You’re drinking and driving in the wrong county at the wrong time. A cop pulls you over. : The Nightmare Begins . . .

He has been driving suspiciously, straddling lanes with one headlight out. Now the man who will soon be Booking No. 424091 stands in a west Ventura parking lot on a Saturday night, blinking in the glare of a police spotlight.

“How much have you had to drink tonight?” asks Officer Glenn Utter.

One or two beers, says the man, grinning nervously. But then he oversteps directions on the heel-toe walk and loses his balance while standing on one foot and counting to 30. Back at the station, he blows a .115 on one blood-alcohol test and .130 on another. He is going to jail.

On a typical day in Ventura County, this routine is repeated 20 times or more. Every driver knows it means trouble. Many realize that this may be California’s toughest county in enforcement of drunk-driving laws. Some drivers may even have heard the warnings of Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

“These people are random killers,” Bradbury says. “Every time that they drive under the influence, it’s an act of God that they don’t kill somebody. To pay a $1,200 to $1,500 fine for that kind of conduct certainly doesn’t offend me.”

Yet as of Sept. 10, 10,674 people were on probation for driving under the influence of alcohol in Ventura County--roughly one for every 45 licensed drivers here. If drunk-driving probation were a club, it might be the most popular one in the county.

It’s only after joining this group, evidently, that many members get a clear idea of the bylaws and dues. The rites of initiation begin on the roadside, but the experience continues in court, in custody, in a succession of fines and fees, and it lasts through weeks, months and years of proscribed living.

For most, the punishment begins in Department 10 of Ventura County Municipal Court.

At 9 a.m. most weekdays, a judge takes a seat there, beneath the state seal, between the flags. Scores of alleged drunk drivers and traffic-law offenders then step up to plead guilty or innocent, and hold their breaths.

“Most people who do this for the first time have no idea what’s in front of them,” says Robert I. Schwartz, a Ventura attorney who has handled drunk-driving cases in this county for 11 years.

“Their lives are tied up for three years,” says Linda Sanchez, Ventura County spokeswoman for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. “That’s a big surprise to a lot of people.”

On one recent weekday morning, the accused are young and old, male and female, tall and short, wiry and pear-shaped. Before and above them sits Municipal Judge Steven Hintz, a silver-haired man whose voice resounds well enough even without the courtroom microphone.

On first offense, drunk drivers convicted in Ventura County spend either two nights in County Jail or five working days on a county crew, doing manual labor amid sewage or roadside litter. Most are also fined $1,470, assessed at least $600 in additional fees, ordered to attend regular Alcohol Information School sessions for three months, assigned three years of probation, and stripped of their driver’s licenses for four months.

At 9:15 a.m., the procession of defendants begins. Those pleading innocent are assigned an attorney if they want one and given a future court date. Most who plead guilty need no attorney. They can hear their sentence on the spot, sometimes with a dash of judicial scorn.

“You’re charged with driving under the influence with a .08 or more. A lot more,” intones Hintz, addressing a 52-year-old male defendant. The accused, who has no attorney, pleads guilty, draws a standard first-timer’s sentence and chooses to serve two days of jail time rather than five days of manual labor.

The alcohol cases keep on coming: a 26-year-old woman in a back brace and a bright yellow dress; a 31-year-old man with a beeper on his belt; a 19-year-old man in a spiked haircut accused of falling behind on his mandated payments from a previous conviction and missing Alcohol Information School.

“I’m unemployed right now,” says the man. “Transportation has been a problem.”

“Well,” suggests the judge, “we can give you a ride to the jail and have you do six months.” Hintz asks a few more questions and settles on a slightly less severe sentence.

In less than an hour, the judge races through a 73-name schedule. Many defendants fail to appear. In all, 40 of the 73 defendants are charged with drunk driving or violating probation that was imposed after a drunk-driving conviction.

A little after 10 a.m., Hintz adjourns court and strides out a side door. Some Spanish-speaking defendants linger to hear an interpreter’s explanation of court procedures and ponder their next steps.

“A light day,” says the bailiff.

“So,” says the 20-year-old woman in the tight black warm-up suit, “are all those chairs up there going to be full or what?”

