Many times people will try to reason with the police in hopes of being able to talk their way out of an arrest. They ask the officer for a break or they tell the officer they’re only a few blocks from home, and this is normally not going to help the situation. Maybe if you’re a police officer yourself, you may get a little professional courtesy.
Otherwise, it’s going to come back as a consciousness of guilt that the officers are going to say that you knew that you were impaired, and that’s why you were trying to get out of it. I’ve even had cases where officers interpret it as a bribe, thinking if it were offered, the officer would just take them home, and obviously that’s not the case.
What Defenses Can Your Attorney Use to Refute the Reasonableness of the Initial Police Stop and throughout the Ensuing DUI Investigation?
There are defenses throughout the entire investigation. We need to start with the agency that we’re dealing with, which is usually the police department. Is it a reputable police department or questionable police department? From the very beginning, from the driving pattern that we talked about, we look for reasons that the person was not impaired, things that they did well, and we do that throughout the entire DUI investigation.
We examine the driving, what you said to the officer while you’re still in the car, getting out of the car, talking to the officer once you’re out of the car as well as looking for problems with the way that the field sobriety tests were given. Many times police officers don’t administer them correctly.
There’s no way that anybody could successfully do field sobriety tests when they’re not instructed to do them correctly. When we get to the chemical testing, breath testing, blood testing, and sometimes urine testing, we look for problems in those tests as well.
There are things that we can do in court, arguing that the officers didn’t have a reason to stop and detain the person. We have the ability to question prolonged detentions if they keep the person too long. We can contest the lawfulness of the arrest, and if the officer’s investigation fails at any point on this continuum, the stopped detention, the prolonged detention and arrest, we may be able to get the case thrown out on legal grounds.
The Attorney Will Refute the Officer’s Reason for Pulling over a Motorist for a Very Minor Driving Error
So if an officer does see someone touch the line, drive on the line for 10 seconds and then back into their lane, we may be able to get the case dismissed because that’s not driving any different than anybody else would normally drive.
Certain Violations Are Not Illegal under Certain Circumstances and the Attorney May Be Able to Have the Case Dismissed When the Initial Stop Was Improper
We have situations where someone may change lanes without signaling, and an officer thinks that that’s a violation of the law, and under certain circumstances it may be. But we need to look at the particular case to see whether any other traffic was affected. This is because you don’t have to use a signal to change lanes if no one else is affected.
Similarly with speeding, an officer may pull someone over, start a DUI investigation because the person was driving over the speed limit, but that doesn’t mean that that’s a violation of the law. If the person is cited for unsafe speed, we may be able to show that the driving was in fact not unsafe and therefore the stop and the detention were improper.
Sometimes someone will be detained by one officer who stops them, but since that officer isn’t a DUI officer, the person must be detained as they wait for the arrival of a DUI team which may take half an hour. I’ve seen it take well over an hour to get a DUI team on scene, and that would be a prolonged detention, probably an illegal prolonged detention, and we may be able to get the case dismissed or thrown out based on legal grounds there as well.
The Level of Training Differs among the Law Enforcement Agencies throughout California
Training levels vary a lot from police department to police department. If we’re dealing with the California Highway Patrol, they’re usually very good with their investigations. They are careful concerning the driving, the stop, and the detention. We may not be able to find something if it’s a well -trained officer with a well-trained agency.
Other times we may be dealing with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with an officer who hasn’t done a DUI investigation in 15 years. He or she may be very inexperienced in conducting that type of investigation, so it’s really a case by case basis. Oftentimes we do find problems with the initial stop and detention.
Police May Follow Drivers, Even If It Results in a Driving Error Due to Nervousness
Unfortunately, there’s no law against police officers following somebody until they commit a violation, and if they don’t commit a violation, there’s no reason for a stop. Most often, police officers will station themselves in police cars or on police motorcycles outside of popular restaurants or bars to follow people.
It may make somebody nervous, and it may lead to a vehicle code violation, but there’s no prohibition against police officers following someone, waiting to see if they do something wrong.
Personal Attention
