Cold May Void Drunk Tests on Hundreds

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office is reviewing cases against as many as 276 drunk-driving suspects arrested in February by police using a much-heralded mobile jail because breath-analyzing devices may have been invalidated by being used outside in the cold.

“A problem with respect to some of the evidence was made known to us,” said Marty Vranicar, a supervising deputy city attorney in Van Nuys. “We’re following up on our ethical obligation to review any cases in which there might be problems.”

Officials said they believe that the breath machines might have been measuring blood-alcohol content too low and expressed concern that defense attorneys could exploit the mechanical problems.

“We’re looking at all the tests that were run to see that we can support those tests,” said Richard Bingle, chief forensic chemist for the Los Angeles Police Department.

He said officers discovered the problem last weekend in Pacoima, where they had deployed the Immediate Booking and Release System.

Uses Converted Buses

The booking unit, known as IBARS, consists of two converted Rapid Transit District buses, one a jail and one a command post. The unit is equipped on the outside with three breath-analyzing devices. Normally, drunk-driving suspects are taken to a police station, where breath testing is done indoors.

The IBARS unit is supposed to process more drunk-driving arrests by reducing the processing time for a single arrest from two hours to about 30 minutes.

Last weekend, officers noticed that condensed vapor was forming on the inside of the machine’s breath tubes because of the cold, Bingle said. The vapor indicated that samples of suspects’ breath were being diluted before the machines could measure them, he said.

Drunk-driving charges against about 60 suspects arrested Thursday and Friday and processed at the IBARS unit in Pacoima have not been filed yet, Vranicar said. Authorities are reviewing those cases, but also will examine “additional ones that had already been filed,” he said.

In six nights of operation this month in Pacoima, police processed 276 drunk-driving suspects with the IBARS unit, said Sgt. Michael Pattee, the officer in charge of the unit. The arrests were the first in a two-year, $4.7-million program that will deploy the mobile booking unit eight to 10 days a month in parts of the city where drunk driving is worst, Pattee said.

“It’s a new program and there are bugs to be worked out,” he said.

“We’re having more problems with the program than we’d like to,” Bingle added, “but that doesn’t mean we’re producing bad results.”

On Feb. 19, police displayed the mobile system to reporters and visitors from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the California Office of Traffic Safety, the Maryland State Police, the Tucson Police Department and the Department of Water and Power.

Police used IBARS to process 35 drunk-driving arrests that night but had to shut down two hours early because high winds were making outdoor paper work impossible, Sgt. Dennis Zine said.

IBARS was to have been deployed this weekend in Pacoima, but the operation was canceled to allow technicians and chemists to adjust the breath-testing devices and install protection from the wind and cold. When IBARS returns next weekend, it will be in another part of the city, Zine said.