v. Brown, 110 Or App 604, 825 P2d 282 (1992)": here; "refusal to give consent to a search undoubtedly caused the officer to have a healthy suspicion that defendant was probably in illegal possession of something; but such a suspicion, however well founded, having been aroused merely on the basis of an assertion of one's constitutional rights, can play no part in creating probable cause for a search." here, Tillamook County Circuit Court, filed 24 Dec 08)

It's not really contradictory as far as I can tell: the right to privacy might be possible to derive out of various provisions of Article 1 of the Oregon Constitution, but driving (or operating a vehicle in general) isn't a right, but rather a privilege, and as such, a sobriety test can be administered if you've been stopped and the officer has reasonable cause to think you're operating a vehicle under the influence: no cause to believe you're under the influence, no reason for the test to be administered.

That, and by what I see, unless they have reason to suspect you before your refusal to be searched, it won't hold up. So - in all cases, without reasonable suspicion, there's no search or testing allowed to begin with; in the case of a sobriety test, the bar seems to be set at the same level as a general search, except that the reason to suspect you of DUII is a lot easier to come up with than for a general search: watch the vehicle being operated. Since driving isn't a right, and it's an activity that requires both skill and fine motor coordination with the potential of death for the driver and other bystanders if something goes wrong, you've got an easy bar to claim suspicion for DUII.

So, you can refuse a general search of you, your personal effects, your vehicle, etc. You can also refuse a field sobriety test. In the former, to search you, the officer has to have reasonable suspicion of you being in violation of some statute prior to the search; in the latter, in order to perform a field sobriety test, the officer has to have suspicion that you're operating a vehicle while intoxicated. If there's no suspicion prior to either request being made, they haven't got a leg to stand on. In the case of the field sobriety test, however, if they suspect you, you can't legally refuse: refusal to take the test, by ORS 813.136, is ultimately the same as failing the test.

As far as brethalyzers go, ORS 813.100 covers that: however, for that section to come into effect, you have to be arrested first for a violation of ORS 813.010 or an equivalent local ordinance (813.010 is DUII). Basically: if you've been arrested for DUII, the officer can request a brethalyzer test; refusal or failure is grounds for immediate suspension of your license and (by 813.095, 813.130(f)) a fine of at least $500.

(IANAL, but all of this information is easily found and pretty easy to read. And I'm having a beer while writing this. Maybe someone here knows better, but everything I'm seeing seems pretty reasonable.)

Kari, it's obvious from their comments that Bill R, Karol, and Stephen are people with anti-social character disorders --- they are fearful, ego-centric and sociopathic in their disrespect of others. Mrs. Todd is simply an incoherent nutjob.

But my question is why are you not calling for Democrats to repudiate Monroe? Frankly, you are as bad as these guys. You talk a big game, but don't actually call for the voters to get rid of this guy and other legislators with twisted values and diseased egos.

And this is probably the dumbest comment you've made, but you're pretty much just a gasbag anyway: Civil liberties aren't absolute The attacks on what the Founders most certainly intended to be a smaller set of absolute rights, by pandering elected officials, intellectually dishonest judges, and ignorant citizens form the left, right, and center, is what the Founders knew and said would be the greatest threat to America.

There is only one proper response to a cop stopping you at a sobriety checkpoint:

Fu*k yourself, cop.

MADD is trying to control behavior. They were asked, and had no problem with Lars' statement that if his daughter ever tried MJ, he would use his new handgun to blow her brains out, "and she knows I mean it". That is the same kind of "respect for life" and "love" that the Catholic Church has been doling out for centuries. I've lived through most of it. Go back to Karol's post on those father-daughter commitment ceremonies. It's all about controlling behavior. It is pathological. It is obsessive compulsive. What makes that a pathology and not a lifestyle, is that it has a net negative effect on their social relationships and they have a very pronounced tendency to try to destroy what they cannot control.

