This last weekend the Johnson County Police Department held DUI Checkpoint's in Mission, Kansas and Merriam, Kansas.
In total 1209 people were stopped and 18 DUI's were handed out, that's a under 1.5% of the hundreds of driver's held up in traffic on their Friday and Saturday nights that were ALLEGEDLY Driving Under the Influence.
Each of these checkpoints (Mission Friday Night, Merriam Saturday Night) took around 20 police officers off of the streets for at least 3 hours, and held up hundreds of people from getting where they were trying to go.
These DUI Checkpoints are a huge waste of taxpayer dollars and resources. They are public relation stunts that are funded by transportation grants. These officers are supposed to be out protecting and serving the public. Instead the DUI Checkpoints have them detaining people in order to drum up publicity and hit people with fines for minor traffic infractions. More and more these DUI checkpoints are becoming a reason for police officers to stop vehicles to write them up for regular traffic tickets like no insurance, broken headlight, or driving while suspended.
The sad fact is that these DUI checkpoints don't lead to many DUI arrests, but they do generate lots of income for the counties and municipalities that are performing them, and as long as that continues so will the DUI checkpoints. They use the publicity to let the public think they are keeping drunk drivers off the road, but this isn't really the case as these facts show.
If you or a loved one has been charged with a DUI or other criminal charges contact our office to speak with a Criminal Defense Attorney in Overland Park Kansas today.