For Drunk Drivers, Holiday Means Another Crackdown

At least he was honest about it: Javier was drunk.

Under the harsh electric glow of a California Highway Patrol sergeant’s flashlight, the bleary-eyed Boyle Heights resident blithely confessed that he had quaffed a six-pack of Budweiser before climbing into his Dodge Colt and driving the wrong way up a freeway off-ramp.

Just a few hours into the long Labor Day weekend, Javier’s holiday was over. He would wake up in jail Saturday morning with more than just a headache and a bad case of cottonmouth. His car would be impounded, and he still would have the probable suspension of his license and a hefty court fine to look forward to.

Better, though, than not waking up at all.

“If we hadn’t found him, we would probably be looking at a fatality,” said Sgt. Robbie Roberts, stepping carefully around a stinking puddle of Javier’s vomit in the middle of the road.

Javier wasn’t the first drunk hauled into jail and off the road during a nightlong holiday weekend patrol of Los Angeles- area freeways. And he wouldn’t be the last. Roberts and other officers from the CHP and Los Angeles Police Department were out in force each of the nights throughout the Labor Day weekend.

Their efforts netted dozens of drivers with blood-alcohol levels above the legal limit, some so far from sober that they wet their pants and could not remember where they lived.

Such crackdowns--now a regular part of most weekends and holidays--appear to be saving lives.

The number of drunk-driving-related fatalities has fallen steadily over the past five years. In 1987, 2,754 people were killed as a result of drunk driving in California. By 1992, that number had dropped a third to 1,832. In Los Angeles County alone, drunk driving fatalities fell from 542 in 1990 to 367 in 1992.

Law enforcement officials attribute the drop to tougher penalties resulting from activism by grass-roots organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Once treated lightly, drunk drivers now face harsh reactions from the courts, their insurance companies and even their friends.

“People are not laughing anymore,” Roberts said.

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Once the drivers have been picked up, they are transported to the Parker Center parking lot. Old buses and mobile homes form a horseshoe. Long tables line one side, long benches the other. On the benches sit the drunks--some glum, some still smiling. At the tables sit officers and civilian volunteers carefully filling out the stack of paperwork that accompanies any arrest.

This is IBARS, the LAPD’s Immediate Booking and Release System, which speeds up the processing of people who

have been arrested so that patrol officers can spend more time on the street patrolling instead of filling out forms. The standard booking process can take an officer more than two hours, about a quarter of his or her shift.

The routine is simple.

Drunks are brought to the command post by patrol officers and cuffed to one of the benches for a few minutes. Officers fill out preliminary forms, then administer a breath test on the Intoximeter 3000, which measures the amount of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream.

With a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, a person is considered legally drunk. On Friday and Saturday, many drivers showed blood alcohol levels double or even triple what is legal. It showed. Many stood glassy-eyed as officers explained the fairly simple procedure: Just blow into the tube.

These cops have heard it all. CHP Officer T.J. O’Donnell said sometimes the drunks are telling the truth. “When a guy says he’s only had two beers, he is being honest,” O’Donnell said. “What he’s not telling you is that they were the giant size.”

After administering the breath test, the officer can return to the street.

The drunk is put into an old bus fitted with cages to sober up while volunteers call his home. Often, a family member will pick the driver up; but sometimes, drunks are driven home one by one at dawn in a refurbished city bus.

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Spotting a drunk driver on the road can be tricky. Often, Roberts said, the guy weaving back and forth is just a bad driver--either tired or distracted or fumbling with the radio dial.

“People don’t realize that driving is a full-time job,” Roberts said, maneuvering his cruiser through the concrete spaghetti of the East Los Angeles Interchange.

After about 2 a.m., though, somewhere between 40% and 50% of the drivers “are definitely in a position where they could be under the influence, or very close,” Roberts said.

Sometimes, spotting them is easy.

As he pulled off the eastbound Pomona Freeway at Downey Road, Roberts was surprised by a pair of headlights coming the wrong way.

Roberts flashed his rooftop lights and shined his spotlight into the stalled car. Javier, the hapless driver, looked away, as if he were going to try to back the car down the ramp. But the car didn’t budge.

From 20 feet away, Javier’s car smelled like spoiled beer. Upon closer inspection, Roberts discovered why. Javier, 18, had vomited all over the driver’s side.

“How many cervezas have you had?” Roberts asked.

“Six,” Javier answered frankly. A seventh rolled about on the floor of his car. He fumbled through sobriety tests such as counting off his fingers one by one and standing erect with his eyes closed, head tilted back.

Within minutes, Javier was cuffed and in the front seat of a patrol car. His car had been towed away. And he had thrown up once again. Still, he smiled meekly as backup officers took him away.

A few minutes later on the Hollywood Freeway through Downtown, Roberts spotted a Mercedes drifting from side to side in its lane. Near Broadway he flashed it to the side of the road.

A false alarm. The guy was just tired after spending the day with relatives. So Roberts cautioned him to be careful and sent him back into the blur of taillights heading toward Hollywood.

“He promised to pull off and get a cup of coffee,” Roberts said. “Hopefully, he will.”