Can You Be Falsely Charged With a PA DUI because of the Snow?
Pennsylvania gets quite a bit of winter weather and as we all know snow and ice make it harder to drive. One problem you may face is a false Pennsylvania DUI charge because of the tough driving conditions. Just imagine:
You are driving on a icy secondary road in Harrisburg. You keep your speed slow and try to veer away from any dark patches on the road because you are concerned about black ice. You may press your brake from time to time at the suspicion of a slick spot or ice. Guess what, the cop in the unmarked car behind you sees lack of control, weaving (from you trying to avoid icy spots) and erratic driving (pressing the brake) and pulls you over for DUI.
You Can Get a DUI in Pennsylvania because of the Snow
Once you are pulled over, the rest is academic. The cop believes he sees “red, bloodshot and glassy eyes.” Your nervous explanations he calls “slurred speech.” He sees your reaction from the cold draft of having your window open and takes your shaking and clumsy reactions as “fumbling with the paperwork.” With all of this he presumes you to be drunk. You are asked to stand on one leg and stumble a bit because, well silly you, you are used to standing on both of your legs. You are asked to, like a gymnast on a balance beam, walk a straight line placing your heel against your toes and, because you are not a gymnast and very nervous, you cant never do it. All of this leads to you being arrested for and falsely charged with a PA DUI.
So what about those ever so accurate breath tests? They will save you right? Wrong:
- PA DUI Breath Tests are very inaccurate and produce a high number of false positives. They can produce an erroneous reading as a result of certain mouthwashes, cough medications and even white bread. You are also at high risk of a false DUI if you are a diabetic or have GERD or another medical condition.
- Police can charge you with a PA DUI even if you have a zero reading because they can charge you for being under the influence of drugs (even if you are not).
Some may see this as far-fetched, but ask any DUI Attorney and they will tell you that mistakes like this happen on a regular bases.
Pennsylvania drivers, please drive safely and please beware of the snow, ice and false DUIs.
If you are charged with a false DUI please call 1-866-MCSHANE to speak to an expert PA DUI Attorney.
I recently wrote about a case that PA DUI Attorney Shawn Dorward represented where his client’s severe illness was mistaken for a DUI. This is not an isolated incident. In fact, overzealous police officers who are locked-into arresting as many people as possible commit this type of oppression sometimes frequently all over the country. What’s worse, instead of getting reprimanded for abuse of power by arresting innocent citizens, these officers are rewarded and commended.
My good friend Utah DUI Attorney Glen Neely recently represented a case where the police officer arrested a disabled man with cerebral palsy and charges him with a DUI. CBS News covers the story:
Cop Arrests Biker With Cerebral Palsy for DUI
After Inquiry, Charges to Be Dropped Against Utah Man With Cerebral Palsy, Epilepsy Who Could Not Perform Field Sobriety Test
(CBS) A Utah man who suffers from cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other disabilities was stopped while riding a motorized bicycle and charged with DUI after admitting he takes medication.
So we have an unfortunate disabled man who deserves our help and sympathy wrongfully arrested by a trooper who is hell-bent on arresting anyone she can for DUI and has used devious methods to cover up her faults. She is so “locked-in” that she has made more DUI arrests than anyone in the country. Then the Utah Highway Patrol, instead of reprimanding her on this gross injustice, goes on to praise her because of the volume of arrests she’s made. Way to go guys! Arresting a disabled person and making his already tough life miserable and then not being responsible enough to admit your mistake until you were exposed by the media. Sounds a lot like a schoolyard bully if you ask me.
My friends, this is not DUI enforcement; this is oppression. Officers all over the country are blatantly arresting innocent people like you and me and getting away with it. That is a crime and it is the job of DUI attorneys like myself to protect you from corrupt police officers.
As a Pennsylvania DUI Lawyer and resident of this great state, just like everyone else, I too wish there were no DUI drivers on Pennsylvania roadways. In my opinion, better education and training for Pennsylvania state and local police is the key to saving lives. As it stands, the training police officers receive on drunk driving is woefully inadequate and leads to a high number of false arrests. False arrests are a huge problem because a perfectly innocent citizens are arrested for a DUI they did not commit forcing them to go through often times lengthy legal proceedings to clear their name.
Pennsylvania State DUI Troops: Residents of Carbon, Columbia, Lower Luzerne, Monroe Counties Beware!
