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Police chief takes issue with column
Dear Editor,
In response to Mike Hendricks' column "BAC and New Year's Eve," I feel a duty to respond.
I am the police chief in La Vista, Neb., a suburb bordered by Omaha to the north and Bellevue to the east.
There are approximately 750,000 people in our metro area. I've been a police officer for 22 years and I am a member of the Nebraska State Board of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
I have made numerous drunk driving arrests in my career and have seen first-hand the dangers and tragedy that drunk drivers leave on our communities. So I speak from experience.
Hendricks' comments seem (similar) to those of a defense attorney who will try anything to get his client off. His basis for his comments, what transpired in the 1930s, should scare all of us who drive or have children who drive. We are a completely different society than in 1930. Alcohol use and abuse has also changed.
In 1980, when MADD was founded, traffic deaths in the United States were approximately 40,000, with 25,000 (62 percent) of those death being alcohol related. Traffic deaths in 2005 were approximately 42,000, with 15,000 (36 percent) of the fatalities being alcohol-related. What would have happened if tougher laws and penalties had not been adopted? How many people would have died without the efforts of our community groups such as MADD?
If the alcohol related fatality rate stayed at 62 percent, we could assume total deaths from alcohol related crashes to be around 26,000 people, increasing our total fatalities to 53,000.
That's 11,000 more people per year, and over the past 25 years, that's another 275,000 people. Maybe one of those would have been a Hendricks relative. Is it worth not getting behind the wheel and driving to save 11,000 lives per year? I hope that's an easy answer for most of us.
Hendricks also stated the .08 law is not accurate when deciding if a person becomes a safety hazard when driving at that level.
Hendricks, you were a police officer, you should have a better understanding and know what people are like at .08. Yes, they are a hazard. Talk to the families of those killed by drivers who were at .08!
Hendricks' comments showed his ignorance in the understanding of Field Sobriety testing.
He cites field sobriety tests which are not validated, which means that he's totally ignorant of the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests which evaluate both divided attention (which is a requirement to drive safely) as well as the involuntary indicators like horizontal gaze nystagmus (which is entire controlled by the Central Nervous System and cannot be practiced).
I don't know what type of police work Hendricks and his "partner" did in Tulsa, but if it was as he described, both of them should have been fired (maybe they were!).
Hendricks' comments of how he conducted drunk driving investigations (it is a CRIME) are a disgrace to the law enforcement profession. Thankfully he is not a law enforcer, but unfortunately he can make comments with no basis that some people may actually believe (that is his protected right as an American citizen). Drunk drivers have no place in our society. That should be your message.
Robert S. Lausten
Chief of Police
La Vista
Hendricks responds:
Unfortunately, Chief Lau-sten missed the main point of my column, as often happens. Nowhere in the column did I advocate driving under the influence. Nowhere in the column did I advocate allowing drivers who were intoxicated or appeared to be intoxicated to be sent on their way behind the wheel of their vehicle. Obviously, regardless of the reason of the impairment, whether it be alcohol, drugs, emotional distress, lack of sleep, cell phone usage or a hundred other variables, impairment of any kind is dangerous when one is behind the wheel.
The point of my column was two-fold. One, man is not a machine and consequently does not fit into a predetermined formula, which brought about point two which advocated giving police officers some of their discretion back in this area when it comes to making arrests. Officers have discretion in practically every other area of misdemeanor crime but have been stripped totally when it comes to drinking and driving, thanks to the lobbying efforts of MADD. I simply suggested that it is possible to remove drivers from behind the wheel using some other option besides locking them up.
As far as the Chief's statistics, he's far off. You would hope that a police officer of 22 years and a Board Member of MADD would know better but maybe it's because he IS a board member of MADD that he uses the phrase "alcohol-related" crashes. Alcohol related does not mean alcohol-caused.
Alcohol-related traffic crashes are defined by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to include any and all vehicular (including bicycle and motorcycle) accidents in which ANY alcohol has been consumed, or BELIEVED to have been consumed, by the driver, a PASSENGER, or a PEDESTRIAN associated with the accident.
Thus, if a person who has consumed alcohol and has stopped for a red light and is rear-ended by a completely sober but inattentive driver, the accident is listed as alcohol-related, although alcohol had nothing to do with causing the accident. If a totally unimpaired driver crosses the center line and hits an oncoming car, in its own lane, head-on and someone in the car that was hit was drinking or BELIEVED to have been drinking, it is classified as an alcohol-related crash. So the Chief's numbers that says that 36 percent of all fatal crashes being alcohol related are just wrong, if he's trying to suggest that 36 percent of all fatal crashes were the result of a drunk driver. When you look at alcohol-caused accidents, rather than alcohol-related accidents, the numbers drop significantly, down to 12.8 percent, almost 300 percent lower than the Chief's figures.
Obviously, anyone being killed or injured by a drunk driver is tragic and any number is too high. But the purpose of the column was not to allow drunk drivers to drive, it was to allow police officers discretion in how to handle the drivers once they were identified, because every case is different.
Finally, I wasn't fired, nor was my partner. The procedures mentioned in my column were common procedures followed by many Tulsa police officers during my tenure there and I'm not aware of any officer who received any kind of negative admonition at all for using their discretion. The drunk driver was removed from the streets and from behind the wheel of the vehicle which, after all, was the important thing. There are many CRIMES (using the Chief's italics) that go unpunished due to officer discretion. It has always been that way and hopefully it always will.