Pat, refusing a sobriety test is taken as prima facie evidence of guilt. There is no way to shoehorn checkpoints into fitting the 4th. It's a matter of priorities. The breeders and nanny staters look at every life like a farmer looks at his stock. They can take whatever, whenever, but the stock had better never. Personally, I would see every drunk driver go free and kill every person I know and love before I would see the 4th diminished one iota. It's a matter of how many moves you can think ahead. I can see far enough down the road to know that what you are doing to the 4th will ultimately cause more deaths and carnage than your societal inability to manage alcohol consumption.

At the very least, can you admit that your management of the problem has been totally ineffectual for 70 years? Why should the state get another shot at it? Meanwhile, you level of civil rights is now less than what a parolee on custodial supervision enjoyed when JFK was elected. Per capita drink driving has increased. Deaths have decreased because Ralph Nader lived. And are you grateful? Do you have a clue about which side your bread is buttered on?

Finally, your veiled attempts to control behavior at the expense of everything else breeds mutants like James Karlck and Terry Parker, that become totally fixated on society controlling nothing in their lives, even when it is critical that we have some common agreement. Those that want checkpoints anyway are diseased, obsessive compulsives. If you can carry the day, then that means the society is too.

Oh, you want some good, practical debate... I've a friend that does his drunken (very) debauchery, on bike. Are we including them? These data have to be given to the Feds, I am informed. Is this a way to inventory all the legal MM card holders?

How about a more simple question? Do you know how screwed this society is that you would continue to promote this, after the facts that have been itemized here? Has Katrina not taught anyone that you don't stomp on people daily, then expect social cohesion after a disaster. Why don't you want people driving drunk? If you are smart enough and intellectually honest enough to work out the answer, you will see that the proposed policy undercuts every one of those goals. And if you're not...why do you think people do irresponsible things like drive drunk? They don't give a damn. Do you not see how stupid policies breed that attitude? Of course not. You can't see how raping a girl in front of her family doesn't decrease terrorism in Iraq.

As usual, Pat has put it straight and true. This is amending the constitution. Go around and ask everyone who will answer you, "what is the first thing you would change in the Oregon constitution"? How many people do you have to ask to get an answer like, "I'd like to see the search and seizure provisions changed to allow for sobriety check-points"?

When you finally find one, take him/her aside and get some demographics! Finally we would know who the people in Salem are serving. This is where Portland liberals are delusional. You go to sleep at night thinking what a wonderfully progressive town Portland is. The fact is that your elected rep., living right next door to you, is thinking that we need to amend the constitutional protections against unreasonable searches to allow for, what Kari has demonstrated, is a completely unreasonable search.

This is where my tone comes from. How do you have respect, on any level, people that would do that? What would you be respecting, exactly, besides the idea of extending respect?

This is why proportional representation is much better than simple majority winner take all. There are groups of people, like Pat describes, like I describe, like Kari describes, and others. In a proportional system the question is how control gets allocated between the groups. In a system like ours, the question is which one group wins the day. We can lament that the facts seldom ever win the day. But they seldom win the day, anywhere. The difference between us and more progressive countries, is that there they don't have to win the day to become a part of policy. The people continue to be the people, the sickos continue to be the sickos, and the facts continue to be the facts. You don't have to convert one into another to get that holy 50%+1 vote majority.

I think one thing we can conclude, from the number of times this has been mentioned, is that we're talking Second Republic; there is no hope of the First ever dealing with their tyranny of the majority problem.

Thank you Kari for keeping our streets safe!

Kari, I wish I had done what you did when I was in high school. I never gave anyone a "safe home ride," and in my senior class, 34 students out of 78 died in drunk-driving accidents. That's a 43.5% fatality rate over the course of one year ... and I know I am to blame because I took no action.

Sobriety checkpoints don't save lives, but you do, Kari. Thank you for all of your work.

I hate to be an ass (Okay, that's a blatent lie...I love it.) but I'd have to see some evidence before I believed "...34 students out of 78 died in drunk-driving accidents." REALLY???!!!

Kari good work

Anyone who buys this line of crap deserves what they get. I will fight them in court if need be. Our rights to be free of unreasonable searches must be protected and the fools who dont mind giving up rights "because i have dont nothing wrong" need to look at germany circa 1933..

