Embarrassment, fines just the start when getting a DUI

By Nick Grudin
News-Sentinel staff writer

As the night wears on and the crowd at the bar dissipates, you look at your watch.

It’s 12:30 a.m. You’ve been drinking throughout the night, maybe six beers over three hours, and you feel pretty good.

You hop into your car without a second thought and you’re off to the races, day-dreaming about who the guest will be on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” The steering wheel feels loose, and the gas pedal soft. What fun!

Lodi police Officer Ernie Nies administers a field sobriety test to a DUI suspect pulled over on Cherokee Lane in Lodi. (Mary Min Vincent/News-Sentinel)

But then a sobering image appears in your rear view mirror. It’s the flashing light of a police cruiser.

The protocol that follows a DUI stop is at once embarrassing and uncomfortable, said Officer Lee Patterson of the Lodi Police Department.

And if you’re arrested, it becomes a whole lot worse, with fees that total upwards of $3,800 in the first year after a DUI conviction, on top of a night in jail, for first-time offenders. With prior arrests, things just get worse.

“It’s not a fun process,” Patterson said.

What starts out like a normal traffic stop quickly turns into something more as the DUI suspect is asked to get out of the car and do field sobriety tests:

“Close your eyes and touch your nose.”

“Walk on this line toe-to-toe.”

Then comes the litmus test, the breathalyzer. And if the suspect refuses and still gets arrested, then the police can draw blood, restraining the suspect if necessary. The urine test, which used to be the third option for blood alcohol tests, is no longer an option.

Once the cops make a DUI arrest, it’s off to the Lodi City Jail, handcuffed in the back of a patrol car.

“We cuff ‘em and take ‘em in,” Patterson said.

That’s when the fees start adding up. The drunken driver’s car is towed and stored, a cost of between $200 and $250 dollars if dealt with quickly.

And the driver will worry about these costs during a four- to six-hour stay in the city jail’s drunk tank, a plastic-walled cell with rubberized floors, filled with people under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

“I think the drunk tank is the biggest deterrent,” Patterson said.

“It gets pretty bad in there.”

And then come the court fines totaling more than $1,820, and after that, a required counseling service costing another $556.

“The costs add up” Patterson said.

To add insult to injury, a convicted drunken driver’s license is suspended for six months, with the opportunity to get a driving permit for commuting to and from work.

But the real costs come in additional insurance premiums. Rates increase by $800 to $1,000 per year, according to American Automobile Association and Allstate Insurance. And that does not include the loss of good-driver status, which could run insurance premiums even higher.

Other fees include a $100 driver’s license reinstatement fee and a $75 substance-abuse evaluation.

And these fines are just for first-timers, Patterson said.

“We beg these people not to drink and drive,” he said.

Contents

» High number of drinking and driving arrests in Lodi raises questions
» The .08 debate: Does low standard net social drinkers?
» Students tell stories of drinking at parties, rural areas
» Family copes with tragedy of drinking and driving
» Embarrassment, fines just the start when getting a DUI
» Tips on how to avoid a DUI charge, or to stop drinking altogether