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Saturday, October 24, 2009
DWI Arrest 'Quota' Blasted
By Jeff Proctor
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
Albuquerque police officials require their DWI officers to make an average of two arrests a night.
They call it a "performance standard" and say it's been in place more than 20 years.
But the president-elect of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association calls it a "quota" and says it has contributed to borderline arrests.
Defense lawyer Ousama Rasheed believes Gov. Bill Richardson's "kitchen-sink approach" in the fight against DWI has been effective in reducing the number of drunks on the road, but APD's two-arrest requirement may now be leading to weaker cases that clog up the court.
He said he's seen an increase recently in the number of cases that end up in court in which the defendant's breath-alcohol score is lower than the state's presumed level of intoxication of 0.08 percent.
"When you include performance standards — quotas — as part of an officer's review process, while it's not a guarantee, it certainly improves the chances for borderline arrests in terms of proof," said Rasheed, who specializes in DWI. "The officer may be more likely to take a case that's more on the edge — like the driving he witnessed is less severe than in a stronger case — because he's not sure he'll get a more solid arrest later in the night."
APD Lt. Les Brown, who commands the DWI Unit, said he believes there are just as many drunks on the road as there have ever been. He said his officers' top priority is catching them — and the officers are good at what they do.
"My guys don't go out, make bad arrests and risk their job and their integrity," Brown said. "Defense attorneys are in the business of saying anything, anytime to win a case. I'm actually proud that they've resorted to this, because we are winning in court."
He said it would take a drastic reduction in the number of DWI arrests to make APD rethink the two-arrest requirement.
The number of drunken driving arrests made by APD has gone down slightly the past few years, according to the department's figures. There were 5,651 arrests in 2006, 5,632 in 2007 and 5,371 in 2008. But there were 4,193 through Sept. 15 this year, and it appears arrests are going back up slightly.
The 13 officers on the DWI Unit make about 60 percent of APD's drunken driving arrests each year, Brown said.
Brown and APD Executive Deputy Director Joe Bowdich bristle at the word "quota."
"They can arrest as many as they want," Bowdich said. "There have never been quotas."
Rasheed disagrees.
"There's no other way to characterize it," he said. "If there are numbers the officers are supposed to meet, then there's no other way to say it. A quota is a quota. We are normally supposed to assume that a cop is making arrests because they feel it is justified and all the legal factors are taken into consideration. But when you include performance standards — quotas — you see a lot of cases that are more difficult for the state to prosecute."
Brown said the two-arrest requirement has been around since before he joined the force 17 years ago.
If an officer on the unit isn't meeting the requirement, Brown said, he tries to find out why.
"We evaluate whether they need additional training or have been working more day shifts and doing more training," he said. "But if we have someone who's working all nights and only gets 15 (arrests) in a month when everybody else is getting 30, we look at whether they're just being lazy."
He said that, sometimes, an officer simply grows tired of the scheduling demands of the DWI Unit, which entail a lot of night shifts, training and time in court.
"If that's the case, or if they're just not getting the job done, we say, 'No hard feelings' and move them to another unit," Brown said.
The average stay for an officer on the unit is about three years, he said.
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