Sunday, January 31, 2010, 10:32 AM
News, Opinion
By Stephanie Ramage

A LITTLE MORE INFO ON THE STATE'S DUI GRANT FOR ATLANTA

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety has made a $93,000 grant available to the City of Atlanta for “Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic.” But the city has to ‘match’ it with its own $139,230.  The money would cover the training and salaries of APD’s 5-officer (at present) DUI unit.

Last week, I expressed some skepticism about the usefulness of spending $139,230 of Atlanta’s tax money to “match” a state grant of $93,000. However, some APD officers have set me straight on this. Here is the gist of their insights:

--The average DUI task force officer completes almost 100 DUI's each year. That brings in [the officers say] a lot of revenue for the city since the average fine for a first time DUI is over $1000.

--Response time by the DUI unit is bad because there are only five officers and there are currently another five slots on the DUI force that haven’t been filled. The grant would help fill them, in fact the city HAS to fill them as a condition of the grant.

--The average beat officer is afraid of making DUI's because to do it right requires expertise and a lot of off-duty court time. Most beat officers make between two and five DUI arrests each year, because they are forced to, and have no way out of it. These cases are often dismissed in court because, according to some sources, the case work is flawed. DUI is notoriously contested.  

Most officers would probably arrest a drunk driver if they ran into one, but I understand it is very time consuming to put together a good case, and your average beat officer spends most of their time answering calls. That's why the DUI unit is important. It frees up beat officers from these cases, and with their advanced training and experience, the case is generally more well put together and doesn't take as long. Point being, APD needs more officers of EVERY kind. Beat officers, dui, everything. More than 2000 right now..now...

Ken
Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 4:19 PM

The information is close but not as accurate as it can be, but the officer that gave the information is missing some stuff.

Leon
Monday, February 01, 2010 at 10:55 AM