If we continue to ignore the training problem that is rampant in Pennsylvania’s police forces, we will end up with well-meaning but dangerously under-educated police officers jumping to conclusions that are not sound or bending the law and violating our rights:
Drunk drivers: Police are looking for you
There was a time when troopers stationed at the state police barracks in Swiftwater would track crimes and car crashes in their coverage area using a large map of Monroe County posted on the wall in the station. Color-coded pins were pushed into the map after a crash, arrest or crime.
The map and a few of its now-unused pins still stare down from the wall, but troopers have a much more sophisticated system now to piece together where and when crimes are taking place.
Since 2003, the troopers stationed at Swiftwater have used mapping technology to target patrols at roads with a high volume of drunken driving crashes and arrests.
Last year, police at the Swiftwater barracks made almost 200 more DUI arrests than the previous year — a 75 percent increase from 2008 and the largest jump at any of the 88 state police barracks in Pennsylvania last year.
(We have discussed Pennsylvania DUI statistics before so please take these numbers with a proverbial grain of salt.)
The Pennsylvania State Trooper in this article really makes some amazing admissions:
Far more useful in catching drunk drivers is the “roving DUI patrol,” Reznick said. During a DUI patrol, troopers are assigned to target areas that the PROphesy program has highlighted as heavily traveled by drunken drivers during the likeliest hours.
In a traffic stop, troopers look for more than just the obvious signs of impairment, Reznick said.
“It doesn’t have to be the traditional guy weaving all over the road,” he said.
Police might stop someone for an equipment violation. “It’s very difficult not to be able to find some type of equipment violation even on a new car,” Reznick said.
“There’s a multitude of things. There are little things built into the vehicle code, like something hanging from your rearview mirror is against the law. [Blogger's note: that is not true, by the way unless it materially obstructs the safe operation of the vehicle, which most hanging objects do not]
“Do we stop people and give them $100 citations for that? Mostly not. But it’s probable cause to pull over a car and see if there’s anything else going on.
“If we pull you over for one of these little equipment violations and you’re otherwise driving safely and not driving under the influence, then ‘Here’s your warning, sir,’ and you’re on your way,” Reznick said. “But that’s how you capture the DUI drivers also.”
Amazing! In this country we have rights and one of those is protection from unlawful search and seizure as preserved in the Fourth Amendment. Here we have admission of pre-textual stops which are not proper. Here the roving patrol officer or Trooper following this method is not only guilty of DUI tunnel vision but they are overtly treading on our rights by not demonstrating probable cause for a DUI stop. Any drivers in Carbon, Columbia, Lower Luzerne, Monroe Counties who find themselves arrested for DUI under these circumstances should call The McShane Firm immediately so a qualified Pennsylvania DUI lawyer can assess your case.
I was interviewed recently by Christine Funk for The Women’s Information Network about cognitive bias. Here is the link:
Cognitive Bias: An Interview with Justin McShane
In this interview I explain the flaw in every single one of us humans suffers from called cognitive or contextual bias. I have blogged before about how this effects DUI cases in DUI Tunnel Vision: How Contextual Bias leads to False Arrests. With all of the increasing attention and focus on DUI, contextual bias has become such a big problem that a number of motorists right here in Harrisburg, PA have been falsely arrested due to it.
However, there is hope (assuming that the powers that be actually want to rectify this problem). Better training and awareness can definitely help police officers make better decisions on who they arrest. Pennsylvania’s finest really need to be top-notch and the only way to achieve that is through better education and training.
-Justin J. McShane, Esquire, Pennsylvania DUI Attorney
I am the highest rated DUI Attorney in PA as Rated by Avvo.com
You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin
Board Certified Criminal Trial Advocate
By the National Board of Trial Advocacy
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court Approved Agency
A recent report from The Republican-Herald:
Pa. State Police make record number of DUI arrests
HARRISBURG, Pa.—Pennsylvania State Police say they made a record number of DUI arrests last year while the number of alcohol-related fatalities dropped more than 10 percent.
Commissioner Frank Pawlowski says troopers made 16,900 DUI arrests in 2009, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. At the same time, the number of alcohol-related fatalities investigated by troopers dropped from 161 to 141.
According to figures released Tuesday, the number of all alcohol-related crashes was also down slightly.
Pawlowski says expansion of a drug recognition expert program deserves some of the credit. The number of drug-influence evaluations rose from 693 in 2008 to 1,118 last year.
