dui attorneys

Drivers are asked to step out of their vehicles and perform a few simple sobriety tests. One barefoot, tipsy woman keeps saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as a Butler County Sheriff’s deputy escorts her to the breath-test machine. Her Toyota Solara is towed away.

By the time Fairfield police officers fold their checkpoint at 3 a.m., they have briefly stopped 688 vehicles and netted eight driving-under-the-influence arrests – including Richard Guinan, Hamilton County assistant prosecutor. Both Guinan and the woman of many apologies refused the breath test. Both were taken in for booking.

The June 15 checkpoint location, as usual, had been publicized in advance. Roadside floodlights and warning signs were set up shortly before 11 p.m.

Southbound traffic was funneled into a single lane. Patrol-car light bars flashed for hours.

Yet motorists still drove up high on alcohol or drugs, without driver’s licenses or not wearing seat belts. Two had outstanding warrants against them. Guinan earlier that day spent time at a prosecutor’s office golf outing and in the past had prosecuted drunken drivers.

Welcome to the world of tougher DUI enforcement.

But are sobriety checkpoints working here? Are they deterring drunken or drugged drivers?

An Enquirer analysis of 40 checkpoints for the four-county Southwest Ohio area since January 2006 found a total of 261 DUI arrests. That’s 261 out of more than 17,000 vehicles checked, or about one DUI arrest for every 67 vehicles.