I will meet, debate and wollup any bastard who thinks we need to give up this right.

What a great way to rebuild the State coffers. The increase in various infractions discovered during the stop will rain money on the state. This is the slippery slope of erosion of privacy designed to vindicate laudable ends. It obliterates the concept of reasonable suspicion, the minimum standard to interrupt a driver's progress from point A to point B. It indirectly infringes on warrantless search prohibitions, your car's contents will be scrutinized carefully. The early morning two hour wait to clear the checkpoint will provide ample time to compose the apology to those awaiting your arrival.

I cherish the fact I live in one of only twelve states which lack checkpoints. There are myriad ways to stem intoxicated driving without using our constitution as a sword to pierce the skein of privacy and erode the sense of freedom we enjoy within Oregon. Just Vote No - because no politician will find the courage to do so.

I'll disagree with you, at least, on the characterization of Karol. She's a lovely person; one of my favorite people. Reasonable people can disagree reasonably.

Nothing in such character flaws prevents people from being perceived as "nice people" up close and personal. "Reasonable people can disagree reasonably" is of course another of the most meaningless statements. Karol's position is not reasonable and her pathologically calm defense of it is just pathological.

Repudiate Monroe? Call for the voters to get rid of the guy? Um, maybe you're new around here - but BlueOregon co-founder Jesse Cornett ran against Monroe, and I was one of his political consultants. For what happened in that race, and other reasons, I'm no fan of Monroe. (Just didn't realize that I had to propound a universal theory of Rod Monroe to be allowed to post about a specific policy issue.)

Yup don't know the history, but today is today and the past is the past. What matters is how people are held accountable each time they say something (un)reasonable or take unacceptable political actions. There also is a big difference between opposing Monroe because a friend or associate is running against him and prominently calling for people to oppose him on his own merit when that carries negative implications for the Democratic leadership in Salem.

Civil liberties aren't absolute. They're not. You can't use your free speech to incite violence or conspire to commit a crime or shout "fire!" in a crowded theatre. Et cetera.

The latter of course is one of those popularized examples used just to justify the other common, and seemingly less egregious examples. (The shameful history of DEMOCRATS who share the ethical bankruptcy of Ron Monroe and more than a few other of our state legislatures, in that case criminalizing speech and "conspiracy" out of partially racist motives being yet another topic.)

Problem is the statement isn't even quoted correctly when it is cited to defend attacks on the Founders' intent that our civil rights be absolute and inviolate. Your paraphrase is of the incorrect quotation.

In Schenck v. United States, Holmes in fact said: The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man FALSELY shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. Holmes was exactly the kind of threat to liberty that I mentioned the Founders feared because he made this statement to justify the conviction of Schenck for distributing flyers against the draft in WWI. A later court overturned even that ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969.

And even that court was composed of justices the Founders knew were the worst in American life: They finally fell back on emotionalism and the ultimate constitutional unaccountability of the court to sanction speech that was LIKELY to incite lawless action, rather than finding that only action, not speech, can be sanctioned, on the basis of wordplay about how such a thing could ever actually be determined. The case stands because a lot of people on the left, right, and center have no interest in actually seeing the First Amendment defended, so prosecutions that would force SCOTUS to review and overturn it are headed off before the get too high in the appeals system.

I don't have any truck with the somewhat nutty big "L" libertarians, but anyone with the level of critical thinking commensurate with an normal IQ can see there is NO legitimate argument against the absoluteness of the 1st Amendment and attempts to find one are un-American:

Congress SHALL MAKE NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

All: thank you for taking me seriously and answering fully the question I posed to Karol. I did not want to lay out more anecdotes related to my experiences/suspicions borne out by the evidence presented by you'all.

Also, I did not want to get shot at from right and center, so simply posed the question.

Not intending ad hominem, but Karol, you are ostensibly an analyst with a fine mind. I had rather expected research rather than anecdotes such as laid out by the common run of morons such as myself!

I haven't made up my mind about sobriety checkpoints, so I'm just posting to try to make the debate a little bit more intellectually honest - the data that Kari cites are not helpful in analyzing the effectiveness of checkpoints.

