if plea-bargaining is gone, so is the state’s revenue stream. This may have the unintended concequence of less dwi enforcement…as putting people in the pokey costs the state money, and plea-Bargaining them makes money…always look where the incentive is to see what is going to really happen.

Will drinks be served?

Time will tell if this is a face saving stunt or if Nixon is serious about “fixing” the DWI issues in St. Louis county. I am very pessimistic about this “summit”. One wonders why he calls in police chiefs? Most of them haven’t made a DWI arrest in decades. If he is serious then he will adopt some of these ideas:

(1) DWI Conviction rates are far too low

Just about every number we have shows that Missouri courts are convicting DWI offenders less than 50% of the time. I’m not talking about DWI offenders who are “convicted” of a lesser charge of speeding with a huge fine. This is unacceptable.

(2) DWI is not about “revenue enhancement”.

Missouri must move toward taking DWI offenses away from municipalities. DWI enforcement is not for revenue enhancement or generation for city coffers. DWI enforcement is for saving lives and holding dangerous drivers accountable (JUSTICE). See next point. DWI offenders should be arrested NOT to raise money for the city, but to help keep the citizens of Missouri safer. We have far too many city managers/administrators/police chiefs who have adopted a philosophy that says law enforcement is a “business”. Its not a business. Whatever it costs to save lives is what it costs. The bottom line cannot be allowed to be the sole focus when it comes to setting priorities in crime control.

(3) DWI Courts

We need to send each and every DWI charge to a DWI/traffic court. Like a “drug court” a DWI court would be much more prepared/equipped to handle the INCREDIBLY COMPLEX crime of DWI. Even if municipalities were allowed to “keep” and enforce DWI ordinances, these cases MUST be sent to a DWI court (perhaps a “municipal” division DWI court set up to handle all of St. Louis County’s municipal DWIs???).

(4) Prosecutor training needs to be magnified 100 fold.

MOPS and Highway Safety can handle this. There is federal money for this available.

(5) Judge training for DWI courts.

MOPS and Highway Safety can help with this also.

(6) DWI Tracking System

The DWITS needs to be MANDATORY in EVERY department in the State. No traffic safety grants should be granted to any agency that refuses to participate in DWITS.

The DWITS also needs to be linked to every courtroom (ideally to the DWI courts set up above). Prosecutors MUST have access to it also so they can make INTELLIGENT/INFORMED/ACCURATE decisions about DWI charging.

(7) DRE Program enhanced

A rising number of Missouri drivers are operating under the influence of alcohol and/or other drugs/medications. Every month I hear a police officer tell me that their local judge/prosecutor won’t accept a DRE report. This most recently happened from a Henry county officer but the problem is spread Statewide.

Also, there are far too few ACTIVE DRE officers in the State. More should be trained and the ones who are inactive need to be dropped from the program.

The active DREs should be a resource that EVERY law enforcement agency can draw on. On almost a weekly basis I hear (normally from the east side of the State) that a DRE “wasn’t allowed” to respond to a request from another agency because the DRE’s agency refused to allow them to. This is unacceptable. DREs are far too valuable to the “property” of a local Chief or Sheriff.

I’ve been told that the State of Wisconsin has a program that actually makes sure DREs are paid for their time if they are called out by another agency and their parent agency refuses (or cannot afford) to pay them.

(8) Refusal warrants

More and more agencies are moving toward pursing blood test warrants after a DWI suspect refuses to supply a test. From what I gather this process can be streamlined to the point where the warrant process is taking 30-45 minutes. Prosecutors and judges need to get on board with this idea and LE administrators should set up a process within their agencies that grease the skids. In this day of modern electronic communication there is literally NO REASON whatsoever that this cannot happen.

(9) Legislation

I’ve heard (from other States) that the following laws seem to be working:

Banning plea bargaining on DWI. Some critics say this will jam up the courts, but this has not been the case. If these cases were assigned to “specialized” DWI courts, there will be no “jam”.

Creating a criminal charge for refusing a breath/blood/urine/saliva test during a DWI investigation. Why not have both a criminal penalty AND a civil penalty for blocking a legitimate DWI criminal investigation?

