Police to Keep Eye on Habitual Drunk Drivers

Police officials are expected to announce today a citywide initiative to curb the number of habitual drunk drivers in Los Angeles by monitoring their activities.

The newly organized Habitual DUI Offender Taskforce will target anyone with three convictions for driving under the influence within seven years, said Motor Officer Douglas Gerst of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division.

The program is an expansion of the two-man operation that Gerst began in December with the help of the city attorney’s office in Van Nuys. In coming months, the program will begin in the LAPD’s three other traffic divisions. Through Van Nuys court records going back to 2002, Gerst’s original team identified more than 750 habitual drunk drivers, said Rick A. Schmidt, a city prosecutor.

The team, which is supplemented by a handful of motor officers who help with surveillance, has focused on 35 high-risk cases; about half of the drivers involved have been rearrested for probation violations. “Our goal is to arrest them before they crash,” Gerst said.

Those arrested for misdemeanor offenses have been getting about nine months of jail time; the felony cases are still being processed. “I’ve always been frustrated with these people who have so many DUI convictions and are still out on probation,” Gerst said. “I would say the majority of these people are in violation of their probation every day because they know they are not being watched.”

“Well, they think they are not being watched,” said Sgt. Dave Ferry, the other half of the traffic task force. “All that changed in December.”

In 2002, alcohol-related traffic crashes across the country caused an average of one death every half an hour, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Annually, about 40% of California’s traffic deaths since 1998 have been caused by alcohol.

Gerst, who has worked with the Valley Traffic Division’s drunk-driving unit for 13 years, said he had become interested in stopping impaired drivers after being rear-ended by one. The driver “broke my back in three places and he actually tried to flee the scene, but his drive shaft came off,” said Gerst, who spent six months recovering from his injuries. Drunk drivers “are probably your most violent criminals out there,” he said. “I live with the pain every day, and when I feel the pain, I associate it with drunk drivers.”

Gerst and Ferry organized the task force with the approval of Capt. Greg Meyer.

Meyer said he thought the team was “going to become a nationwide strategy on how to deal with this whole problem.”

Ferry said he and Gerst had compiled information on repeat offenders, including their addresses, the cars they drove and their drunk-driving histories. The officers organized surveillance teams to monitor those considered high risks.

Occasionally, the officers said, they have a situation that calls for some compassion.

Gerst related one incident in which a habitual offender had been caught driving home from his job in Thousand Oaks in violation of his probation. The man, who was not drunk, was candid with the officers, explaining that he had no other way to get to and from work. The officers arrested him, but Gerst said he had asked the judge to be lenient.

Tina Pasco, executive director of the Los Angeles County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, applauds the efforts. “It makes more sense to try and intervene ... before there is a crash and somebody dies,” she said. “It’s real simple. It adds up to saving lives.”