Your chances of being caught driving drunk vary dramatically around the state. Providence police last year made just 24 arrests for driving under the influence.

01:05 PM EDT on Monday, September 19, 2005

BY BRUCE LANDIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Law enforcement and safety officials repeat the slogan "You drink, you drive, you lose."

There's something to that claim. Rhode Island municipal and state police departments arrest dozens, even hundreds, of suspected drunken drivers each year, and the overall number of arrests is rising.

But Rhode Island police make few drunken-driving arrests compared with police elsewhere, and some departments make so few that the chance of being caught is minimal.

A Journal analysis of five years of state-police arrest figures suggests that your chances of being caught vary dramatically depending on where you drive when you've been drinking.

Accident records, meanwhile, show that alcohol-related traffic fatalities frequently take place in the same places where police enforcement is weakest.

With federal officials and local advocates trying to reduce drunken-driving deaths, many Rhode Island cities and towns dramatically increased their arrests for driving under the influence (DUI) between 2000 and 2004.

Thirteen communities at least doubled their arrest numbers, and some tripled and quadrupled them. The statewide total rose to 2,330, from 1,754.

But in the midst of a supposed war on drunken driving, FBI statistics for 2003 say Rhode Island police made the second-fewest drunken-driving arrests in the nation (after Delaware) on a per capita basis.

In Providence, the state's biggest city with by far the biggest police force and the most drinking establishments, the police reported just 24 arrests last year for driving under the influence.

In other words, an average of more than two weeks passed between drunken-driving arrests.

By contrast, police in small towns such as Burrillville, Tiverton, Hopkinton and Glocester made between 35 and 57 DUI arrests in 2004. The police in South Kingstown reported 120, five times as many as the entire Providence Police Department.

Providence, meanwhile, also had 31 of the state's 197 alcohol-related fatal accidents during the last five years, the most of any community, according to figures from the state Department of Transportation.

Pawtucket police reported only 16 drunken-driving arrests in 2004, and Central Falls police only 9. That meant Pawtucket arrested someone for driving drunk about once every three weeks, and Central Falls police less than once a month. In both cities, the figures were not markedly different in the previous several years.

The state police, prominent in highway-safety campaigns, actually made fewer drunken-driving arrests each year from 2000, when they reported 379, through 2004, when they reported 221.

PAWTUCKET POLICE Chief George L. Kelly III said his officers watch the city's more troublesome bars on Friday and Saturday nights and intercept potential drunken drivers before they get in their cars.

"They're not leaving the bars intoxicated, or they're not being allowed to drive," Kelly said.

Kelly said his men watch about 10 establishments a night. However, state records show 89 establishments are licensed to sell liquor by the drink in Pawtucket. There were also nine alcohol-related fatalities in Pawtucket during the five years, the fourth-highest number in the state.

Reflecting on his department's rare DUI arrests, Central Falls Police Chief Joseph Moran said, "Maybe we don't have a drunken-driving problem."

Moran also raised a point that is a major concern among national experts: DUI arrests are complicated and time-consuming.

In Central Falls, Moran said, he is most likely to have four patrolmen on an evening shift, plus a supervisor. He said his men may get 70 to 95 calls for service on an eight-hour evening shift.

Moran said a case where the driver refuses to take a breath test can take an hour and a half of an officer's time. Where the driver submits to a test, it takes much longer. The officer must administer two breath tests, at least 30 minutes apart, for the results to be convincing in court.

DUI arrests are so complicated and time consuming that police elsewhere in the country have assigned specialized officers to handle them, and there are efforts to streamline the process.

But Moran questioned whether there were many drunken drivers to arrest in his densely populated city. "Maybe [citizens] can walk from one place to another, and don't drink and drive," he said.

Indeed, there were no alcohol-related fatal accidents in Central Falls during the last five years. But national studies indicate that for each arrest, there are dozens more drunken drivers on the road.

Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman doesn't suggest that his city's low-arrest figures mean that drunken driving is under control.

"Drunken-driving fatalities are a serious, serious problem," Esserman said.

But Esserman said he arrived in 2003 to find a city besieged by violent crime, with "one or two people shot every week when we first got here, and two or three being buried every month."

"I made some decisions when I came here," he said, to "focus on this hemorrhage of violence.

"Everything we have done for the last two and a half years has focused on the violence," Esserman said, "and I make no apology for it."

Esserman said he thought things were getting under control, and that he intended to step up traffic enforcement.

Another exception is the Rhode Island State Police, where Maj. Steve O'Donnell said commanders recognized a need to pay more attention to drunken driving and have done so.

"The high death rates from alcohol-related accidents needed attention," O'Donnell said. "Our emphasis on DUIs picked up in February" and has continued since.

