NCJ Number
140601
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 40 Issue: 7 Dated: (July 1992) Pages: 99-101
Date Published
1992
Length
3 pages
Annotation
A recent poll of police officers revealed some interesting attitudes toward law enforcement DWI policies and judicial influences on those policies.
Abstract
About 84 percent of the police administrators who participated in the poll indicated that their officers made DWI arrests first and worried about court decisions later. However, this author expressed concern that the abundance of negative judicial decisions in DWI cases may wear down officers' zeal in apprehending these offenders; 36 percent of the poll respondents mirrored this concern. However, all respondents believed that their officers would not intentionally fail to make an arrest because of court decisions in their jurisdiction. DWI enforcement remains a high priority in the vast majority of police departments. Several respondents described their departments' officer DWI training on standardized field sobriety testing and other current techniques. Public support for increased DWI enforcement, and disapproval of judicial leniency, does make the officers' job easier. On-scene videotaping was endorsed by a large proportion of respondents as a way to improve prosecution rates.