Article reprinted with permission THE HUNTSVILLE TIMES LIBRARY 11/02/97 A More Sober Message The DUI capital has no apologies

BY: AMY FRENCH-Times Staff Writer

In 1996, Huntsville police made 1,560 DUI arrests, more than doubling their 1995 total and topping the individual 1996 totals of every other police force in the state. This year, Huntsville officers are up to 1,550 arrests, with two months left to go.

Huntsville is the DUI-arrest capital of Alabama, a distinction that draws mixed reactions.

``I'd rather not think of it as us being the capital for arrests, but that we are making our roads safe because we owe that to the citizens,'' said Mayor Loretta Spencer. ``I'd rather put a positive twist on it, that we are doing our job.''

The job falls mostly on members of the Police Department's DUI Task Force, led by Sgt. Steve Lowhorne. Give police the credit, Lowhorne said. Give drunken drivers the blame.

About 94 percent of DUI arrests in Huntsville lead to convictions, and the average blood-alcohol level of those arrested, including those who are younger than 21, is 0.12.

The legal limit for drivers 21 and older is 0.08, and the legal limit for drivers too young to drink legally is 0.02. Police have charged 205 drivers younger than 21 with DUI, Lowhorne said.

Those numbers are proof, he said, that the people arrested need to be off the road.

``My position has always been that we'd like to see the numbers go down. We wish no one would drink and drive,'' Lowhorne said. ``As long as the drunken drivers are out there, we're going to arrest them, and we're going to put them in jail.''

But task force officers do more than just put people in jail.

They lobby the Legislature for tougher DUI laws.

They seek grants for more manpower.

They frequently announce the times and locations of road blocks set up about once a week to check motorists for signs of drunkenness and other violations of the law.

They lecture at schools and civic meetings, and they recently started teaching classes on host liability - a legal term for a host's risk of being sued successfully for the damage someone does under the influence of alcohol the host gave or served

``That's what kills me, is that we do all that, and the numbers still go up,'' Lowhorne said. One-third of the people arrested are repeat offenders. ``You'd think people would learn.''

Lowhorne considers whether Huntsville police make more DUI arrests than those in other cities because the city just has more drunks. ``It's possible,'' he said.

It's possible, he said, that in this city dominated by high-tech industry, more people run to bars after work to escape high-power pressures. And maybe they socialize over just one drink at first. ``You do that two or three times a week, and pretty soon, you're having - instead of one or two beers - three or four,'' Lowhorne said. ``And you're having a drink with lunch, and it can start to become a problem because you're driving after that.''

It's possible. But mostly, Lowhorne thinks arrests are up because the rest of the task force and the rest of the Police Department are doing a great job.

The trend began 10 years ago, when the Huntsville Police Department under then-Chief Ric Ottman created the task force. With Compton Owens as supervising sergeant in 1988, the seven-officer task force set a still-standing record for the most DUI arrests in Huntsville in one year - 1,956, according to police records.

That's an average of 163 arrests per month.

``We came in early, and we stayed late,'' Owens recalls. ``We just had some motivated folks, much the same as we are seeing now.'' Now, Owens is chief, a position that allows him to set police priorities, and he says aggressive enforcement of DUI laws is one of his highest.

``Even robberies,'' Owens said - naming a crime he has targeted in recent months - ``even that may not be as high a priority as DUI enforcement. We lose far more people in this country to drunken drivers than robberies each year, far more in this community.'' Two people have been killed in Huntsville robberies since Jan. 1, 1996. Six have died in the same period of alcohol-related wrecks, according to police records. One was Mary Wooten, the mother of police Maj. Dennis Wooten.

Lowhorne said the task force has dedicated its efforts this year to her memory.

``Driving drunk is one of the most reckless, thoughtless, dangerous acts a human being can commit,'' said Owens.

