Scofflaws Are Targeted in Drunk-Driver Cases

Despite the get-tough laws and rhetoric of the 1980s, a huge number of people arrested for drunk driving in Los Angeles County have escaped paying a fine or serving jail time simply because the county marshal’s office has not been able to find them.

Upwards of 100,000 bench warrants for the arrest of these drunk-driving suspects--issued by judges after the suspects did not show up in court or failed to pay their fines--have never been served, officials estimate.

Weeklong Sweep

To publicize the extent of the problem and to encourage greater public cooperation, 32 deputy marshals and district attorney investigators on Tuesday began a weeklong sweep in Los Angeles County, attempting to arrest 2,000 drunk-driving suspects on outstanding bench warrants.

The sweep, the first of its kind, was proposed by the district attorney’s office to frighten would-be drunk drivers as the holiday season approaches.

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, whose staff invited television crews to videotape Tuesday’s arrests, said he hopes that scenes of ordinary residents being arrested for evading justice “will have a chilling effect. Maybe . . . people leaving dinner with too much to drink . . . will give the car keys to someone who isn’t as sloshed as they are.”

By the end of the day, 116 people had been arrested at their homes or business.

Drop in the Bucket

However, in terms of cleaning up Los Angeles County’s backlog of approximately 224,000 bench warrants for all crimes, Tuesday’s sweep was a drop in the bucket.

Los Angeles County Marshal Robert Mann said his 70 warrant officers, who spend their time tracking down and arresting scofflaws, cannot keep up with the pace of newly issued bench warrants.

“You’re always shoveling the sand against the tide,” Mann said.

Orange County Marshal James C. Byham said he has been following the Los Angeles plans with interest and might try something similar later.

“It takes the cooperation of a lot of agencies,” he said. “You need help from the district attorney’s office, and I don’t think the D.A. investigators in this county have the manpower to pitch in with us.”

A sweep similar to Los Angeles County’s may not be practical right now unless there was somewhere to take people other than the Orange County Jail, Byham said. Because of jail-overcrowding problems, Sheriff Brad Gates is refusing to accept anyone on any warrant which includes bail of $2,500 or less.

While Byham had no readily available figures on drunk-driving warrants, he said his office receives about 10,000 warrants a month and has a staff of just 15 to handle them.

“All we can do is concentrate on the felonies,” Byham said.

Byham also believes that drunk driving-related warrants may not be as serious a problem in Orange County as they are in Los Angeles County because all of the warrants in Orange County are on one computer system.

“Anytime anyone is stopped in Orange County on any traffic violation, the police can check that one computerized system to see if the person has any outstanding warrants,” Byham explained. “The police departments really do clear a large percentage of the warrants, probably equal to what we’re clearing.”

In Los Angeles during the last 12 months, county judges issued 144,859 warrants for the arrest of people who had jumped bail or otherwise had failed to comply with the orders of a court. (In some cases, two or more warrants are for different crimes allegedly committed by the same person.) The marshal’s office served 72.6% of those warrants, but that left nearly 40,000 “under investigation,” joining the backlog.

The size of the backlog troubles criminal justice authorities because it provides hope to many suspects that they can escape punishment.

Mann said his office does not keep separate statistics on bench warrants for drunk-driving suspects, but he said he believes that they make up the majority of bench warrants--as many as 70% of all warrants issued by judges in some areas of the county.

The rest are for suspects in crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies, such as assault or drug-related cases. A separate district attorney’s unit handles warrants issued in family support cases.

Mann said his staff has grown increasingly efficient in clearing warrants but has been unable to make a dent in the backlog because the number of staff members assigned to warrants has not increased.

Static Since 1981

The Los Angeles marshal’s office has about the same number of warrant officers as it did in 1981, when the Board of Supervisors raised the number from 22 to 64 in an effort to clean up the backlog.

Drunk-driving arrests in Los Angeles County have remained relatively constant during that time, from a high of 110,712 in 1983 to a low of 100,455 last year. About half of these cases are prosecuted by the district attorney’s office, the rest by city attorneys.

Mann and several of the warrant officers who are working this week’s sweep said their work is complicated by the mobility of the people they are trying to find.

“These people don’t necessarily give good addresses, or they move a lot, or they hide,” Mann said. “When we get a warrant from the courts, we usually work it intensively for the first few weeks. If it gets us nowhere--no personal contact or direct contact with someone the suspect is living with--then we just hold it in our files.”

Some May Give Up

Dave Roldan, a warrant officer who, as usual, had been on the job since 5 a.m. Tuesday, said he believes that some people with outstanding bench warrants may turn themselves in voluntarily if they become convinced that the odds of arrest are growing.

“Some of these people are simply afraid of being arrested,” Roldan said. Others “are playing the system out as far as they can.”

Arlene Joye, victims services director for the Los Angeles chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she welcomes the publicity value of the drunk-driver sweep.

“A lot of people who commit the crime view it as an infraction, not a potentially violent crime,” she said.

Times staff writer Jerry Hicks, in Orange County, contributed to this story.