Ramsey Steps Up Defense of DUI Law
|
|
For the second time in a week, D.C. Council members asked Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey to explain the arrests of drivers with blood alcohol levels below the legal limit for intoxication. On Monday, Ramsey acknowledged being confused about why the council plans to change the city’s drunken driving law. Yesterday, Ramsey issued a full-throated defense of existing laws and his officers’ actions in a few high-profile cases. We’re at a point where traffic fatalities are the lowest in 20 years,” Ramsey said. “I don’t want us to slip.” Ramsey said the public misunderstands the department’s criteria for charging people with driving under the influence, or DUI. District law, like laws in Virginia and Maryland, allow for the arrest of any driver a police officer judges to be impaired, regardless of blood alcohol level. Attorney General Robert J. Spagnoletti, who joined Ramsey in testifying before the council’s Judiciary Committee, said: “There is no evidence to suggest that this is a big problem in the District of Columbia. The system works. The number of deaths declining suggest we’re doing it right.” Last week the council passed emergency legislation that would bring D.C. law closer to laws in surrounding states. But Spagnoletti said the changes affect only the presumptions that are used in court. They do not change the threshold for arrest: an officer’s probable cause to suspect that a driver is impaired by alcohol or drugs. Spagnoletti said many DUI arrests in which drivers have a blood alcohol level below .08, the legal level for intoxication in the District, also involve drug use, which cannot be measured with a breath test. In 2004, D.C. police made 521 arrests for driving while intoxicated, or DWI, and 165 for DUI. Police also arrested 103 people who refused to be tested. Those totals do not include arrests made by the U.S. Capitol Police and others. The Washington Post has published stories about the arrests of drivers with low blood alcohol levels. One report was about the experience of Debra Bolton, a 45-year-old Virginia woman, who said she was arrested for DUI and spent five months fighting the charge after drinking one glass of wine with dinner. Her blood alcohol level was .03, and her case was not prosecuted. Spagnoletti and Ramsey took issue with her story, saying she did not pass any of the four field sobriety tests administered by the arresting officer. In an interview, Bolton said that after the officer told her she was under arrest, she replied: “Why? I passed all your little tests.” |