``It's a hard thing to measure,'' he said. ``You'll never know how many lives you've saved when you take a drunk driver off the streets. They belong to us. If we catch them, they're going to jail.''

Owens added that he is proud of the recent increase in arrests, which lagged through the early 1990s. ``There may be some who think it sends the wrong message,'' he said, ``but they'll get over it.'' Butch Cassady will have to get over it.

Cassady is owner of Bench Warmer Food & Spirits, a sports bar and restaurant. He likes some of the efforts police have made to curb drunken driving, particularly the host-liability class, which he and his employees were among the first to take.

But Bench Warmer is at 2998 University Drive, and police have made 326 DUI arrests on University Drive this year. It's the street police choose most commonly for DUI checkpoints and the top street for DUI arrests in Huntsville.

Cassady said that's hurting business.

``I think they overemphasize the DUIs. It's killing Huntsville's nightlife,'' he said. ``The checkpoints hurt - don't get me wrong, but it's not so much the checkpoints as the in-between.''

Cassady said customers tell him police sit on University Drive, in dark spots, and wait for people to come out of bars - stopping them as easy marks instead of patrolling for people driving recklessly. ``Just say that Butch hears that from his customers,'' Cassady said. ``And Butch might think there's a little bit of truth to that.'' An officer who stops a driver only because the driver was seen leaving a bar is wrong to do so, said Lowhorne, and ``We don't do that.'' To pull someone over, Lowhorne said, an officer must have ``probable cause,'' a legal term for well-founded suspicion.

Officers on the task force have video cameras mounted on the front windshields of their patrol cars to document observations that constitute probable cause. A vehicle weaving from lane to lane, prolonged failure to use headlights in the dark, driving on the wrong side of the road, a driver's inability to walk a line or balance on one foot - all can become video evidence in court.

It's hard to get a conviction without recorded evidence, and smart defense attorneys are finding more and more other ways to make it hard, Lowhorne said. Members of the task force, he said, constantly revise arrest procedures to eliminate doubts about defendants' guilt that defense attorneys have used to win cases. ``Phil Price is one of the reasons the DUI Task Force is as good as it is,'' Lowhorne said, naming a local attorney who specializes in DUI defense. ``We've had to have a better program to deal with some of the things that Phil brings up.''

For example, Lowhorne said, Price defended a client once who said he failed balance and agility tests after he was pulled over because the patrol car's swirling lights made him dizzy.

``Well, now, that's possible,'' said Lowhorne. So officers turn off their lights now before testing DUI suspects on the road. ``It's just my job in all this process to make sure people's constitutional rights are protected,'' said Price. And some practices in DUI law enforcement, he said, raise several constitutional questions. Price questions officers' practice of testing, or investigating, a DUI suspect without arresting the suspect first and reading the suspect his or her rights. Officers arrest the people they pull over only if they fail tests.

And Price questions the legality of checkpoints, which, he says, prompt investigations of people who have done nothing to indicate they are unable to drive safely.

Lowhorne answers those questions simply: ``The U.S. Supreme Court has said we can do what we're doing, and that's good enough for me.''

It's also good enough for Bernice Pitsis-Rush, Madison County's coordinator for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In 1996, MADD honored the DUI Task Force by naming it as a model for the rest of Alabama. Usually, the award goes to one officer as officer of the year. ``We decided that since Huntsville's task force had made more arrests than any other, we'd just give the award to the whole task force,'' Pitsis-Rush said.

More arrests increase fear of arrest, she said, and research indicates that once a drinker is impaired, fear is the only thing that keeps him or her from driving.

If enforcement has made people afraid to drink and drive, that thrills the task force, Lowhorne said. Fear can be powerful encouragement to call a cab, designate a sober driver, or set drinking limits. ``I think the more people that we can get off the streets, the more lives we can save,'' Pitsis-Rush said. ``When we do victim-impact panels, and we talk to DUI offenders across the state, we emphasize to them how lucky they were to be caught.''