O'Donnell said the increased focus on drunken driving was showing results. In the first half of this year, O'Donnell said, troopers made 253 DUI arrests, more than they did in all of 2004.

Peter T. Brousseau, West Warwick's police chief and president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association, said some drivers were probably not charged with drunken driving because a huge majority -- 1,527 of them last year, according to the attorney general's office -- refused to take the breath test for alcohol.

Condemned as a loophole by police, that choice helps suspects avoid a criminal record in return for a three-month license suspension. The police can still charge such drivers with drunken driving, but lack the best evidence, the driver's blood-alcohol level.

Brousseau said the DUI arrest figures, without the refusal charges, under-represent the Rhode Island drunken-driving enforcement effort.

He called a refusal conviction 'a very poor second choice" to a drunken-driving conviction, but one forced on police by the difficulty of getting drivers' blood-alcohol level.

SORTED OUT by type of community, the figures show that central city police make fewer drunken-driving arrests than police in other urban areas, who make fewer than suburban and rural police.

The cities have much more serious crime, enough to suggest that one factor holding down DUI arrests in the cities may be the sheer volume of crime there compared with the number of officers available.

The crimes the FBI uses to calculate its frequently quoted "crime rate" are murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor-vehicle theft.

The three cities with the highest number of those "index" crimes per police officer, Providence, Central Falls and Pawtucket, were also the cities whose officers made the fewest drunken-driving arrests.

"Instead of doing DUI arrests, they're making felony arrests," Brousseau said.

Federal statistics showing that Rhode Island had the highest percentage of alcohol-related fatal accidents in the nation for five years running have focused attention on the issue here, as has federal insistence that the General Assembly take legislative steps against driving drunk or lose federal highway aid.

Despite that, the legislature has been largely inactive on the issue, to the frustration of police, other law enforcement officials and advocates against driving drunk.

Gabrielle Abate, head of the state chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said a lack of enforcement "equates to more deaths," and she rejects the suggestions of some police commanders that few arrests mean there's no problem.

But Abate rejects blaming the police for the state's drunken-driving problem. The responsibility, she said, lies with Democratic legislative leaders who dominate the General Assembly. The legislature has regularly killed bills police say are critical, such as closing the loophole that ecourages suspects to refuse the breath test.

WHAT SHOULD the state do?

Simply arresting lots of drunken drivers won't necessarily reduce fatalities, experts say. "There is not a direct relationship between a high arrest rate and a low rate of DUI crashes," said Mario Damiata, a regional manager at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration in Boston.

Nationally, many experts both inside and outside the federal government think that the regular use of police "sobriety checkpoints," or roadblocks, and aggressive patrolling, accompanied by lots of publicity, are the best strategy for reducing drunken-driving fatalities.

However, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that checkpoints violate the state Constitution, making it one of 11 states where police can't use that strategy.

What's the next-best plan?

"If you arrest a whole lot of (drunken) drivers with a whole lot of publicity, that'll help," said James C. Fell, an expert on drunken driving at the Calverton, Md.-based Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

Conversely, Fell said, "If you don't arrest a lot of drunk drivers and people find out about it, there will be a lot of drunken driving."

Fell said that a lack of enforcement usually reflects the local police chief's views combined with a lack of demand from the public. "You've probably got a chief who doesn't believe in it, and a community that hasn't complained about it," Fell said.

One of the state's most visible efforts against drunken driving was the federally financed Operation Blue Riptide, which paid to put extra officers on patrol, usually on weekend nights, to catch drunken drivers.

In 10 months ending Sept. 30, 2004, the program cost $201,000, involved 25 police departments, stopped 6,250 vehicles, and lead to 244 DUI arrests, according to its annual report.

The number of DUI arrests rose in most of the departments, But in eight departments, or about a third of those involved, arrests dropped from 2003 to 2004.

In North Kingstown, where the number of arrests dropped 12, to 102, Police Chief Edward A. Charboneau said the decline showed that past enforcement worked.

"I would say people are getting the message," Charboneau said, and fewer people are drinking and driving.

However, the program's intention was to make drunken-driving arrests. Transportation manager Damiata said his agency was looking into the Rhode Island program.

Warwick's police chief, Col. Stephen McCartney, said his officers made a substantial number of DUI arrests because they focused on that offense because the citizens wanted it and the police themselves believed in it.

McCartney said his employers -- the citizens of Warwick -- had "a tremendous amount of sensitivity" to traffic-related problems, drunken driving among them.

Also contributing to the Warwick department's focus on drunken driving is a large number of alcohol-related fatal accidents, 23 in the last five years, second highest in the state.

"It affects the officers," McCartney said. "You end up dealing with the families (of the victims). The families are looking for answers."