It looks like the Pennsylvania State Police want us to believe that the decrease number of fatalities is due to their added effort in making DUI arrests. However, after reading this I am very skeptical about the implied conclusions drawn from these statistics because there are a number of unanswered questions.
- Were these added arrests a result of better police work and training or just because they were arresting anything they suspected due to DUI Tunnel Vision?
- What percentage of these cases were acquitted? Was the acquittal rate higher than it was last year? How many innocent people were falsely arrested and wrongly accused?
- What role did educational programs play in reducing the number of DUI fatalities? What about “safe ride home” type programs? Shouldn’t they be considered when evaluating the overall picture?
- A number of states have also seen an increase in the number of arrests due to DUI focused patrols that have the potential to cause over zealous police action to the point where they were arresting a lot of innocent people. There are both financial and professional justifications for the arrest, without concern as to the QUALITY OF THE ARREST. Is this the case in Pennsylvania?
Before we accept their accounts as fact and give them all the credit, we need to see more evidence than just a few statistics.
Like many things in life, more does not necessarily mean better, does it?
Here is another article to illustrate my point
Pennsylvania police cite hundreds for cursing
PHILADELPHIA — Free-speech lawsuits filed Wednesday accuse Pennsylvania police of wrongly charging hundreds of people with disorderly conduct for swearing.
American Civil Liberties Union lawyers say they reviewed 770 such citations issued by Pennsylvania State Police in a recent one-year span and found most involved profanities and other legal, non-obscene speech.
The plaintiffs are a pizza delivery driver briefly jailed for cursing at a local officer over a parking ticket and a Luzerne County woman cited by state police for hurling a derogatory name at a swerving motorcyclist.
The statute carries a possible 90-day jail term and $300 fine. The woman says she paid $1,500 to fight the ticket.
A state police spokeswoman says the agency has no immediate comment.
Statistics aren’t enough to prove anything and the police, above all, should know better.
As Henry Clay once said, “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.”
-Justin J. McShane, Esquire, Pennsylvania DUI Attorney
I am the highest rated DUI Attorney in PA as Rated by Avvo.com
You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin
Board Certified Criminal Trial Advocate
By the National Board of Trial Advocacy
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court Approved Agency
Contextual bias is a particular problem with respect to DUI arrests, not just in the state of Pennsylvania but in the entire country. Through often politicized law enforcement initiatives such as Operation Night Hawk and other similar DUI focused patrols, intense pressure is placed upon police officers and troopers to “hunt” drunk drivers. They are assigned a certain stretch of highway and given the specific task of searching out DUI infractions. That is all they are assigned to do on this particular occasion. This type of DUI focused patrol is called a saturation patrol. The fact that they are focused on DUI from the onset leads to a well known psychological phenomenon called contextual bias.
Contextual bias goes by another name that police officers are specifically trained and warned about when they go through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration core curriculum with the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests. Here contextual bias is otherwise known as “tunnel vision.” Tunnel vision occurs when an individual who may be very well intentioned is suggested a particular conclusion and they eventually adopt it even though they maybe naturally may not have come that same conclusion otherwise. An easy example of this is the “cloud game”. You and I go outside and I point up at the sky and say “Hey look. That cloud looks like a rabbit.” You look up at it and you think to yourself that it really does look like a rabbit. Meanwhile, had I not suggested it, you might have thought it looked like a turtle or a duck or maybe nothing, but based on my suggestion, you start looking for long ears and a bushy tail and viola you see a rabbit. This is the essence of contextual bias.
This comes into play with DUI in Pennsylvania when Pennsylvania State Troopers are assigned to roving DUI patrols. They have been assigned to“hunt” DUI’s and in the process, perhaps intentionally or unintentionally, committing the error of contextual bias. These police officers are geared up for “hunting for drunks”and receive kudos at the end of their shift or saturation patrol based on how many arrests or contacts were made. Some are even given comp time or get easy duty assignments such as working as a construction detail as an attenuator where they sit for hours on end with their lights on at the beginning of a roadway project. When you factor in this extra incentive, it is a small wonder why a police officer who honestly means to do well can leap to a truly aberrant conclusion that a DUI exists when the evidence isn’t there. This is the problem with contextual bias and how it can result in innocent Pennsylvania drivers getting falsely arrested for DUI.
-Justin J. McShane, Esquire, Pennsylvania DUI Attorney
I am the highest rated DUI Attorney in PA as Rated by Avvo.com
You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin
Board Certified Criminal Trial Advocate
By the National Board of Trial Advocacy
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court Approved Agency
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