First, correlation does not prove causation. For example, it's possible that sobriety checkpoints have been effective in the states that use them but that such states have failed to implement other useful measures to reduce drunk driving. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the fact that correlation does not prove causation, so I won't belabor this point.

Second, the cited data do not account for different levels of use of sobriety checkpoints in different states. In other words, it's possible that states which use checkpoints frequently have accomplished large reductions in fatalities, but that states that rarely use them have not made an appreciable difference in fatalities (unsurprisingly) and therefore bring down the average reduction in fatalities in states that use sobriety checkpoints. Thus, the failure of the cited data to account for different levels of use in those states which have sobriety checkpoints prevents it from being a reliable indicator of the effectiveness of such checkpoints.

Finally, even if you accept Kari's premise that correlation proves causation, Kari's data would suggest that sobriety checkpoints would prevent around 10 deaths/year in Oregon (because he concludes that states with sobriety checkpoints had .03 fewer deaths/10,000 people in 2006). This is sufficient for someone to conclude that sobriety checkpoints are an effective method for reducing drunk driving fatalities. (Obviously, 10 deaths/year wouldn't be much if the State implemented sobriety checkpoints on a regular basis all over the state, but that would be a lot if it could be accomplished through the implementation of a few checkpoints in select locations.)

FWIW, sobriety checks are a regular feature in various countries that all of us would classify as democratic. The same countries also have far stiffer penalties for drunk driving than we have in the US. In some countries (for example, Italy) the law calls for mandatory imprisonment. Excerpt from the linked report:

"The lowest illegal BAC [blood alcohol] level is in Sweden (.02). The majority of countries have established .05 as the illegal BAC, with the remaining countries maintaining an illegal level of .08. The trend has been downward in recent years, with nine countries having reduced the illegal BAC level within the past five years or with new lower limits about to be implemented. These recent reductions in illegal BAC levels have resulted in some pre-post evaluations of the effects of the change. Belgium lowered its limit to .05 in December of 1994, reporting a 14 percent reduction in fatalities in the following year. The legal limit in France was lowered to .05 in December of 1995. Fatal crashes in 1996 were reduced by 4 percent (ETSC 1997)."

As far as I'm concerned, driving under the influence is the functional equivalent of walking around with a loaded gun.

I have always wondered how many less drunk drivers there would be if the MAX lines stayed running later then 1am.

So-called sobriety checkpoints are a violation of your right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. They always constitute a stop, which must be supported by reason to suspect that the person stopped has committed a crime, or probable cause to believe that a violation was or is being committed in the officer's presence. A roadblock satisfies neither condition. Effectiveness is not an issue, nor is the perceived severity of the social problem sought to be addressed. The legal fiction that driving is a privilege, not a right does not change this. Even drivers have a right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. Many of yous seem to have little appreciation of how intrusive a routine stop can be, with demands to inspect your documents, questions about whether the documents contain you current address, asking passengers what their names and dates of birth are to check for warrants, questions about weapons and drugs, requests for consent to search, and the like. Those of you who support general searches like this are welcome to waive your own constitutional rights. In fact, you should be encouraged to dos. I recommend a the issuance of special license plate for supporters, which would act as a waiver and would authorize the police to stop the vehicle at any time or place, without cause. What bothers me is the willingness of some people to waive not only their own rights, but the rights of others as well. Go ahead. Be good citizens. Give up your constitutional rights. But leave mine alone.

Beaver, your "logic" is impenetrable.

"As far as I'm concerned, driving under the influence is the functional equivalent of walking around with a loaded gun." Think how many deaths and other criminal activity might be quelled with random stops to search for weapons. Since we're ceding rights here, how about the second amendment too?

Sobriety check points can be used as an excuse for out and out harassment. Cops have pulled me over just for driving at the wrong time of night, the same time the drunks get kicked out of bars, and they look inside the vehicle and run a warrant check. A check point can result in a lot more than just checking you're sobriety. Thanks Kari for realizing the tip of the iceberg.