Another DUI Checkpoint

Tomorrow night hundreds of law-abiding citizens will be stopped and questioned at a Fullerton DUI/license checkpoint while a few dozen officers stand around drinking coffee and earning overtime pay.

Unlike the previous checkpoint in May, the location of this one is being kept secret. If you want to know where the checkpoint will be, try hanging out at the local bars, where word of the location will spread immediately.

We’ve talked about how these checkpoints are extremely ineffective, nabbing only a couple of drunks while deploying a huge amount of police resources at our expense.

The police department has struggled to explain the lack of significant arrests, and has resorted to justifying the checkpoints as mere “safety education.” Our highly trained and well-compensated police officers have been reduced to handing out M.A.D.D. flyers in the middle of the street, one car at a time. That’s a task that could easily be done for free by M.A.D.D. volunteers in the bar parking lots. Of course, that approach wouldn’t be very lucrative for the police department.

These checkpoints are ineffective, invasive and expensive. It’s time to replace them with regular DUI patrols.

19 Replies to “Another DUI Checkpoint”

  1. MADD would force breathalizers to be installed in all of our homes if they could do it. Those pesky constitutional rights always get in the way. Well, except this time. Papers, please!

  2. I heard that two FFFFools showed up at the last checkpoint with cameras. Where is the footage?

  3. Handing out MADD flyers? How very nanny stateish of our public servants, the FPD. I bet the FPD would rather be out in force catching the bad guys and gals instead of stating the obvious.

  4. One life saved, one unlicensed driver that crashes into your car later and flees taken off the street…

    1. There are drunks driving all over the rest of the city while you’re running your little checkpoint. The over-concentration of forces on one a single block could very well cost lives.

    1. The concept here is pretty basic. You don’t need a law enforcment degree to understand that 20 officers standing around at time-and-a-half while two of them do actual work is inefficient.

  5. You must be smarter than ever law enforcement administration in the country that uses DUI check points. Why not tell the Fire Department, library, City Council, City yard and all of City Hall how to do their jobs since you seem to be the smartest person in the Fullerton. How about a few more Fun Photos as well.

  6. Ah, now he’s fallen back to the “everyone else is doing it” excuse. It hasn’t occurred to him that those cities only run checkpoints because the feds pay them to do it. I wonder why? I bet the unions and the overtime pay had something to do with it.

    Don’t let this Gilligan fool get to you. He’s so attached to “the way we do things” that he feels the need to lash out at anyone who asks questions.

  7. why not stimulate the economy and use the OT for cops at DUI checkpoints for a free taxi ride to home or coffee shop? totally radical cause it don’t involve the government

  8. I’m not lashing out at anyone who asks a questions, I believe it’s quite the opposite. Every time a “non-friend” questions anything this expert writes about he will have a couple of the regular kool aid drinkers rush to his defense here spitting out the same old crap that they are told here. I think he believes he knows more than those who do these jobs and who have much more experience. I’ve read enough to know that he has never been a City Manager,City Council member, Police Chief, Fire Chief, Maintenance Yard Supervisor, political expert or ace reporter. The only thing I will concede is his fabulous photographs specifically the ones of the tipped over benches. What a masterpiece.

  9. Gilligan :I’ve read enough to know that he has never been a City Manager,City Council member, Police Chief, Fire Chief, Maintenance Yard Supervisor, political expert or ace reporter.

    That must be why I like him.

  10. DUI patrols and time-and-a-half overtime wouldn’t be necessary if the punishment for DUI was ten times or a hundred times higher.
    That’s because the penalty for DUI is affordable. Same thing for many other crimes.

    If government wanted to STOP drunk driving, you’d have to pay $25,000 for getting caught, no exceptions.

    So there’s your problem…government doesn’t care about safety or fatalities, they just want the revenue and since it’s cheap enough (relatively speaking) people don’t care if they get caught.

  11. We should never drink and drive, but I still like to know where checkpoints
    will be in Orange County, San Diego, and LA. I may use calcheckpoint
    (www.twitter.com/calcheckpoint) to find out where they are.

  12. How often is the Checkpoint site updated? With the Holidays around the corner, it’s still nice to know what streets to avoid in order to get through traffic quicker. Although, this is also the season where if you’re going to drink, to not drive at all.

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