She squirms in her seat, five rows back in the downstairs meeting room of the County Government Center. Around her sit about 130 others, all drunk-driving convicts, all required to sit through the next hour. Down in front someone props up a three-foot-high poster of a smiling little girl on a carousel horse.

“Aw,” whispers a man in the fourth row. “I don’t want to see this.”

Two men in row six are kidding around about their jail time.

“The AA meetings were the worst,” says the woman in row five. “It sucks that I lost my license for a year. That’s so bogus. . . . I don’t even drink anymore.”

This is a victims’ panel, arranged jointly by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the county’s Corrections Services Agency. Eventually, the lights go down, three women take seats in front, and the room goes dead quiet.

Gloria Ruiz Kozlowski of Oxnard tells how she lost her son 16 years ago. He was 19, a passenger in a car driven by a drunk driver.

Cheryl Viggers, a 20-year-old student from Thousand Oaks, explains why she has had five reconstructive surgeries on her face. Four years ago, she says, her car was blindsided by a drunk driver, who was fined $1,030.

“That’s no kind of punishment,” Viggers says.

Authorities say that by the time a young first offender gets to the victims’ panel, having faced most of his or her punishments, the offender may have already resolved not to risk this trouble again.

But for those not yet won over, says Douglas Hansen, supervisor of the county’s drunk-driver probation program, the MADD sessions are the county’s best chance to make drunk drivers see “a connection between an irresponsible action . . . and its consequences.”

It’s also a reminder that, however severe the punishment may seem, there are people out there who think drunk drivers are still getting off lightly.

Linda Sanchez of Camarillo, the countywide spokeswoman for MADD, is the panel’s last speaker.

First she tells about the girl in the poster: Her name was Kristin, she was 3 years old, and never reached 4. Then Sanchez tells how her husband and two children were nearly killed by a drunk driver two years ago, how his brain damage cannot be repaired, how their lives have changed.

In the hospital after the accident, Sanchez says, she saw a CHP officer and asked if the drunk driver was in the building too.

“I didn’t care what it took or how I was going to do it,” Sanchez says, staring up into the audience. “But I was going to kill him.”

Instead she joined MADD, and in addition to serving as the agency’s administrator in Ventura, she gives these presentations every few months.

Sanchez finishes a few minutes later, and Ralph Brand, a senior deputy probation officer, rises to close the presentation. The audience has been silent and attentive. Now after a few sniffles and no applause, the offenders crowd toward the exits. One young man, wanted in connection with another charge, is pulled aside and handcuffed.

Brand lingers for a few minutes with the speakers. The victims’ panels, he suggests, are “by far the thing we do that has the most effect upon our clients.”

“Clients?” says Kozlowski. “You call them clients ?”

Get caught once, and you pay fines, spend a few days in custody and perhaps hear the stories of some angry victims. Get caught twice or more, and the county’s work-furlough program is about the best you can hope for.

The work-furlough facility, formerly Air Force temporary housing, stands at the edge of the Camarillo Airport. The buildings are minimum security, with bunk beds inside for 345 male and female inmates, housed separately. The windows are unbarred, doors separate the toilets from the beds, and there’s an outside smoking area.

The inmates can leave to do their jobs on the outside--construction, waiting tables, sometimes government work--but they can’t accept visitors on the job or go out to lunch. Four full-time county employees spend their days checking up on the comings and goings of work-furlough prisoners.

An estimated 70% of the inmates are drunk drivers with multiple convictions, which means the driver’s license has been suspended for a year or more.

They are the ones at the bike racks. You can pick them out on weekdays, dozens of them, pedaling off to their jobs, sometimes carrying county-issued sack lunches. Some inmates commute 15 miles each way, logging more than two hours of road time, blowing into Intoxilyzer machines each day upon their return. Anything above zero, and off they go to County Jail.

“They get real healthy here,” says Mike Klee, the supervising deputy probation officer who oversees the operation.

“Ventura County. Come on vacation, leave on probation, return on violation,” says No. 20, a man in his mid-20s who wears a tattoo and sits at the milk and Kool-Aid table in the cafeteria. “I’ve been on probation since I was 18. All on traffic violations.”