And why is DWI in Missouri only a class B misdemeanor? Littering is a class A misdemeanor. Does this make sense to you?When was the last time you heard of somebody killed by “drive by littering”? Never, right? But somebody has probably been killed or injured by a DWI offender in the time it took me type this up. Shouldn’t DWI be a more serious crime than littering?

(10) Toxicological lab support

It simply takes FAR TOO LONG for lab results to be returned on blood alcohol tests and drug tox screens. More chemists need to be hired. Another State Crime Lab should be created.

(11) Elimination of “local law”

You’ve heard me gripe about this before but there is far too much local political influence on DWI cases. Removing DWI cases from municipalities may help but only if a mechanism is in place to make this happen. Local politics and the attitude of “that’s not the way we do things around here” have no place in the war against the impaired driver.

(12) More training in the realm of police ethics

What I mean by this is we need to train police officers they are not “revenue enhancers” for the agency/city/county that employs them. They do not owe their first loyalty to their Chief or their Sheriff or the City administrator. Their oath of office is to the “people of the State of Missouri and to the Missouri and US Constitution. And though this next note will certainly anger some, we need to teach some police officers that it is simply wrong for them to drive drunk. There is no honor or loyalty in allowing a police officer or deputy or trooper to get away with DWI. The law applies to all or to none at all.

(13) Finally, local prosecutors have no business handling refusal revocation hearings.

There is far too much politics at the local prosecutor level and very few prosecutors have the time or ability to deal with refusal cases. Refusal cases should be given back to the Department of Revenue.

BA Bob

Glad to see efforts are underway to prevent the senseless loss and destruction of our families.

This is a good start to getting a handle on the DWI problem. However, after this meeting, the Governor needs to take things one step further and eliminate state employees who have more than one DWI on their record. Years ago under previous administrations, merit employees were allowed to rack up multiple DWI’s, felonies, and other criminal charges without repurcussions to their job. This is unfair to other state employees who have no record of improprieties, let alone unemployed persons. Hopefully this problem is corrected soon. The state should not support employees who have chronic alcoholism or other substance abuse problems.

I absolutely do not agree that someone who refuses to blow should lose their license for a year. People’s bodies react differently to alcohol, and who wants to risk their entire livelihood (yes, for many the results can be that severe) after they had a drink or two and not sure how they’d score? First time offenders should simply get a fine and a warning, while repeat offenders should get the book thrown at them. ALL of us make mistakes. I know several police officers employed both in the county and city, and yes, just this past Halloween, we were all out partying & drinking. I had two beers the entire night, and drove home. No worries. One of my cop buddies had *7* mixed drinks and at least two beers.. Another one had a different drink in his hand every time I saw him… I lost count but it was in the double digits & he was wasted. They all drove home. The ladder told me he gets out of every check-point by flashing his badge.. If the governor and police want justifiable enforcement, I would have to agree with (12) on “The Dude’s” suggestions - that police are held to the same standard as citizens.. And the recent tragedy in Des Peres is a classic example.

What a freaking POPULIST!!!!

I am not trying to minimize anything here, but, I watched a judge turn a burglar loose on his own recognizance and then demand bail money for a 1st time DWI, and there was no wreck involved. I guess what it amounts to is that I feel that DWI is a political football and people make a big deal about it, but whine when the judge throws the book at a real criminal. If you want to have one law for everyone across Missouri, great, but make sure that’s the way it’s written so that the judges can’t turn their lawyer and LEO buddies loose when they get one. How about a law that any elected or appointed official in the state who is convicted of DWI has to resign? Don’t just go after State employees, go after their bosses too.

Yeah, call a bunch of lawyers there to solve the problem. Lawyers are the problem. Each town hires a lawyer to be judge and prosecuter and some lawyers are prosecutors for one city and Judge for another. Then they do the old you take care of my clients where you are the judge and I will take care of your clients where I am the judge, they all get paid and the DWI person is turned loose on the streets again. They aren’t going to cut into their revenue stream

the laws need to apply to EVERYBODY and all these little towns need to get online and talk to each other.

Ersatz - LOL