Inspired by the throwaway final line of this post.
Given that driving while drunk pretty much tops the list of Most Dangerous and Illegal Things A Lot Of People Do Every Day, why is it that police don’t just hang out around bars and wait until everybody goes home? I mean, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it shouldn’t even take Inspector Gadget to figure out that if you’re looking to bust a few more DUIs, 2:00 a.m. outside the town pub that’s two blocks down from the police station might be a good place to start.
Furthermore, start doing this on a nightly basis, and the “aw, I’ll be fine, I do this every night” crowd might just have to start catching the drift. When your odds of spending the night and losing your license increases past 10% or so, it’s about time to recalculate the risk/reward matrix of that last Tom Collins. At the very least, it’ll force the more mind-muddled motorists to convene in less densely populated areas.
And yet, have a look around even the most popular local bars and clubs at closing time. Nine nights out of ten, you won’t find a cruiser in sight. I haven’t, and I drive all around the things practically every other night to ferry one of my more inebriated comrades around.
Is it just Roanoke, or does this go on in most other places? If so, why? Is there an unspoken agreement between the police and the plastered pub patrons to leave their encounters to random chance?
I don’t know about small towns, but in the city they do. They call them “sobriety checkpoints”. I would think your average city could have hundreds of places that serve alcohol. I dont’ think it would be feasible to have a cop waiting outside each one.
Our city cops hang around the area around closing time (beer-thirty) if they’re not busy somewhere else. This is mainly due to the fights that invariably break out, but they get a fair amount of DWIs, too. Periodically, they also do “saturation”; we have two colleges in our town and our bars are not very good about checking IDs or making sure their patrons don’t take their drinks outside. I believe on the last one they did something like 16 liquor law violations (minors in possession and open containers) and about 11 indecent exposures (one dumbass dropped trou and started peeing on the tires of the transport van; he was real surprised when a cop came boiling out of the driver’s seat and started yelling at him). All in the space of about 3 hours. The bars will get their licenses suspended for a few days and be really vigilant about IDs for a while, and then the whole cycle starts all over again.
I think we have had a few complaints from bar owners about police presence affecting their business, scaring the customers away, yadda yadda yadda, but judging from the crowds (and fights) at all the town bars night after night I doubt they’re suffering too much.
I’d say that it really depends on jurisdiction and how the cops prioritize their assets. In a city like Toronto , the ability of the police to corden off whole segments of the city is impossible with the current force level.
Last I heard ,that the city had an estimated 100k divers that were not licensed and had no insurance and only a chance stop or an accident will iluminate these individuals , but for some reason , they seem to be able to get back on the road with a new vehicle within months.
So at around 2 am on weekend nites , most clubs in the fashion district would let out with several thousand citizens in various states of inebriation , all being channeled towards the freeway , the mass transit system at the time only had a few blue light runs that ran 24 hours and most taxi fares would be expensive.
Drinking and driving was not concidered the evil bad thing not to do , everyone paid lip service to the idea that it was bad , nodded solemmly when someone made point of mentioning someone that had died in the course of an incident with a drunk driver , but in practice , drank and made merry ,and then drove home.
The above paragraph is real , and it happens weekly and there is not a damm thing the cops can do about it , they can bust a few people , throw the book at em , raise the insurance to exorbidant rates , all sorts of education , but in the end ,they can only enforce what the general population wants them to enforce.
Thanks for the response, but I’m not really talking about sobriety checkpoints. We have those here, too (Roanoke isn’t really a “small town” per se), and what they call “sobriety checkpoints” I call “baseless accusatory time-wasting bullshit”. I’m talking about individual police cars hanging out on the road, just the same as you see them do on any given road on any given day, in the immediate vicinity surrounding popular bars. Wait for a particularly obviously-impaired person to drive off, and hit the lights as soon as they hit the gas.
Your probably better off having all drivers install a sniffer in the car that detects alcohol fumes and turns on a transponder signal that any cruiser could read. At worst the cops stops a designated driver with a bunch of drunks in tow, but thats why they call it a police state.
The particular city I’m thinking of, where I would more likely than not go to if I wanted to go out for a drink, probably has 20 or 30 places that serve alcohol in a 3-block radius. Time would be better spent just patrolling the area rather than parked in front of one place, I would think. That’s pretty much what they do already, so if by “hanging out in the vicinity of bars” you mean “patrolling the downtown area”, then yes, they already are doing that.
…I have heard tell of officers of the law, on a quiet night, say, stopping by the local watering hole and taking a stroll through the parking lot with a rag in hand. Wiping off one headlight of every car in the lot. Usually it’s in the winter time, but it works in summer too.
Later, when they are out on the streets it’s easy to pick out the cars with one much cleaner and clearer shining headlight. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Of course the solution is to have a rag in your car and wipe off BOTH your headlights before you exit the parking lot.
That’s the nearest thing I’ve ever heard to what I think you’re seeking.
Cop is watching a parking lot of a local bar,
Just before closing a guy comes stumbling out of the bar.
he falls down twice, and cannot walk a straight line.
He finally crawls to his car, and climbs up the door.
While he is struggling to insert the key all the other drivers leave the parking lot.
When he finally get the key inserted into the ignition, the cop roars up and turns on his red lights.
“Sir I am going to ask you to step out of the car and walk a straight line.”
The guy walks a perfect straight line
“Sir would you recite the alphabet backward”
Guy starts with Z and ends with A
“Sir could you lean back and raise one foot and touch your nose with both fingertips”
Guy not only does that, but jumps up and down on one foot while doing it.
The cop says I don’t get it you were falling down drunk 15 minutes ago.
The guys says, it’s simple, I am the designated decoy.
Back to the OP, you are assuming that cops already don’t do things to trap drunks. Trust me they do.
Well, there is such a thing a harassment.
If the cops were to make a habbit out of this on a particular bar. Then drove the Bar owner out of business. You can bet your ass will have the city in civil court no time flat. (Also, the unspoken truth, is you could seriously fuck with a (small) cities ecconomy if you went overboard with this method.)
Now, that’s only if the cops pick on one bar in particular. If they move around randomly then it’s not a problem.
Plus there is something of a ‘hunters’ appeal in finding these bastard out on the road. As opposed to just catching them when they walk out of the bar. Where’s the fun in that?
Well, no, surely this would pose no problem at all for that particular bar IF its patrons would refrain from drunk driving. If they do drive when drunk, one can hardly call it unfair harassment for the police to deal with it.
We have checkpoints sometimes in San Francisco- St. Paddy’s Day near the Irish Bars, Labor Day weekend on the main thoroughfares.f
Just because you’re leaving a bar, doesn’t mean you’re drunk. Translation- no probable cause, especially if you still drive well with a few drinks in you.
In SF, you can rarely park within view of the bar you’re going to. Sure, there’ll be one or two lucky ones who got to park in front, but for the most part, people will be parked anywhere in the surrounding two blocks (in the Richmond & Sunset districts) to six or seven (in North Beach or the Mission). The farther away people are parked, the wider the net you’d have to throw out. That could get pretty draining, especially considering there’ll be a fight or two that will have to be attended to in the area.
