The New Braunfels Police announced that they arrested a whopping one person on New Year's Eve for Driving While Intoxicated as a part of a DWI "no refusal" weekend that began on December 21st. In case you haven't heard all of the dire warnings on your local TV news, a "no refusal" weekend is where people who are arrested of DWI will not be allowed to refuse alcohol testing.
If a DWI suspect refuses to take a breath test, then police obtain a warrant to draw a blood sample from the person, which can then be tested for alcohol concentration. The New Braunfels Police claim that its "no refusal" weekend policy has been a great success so far. But this begs the question: "If no refusal weekends are such a great tool for law enforcement, then why isn't this law enforcement technique used all of the the time?" Why just have this policy for special weekends?
Why not make no refusal standard operating procedure? And is it really worth the trouble to do a no refusal policy on special holiday weekends? Some things to consider: 1. Breath testing is far easier for law enforcement, and far less expensive, then blood testing. Doing blood testing requires law enforcement to go through the trouble of processing extra paperwork to obtain a warrant, have a judge on call 24/7 to issue a warrant, and to have qualified medical technician on hand to draw the blood. The blood sample then has to be sent off to a lab to get a result, which can take weeks.
It just isn't feasible for most jurisdictions to do this on a routine basis. A breath test, on the other hand, can simply be obtained by an on-duty cop who happens to have taken a certification class in order to run the breath test machine. No warrant, no waiting, no civilian personnel -- and instant results. 2. The idea that there is a huge number of DWIs on holiday weekends is largely a myth. I think the general public assumes that an enormous number of people get arrested for DWI on holiday weekends. My experience as a criminal defense lawyer doesn't bear this out.
The vast majority of our DWI clients aren't arrested on holidays. Instead, they're arrested for DWI coming home from their cousin's barbeque, after stopping at a bar after work with friends; they are arrest during normal times, during their normal lives. If anything, they are less likely to be arrested on a holiday, when they are more self-aware of their drinking, when they are more likely to be conscious of police targeting DWI and more likely to have access to designated drivers."No refusal" weekend are good PR, but I haven't seen anything like a peer-reviewed study that says they actually do a lot to stop DWIs from being committed.
As long as there are prosecutors and judges who run for reelection in Texas who think they can get some PR bank for the buck by publicizing "no refusal" weekends, such weekends will continue to pop up around the holidays. But don't expect no refusal polices to become the normal way of doing things or for them to make a significant dent in overall DWI statistics.