To see a video on the tests administrated at a sobriety checkpoint, click here.
Natalie Dean was not intoxicated. She was not swerving from lane to lane, drifting or braking erratically. But that didn’t stop the police from pulling her over.Dean, general studies senior, left Fred’s Bar and Grill in Tigerland to give her friend a ride home around 2 a.m. on Aug. 22. The Baton Rouge Police Department stopped Dean and 528 others on Nicholson Drive near Alex Box Stadium that morning.Dean wasn’t drunk, and she was free to go. But others weren’t so sober. Within four hours at the same location, 34 standardized field sobriety tests were administered, resulting in seven arrests for driving while intoxicated.”The ultimate goal is to change people’s driving habits,” said BRPD Cpl. L’Jean Mckneely. “If you know we’re out there, but you don’t know where, hopefully it will get people to say ‘I’m drinking, I’m not driving.'”Officers issued 20 traffic citations and charged 16 people for open container of alcohol in a motor vehicle, two for minor in possession of an alcoholic beverage and one for possession of marijuana.Thirty-four people were arrested on counts of drinking while intoxicated during the four sobriety checkpoints conducted since July in EBR Parish. More than 1,100 vehicles were screened, and officers issued more than 100 other citations.For the first time in 18 years, BRPD is administering checkpoints in EBR Parish. BRPD received $85,000 this year in grant funds for overtime traffic enforcement from the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission. More than half the money is dedicated to impaired driving. The rest is used to enforce seat belt usage, railroad crossing safety and speed and child safety restraints, said BRPD Sgt. Don Kelly.The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled sobriety checkpoints unconstitutional in 1989, but the ruling was overturned in 2000, allowing police to set up if they follow guidelines.”Other agencies began doing checkpoints under the new court     rulings, and we wanted to wait and let some of those cases work their way through the courts to make sure they were going to stand up,” Kelly said. “Once all that happened, we moved back into conducting checkpoints.”More checkpoints are planned for the future, but specific times and locations are not known. The DWI Task Force planned more than 25 sobriety checkpoints for the remainder of the year, but Kelly said the numbers will be lower because of Hurricane Gustav.The task force chooses locations based on area traffic, past arrests and alcohol-related crashes, Mckneely said. More than 20 people in EBR Parish died as a result of impaired-driving incidents in 2005, according to the latest statistics available. More than 340 people were injured in alcohol-related crashes.Mckneely said checkpoints near campus are not necessarily aimed toward students, including the sobriety checkpoint on Aug. 22 when BRPD partnered with the LSUPD.”LSU is a straight shot passing through Highland Road and Nicholson,” Mckneely said. “Everyone passes that way.”By law, officers must screen every car stopped at a checkpoint. Driver’s won’t be asked to exit the vehicle unless they show signs of intoxication. Officers look for symptoms such as glossy eyes, slurred speech and balance displacement.”They ask where you are coming from, and if you’ve been drinking tonight,” Mckneely said. “If there’s no slurring of speech or smell of alcohol, [officers] just let you go.”If a driver is pulled over on suspicion of DWI, an officer can conduct field sobriety tests: the horizontal gaze nystagmus eye test, the one-leg stand and the walk-and-turn.An officer can estimate the angle where the eye begins to jerk in the eye test. If it occurs sooner than 45 degrees, a person usually has a blood alcohol concentration of .05 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.In a walk-and-turn, a driver is asked to walk in a straight line, turn and walk back in a certain number of steps. In a one-leg stand, a driver is required to stand on one leg for about 30 seconds, Rogé said.A driver failing field sobriety tests is brought to LSUPD and then asked to blow into a breath-testing device called the Intoxilyzer 5000. BRPD operates the intoxiliyzer out of a van at the checkpoint site.”As you are blowing, the intoxilyzer will be reading how much alcohol was in your breath,” Rogé said. “Because of the alcohol concentration in your lungs, it would be a very close to what your blood alcohol would be.”In Louisiana, it is illegal to drive with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent or above. The .08 BAC limit is the standard measurement across the U.S. for an “impaired” driver. If a driver is under the age of 21, .02 percent is the legal limit.”We’re not talking about sloppy drunk or falling down drunk,” Rogé said. “We’re talking about impaired driving ability.”But weight and gender can cause variations in BAC. An average female is about 55 percent water, and a male is about 65 percent water, Rogé said. A 125-pound woman would need less alcohol to have an illegal BAC than a man weighing the same. A BAC of .02 percent for a male is typically one-and-a-half beers and one beer for a woman.All drivers must submit to a breath, blood or urine test if an officer has cause to believe they have been drinking or doing drugs. If they refuse, their driver’s license will be suspended for 180 days for the first refusal and 545 days for the second.For a DWI offense, the fine ranges can be $1,000 and up to 10 days to six months in jail. Thirty-two hours of community service and a substance abuse evaluation and driver improvement school are required.For a second offense, the fine ranges from $750 to $1,000, and the jail time can be up to six months. All but 48 hours minimum in jail can be suspended. Two-hundred forty hours of community service and a substance abuse evaluation and driver improvement school are required.—-Contact Leslie Presnall at [email protected]