“I had three drunk drivings,” says No. 102, in the next seat. “I’m here because I violated one of my probation rules--driving on a suspended license.”

For that third drunk-driving conviction, No. 102 did a year in jail. He’s 28 years old, and he hasn’t had a valid driver’s license, he says, since 1985.

Neither sounds proud, but neither sounds quite contrite either.

No. 210, an articulate 29-year-old, is at least saying things probation officers like to hear.

“This is something I’ve done to myself, and I want to take care of it on my own,” he says, explaining why he hasn’t told his out-of-town parents about his situation.

When they’re not working, sleeping or eating, inmates watch television, play dominoes and complain about the fines and probation conditions they face.

As part of their formal probation, many repeat offenders are required to stay alcohol-free around the clock, whether they are driving or not, whether they are incarcerated or not. That condition strikes many convicts, and their lawyers, as excessive infringement on their freedom. But the courts can impose it because probation is voluntary. You can always choose jail time instead--probably six months in County Jail for a first offense, a year for a second or third, and 16 months or more in state prison for a fourth offense.

Then there’s the money.

If they fight their charges and lose, convicts can land in work furlough owing thousands of dollars to their attorneys. But the biggest debts often arise from the state-mandated restitution program. About one drunk-driving convict in every five, county officials estimate, faces a restitution debt for damage he or she caused.

“We had one the other day, a first-timer: $46,000,” says Melanie Markley, program administrator for the county probation department’s collections and revenue services division.

Everyone in work furlough, meanwhile, pays for the privilege of serving time there instead of County Jail. The fees are $10 to $35 daily, depending on the convicts’ salaries. They usually stay at least 30 days and occasionally longer than a year.

In addition, repeat drunk drivers owe the county $32 a month in probation fees rather than the one-time $100 fee paid by first-timers.

And then there is Alcohol Information School--usually the 18-month course, if you are a repeat offender. That carries a $1,065 bill and requires 12 hours of classroom time, more than 50 hours of group counseling and 18 or more hours of individual counseling.

“Those who are repeat performers in these things just expect to be ground up by the system,” says Oxnard attorney Joseph H. Lax, a veteran defender of accused drunk drivers. “It’s a thinly disguised mechanism for making money.”

County officials dispute that, saying the fines and fees are intended to make a deep impression. Still, many wonder if there’s any way to reach some drinkers.

One teacher in the county’s Alcohol Information School says he tells his first-time students to open savings accounts, just to hold money they will eventually owe to the county for future transgressions.

“They just look at you like you’re a madman,” he says. But nearly one in three is convicted again in California within seven years.

In county custody, “it’s safe and you’re healthy,” says Rick Stein, a 39-year-old prisoner with three drunk-driving convictions. “But you come right back to the place where you started. You get five friends who come over. Everybody’s glad you’re out of jail, and they’re ready with their alcohol and drugs to celebrate. For a lot of people, that’s hard to deal with.”

And for other people, even spending nights in a county bunk bed evidently isn’t enough to bring a revision in thinking.

One of those people is No. 185, who sits in his work-furlough facility room, absorbed in a chess game, as his fellow inmates file down the hall after dinner.

He has been arrested and sentenced twice now, questioned, lectured, fined and incarcerated. And this is what he says, chin in hand, pondering his next move.

“It’s my first time doing any time at all. I’m not a criminal at all. I got caught a few times, but I never hurt anybody.”

Then it’s back to the game.

Outside, the work-furlough supervisor shakes his head.

“Some of these guys,” says Klee, “just don’t get it.”

COSTLY CONVICTION

For a first drunk-driving conviction, the state revokes a driver’s license for four months, and Ventura County requires either two days and nights in jail or five days of unpaid manual labor. In addition, convicts face at least three months of classes and counseling through the county-run Alcohol Information School. For many, attendance at five meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous is required as well.

Then there are the fines and fees. County officials say most first-time drunk-driving convicts can expect the following bills:

$1,470 . . . Official fine (convicts can do 17 days in jail instead)

$100 . . . Probation fee (jumps to $32 monthly for repeat offenders)

$375 . . . Tuition, Alcohol Information School ($1,065 for repeaters)

$125 . . . Fee for five-day work-release instead of two days in jail. Optional fee for paying conviction debts in installments

Total: $2,070

Plus . . .

* Attorney’s fees, which can reach $3,000 or more if the case is fought in court.

* Car insurance costs, which can rise $550 a year or more, depending on the driver’s record and vehicle.

* Reduced income from missing work or losing a job.

6 REASONS NOT TO DRINK AND DRIVE HERE

Past Prosecutions: For years before the state lowered its legal drunk-driving blood-alcohol threshold from .10 to .08 in January, 1990, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury was prosecuting drivers with .08 levels, often getting convictions by persuading the court that the driver’s behavior showed impairment. Once the state lowered its threshold, drunk-driving arrests in the county rose 14% and Bradbury’s department continued to reach beyond the state’s threshold, prosecuting some drivers with blood-alcohol levels as low as .07. (On the charts of the state Department of Motor Vehicles, a 180-pound person reaches .08 by drinking three 12-ounce beers in an hour; a 120-pounder by drinking two.)

Acquittals are rare: The district attorney’s conviction rate in drunk-driving cases has been the second highest in the state among major metropolitan areas. DMV researchers report that Ventura County convicted 78.7% of the 7,606 people prosecuted for driving under the influence of alcohol in 1989. Only Kern County, with a 79.9% rate, ranked higher. (Los Angeles County’s rate was 59.5%.)

Plea bargains are rarer still: In the same analysis, state researchers found that Ventura County prosecutors were the least likely among those in the state’s major counties to plea-bargain on drunk-driving offenses. In 1989, the DMV found, the county district attorney’s office reduced just 0.01% of the drunk-driving charges it filed to reckless driving.

Murder charges are possible: Though few such convictions have been achieved statewide, Ventura County prosecutors are fighting hard to get second-degree murder convictions in extreme drunk-driving cases. For two years, Bradbury has been fighting for a murder conviction of Diane Mannes, whose out-of-control car killed three youths and injured two others near Camarillo in March, 1989. Police say her blood-alcohol level was .20 and that she had been picked up on suspicion of drunk driving the night before. In Mannes’ first trial, jurors deadlocked on whether she showed malice aforethought. The case is being appealed on another issue, with Bradbury maintaining that “if this is not a murder case, I haven’t seen one yet.”

Local judges are tough: Ventura County’s judges are known for stiff drunk-driving sentences, seldom letting first-time offenders off with a 90-day license restriction, as judges in other jurisdictions sometimes do. Another caution: Under state law, a third drunk-driving arrest could be considered a felony and yield a state prison sentence. Or, as Bradbury puts it, “A guy who drinks and drives three times could end up with Bubba as his roommate.”

Local leaders believe the penalties are working: In 1988, county officials note, 31% of the drunk drivers sentenced here were repeat offenders. By 1990, officials say, that figure had fallen to 27.5%. In addition, California Highway Patrol records show that in Ventura County and statewide, accidents involving drunk drivers on freeways, highways and unincorporated roads are down. In this county, the CHP’s alcohol-related accident count has fallen from 480 in 1987 to 435 last year. This year, the rate of accidents has slowed further, with just 195 logged in the first half of 1991.

THE D.A. ON DUI

Ventura County may be tough on drunk drivers now. But if Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury had his way, prosecutors would charge drivers who had any alcohol in their systems.

“It is clear that there is a diminution of one’s ability to safely operate a vehicle with one drink. It is measurable,” said Bradbury, who served on the President’s Commission on Drunk Driving during the Reagan Administration.

“That doesn’t mean that I believe everyone should go to jail if they have a drink and then drive,” he said. “At a .02, it may be an infraction and a small fine. I think definitely at a .05, the state should adopt a per se law that makes you guilty of driving under the influence; .08 is way too high.

“If I’m driving, I have nothing to drink,” Bradbury said. “If I’m not driving, I’ll have a glass of wine with dinner occasionally. That happens maybe once a month.”