Drunk Driving, Part 2

On this episode of Tony Talks Charles County Crime, part 2 of a two-episode discussion, State's Attorney Tony Covington offers solutions to the drunk driving problem discussed in part one. He is joined by Executive Assistant Kristen Schulz and Public Relations Specialist Kandes Carter, both of the State's Attorney's Office, in a question/answer style format.

00:03:05     Responsibility of Drivers
00:05:58     Technology Assessing Sobriety
00:08:37     Expansion of Portable Breathalyzer Tests
00:11:44     Fixing Society's Attitude About Drunk Driving
00:15:10     Law Enforcement & Catching Drunk Drivers
00:20:15     Behavior-Changing Sentencing

To listen to Part One of the Drunk Driving podcast, which discusses the drunk driving problem and its causes, please click here.

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Transcript

Tony Covington: 0:16

Hello. Welcome to the official podcast of the Charles County State's Attorney's Office. I'm Tony Covington, your State's Attorney. Today we have part two of our drunk driving podcast. In part one of the podcast, I laid out the serious problem that drunk driving is to our communities. It was all about the problems. Today is all about solutions. This episode, however, is in a question answer format as opposed to me just running my mouth as I did last time. As we'll hear in a little bit, I have Kandes Carter and Kristen Schultz, both of the State's Attorney's Office, here with me. They've taken the time to boil down the many questions that folks have out there on drunk driving and the solutions there too. So they're going to ask me questions. I'm going to answer the questions, and that's going to be the entirety of this podcast. I hope you enjoy it, but before we get into that, please listen to the following message. Thanks. Tony Covington here. I want to take this opportunity to invite all of our listeners to the Salome A. Howard Bar Association's Seventh Annual Scholarship Affair will be held on April 12, 2019 at 7:30 in the evening at the Greater Waldorf Jaycee's in Waldorf. Salome A. Howard Bar Association, of which I'm a founding member, is a nonprofit organization. The scholarship affair raises money for students to attend the College of Southern Maryland. It's a great cause and it's a great time. You have to believe me on that. This is the seventh time we're doing it and it is a fun time for all. It's a black tie event with a live band, open bar, and trust me, very little people talking on the microphone boring everybody to death. It's a gala type atmosphere, so please come on out. In order to get your tickets, you can email SalomeAHowardBar@gmail.com. Salome is spelled S-a-l-o-m-e, so it's SalomeAHowardBar@gmail.com. You can also go to the Facebook page for the Bar Association. That's also Salome A Howard Bar. Thanks a lot. Hope to see you there. Welcome back everybody. As promised, I'm joined by Kandes Carter. Kandes say hello.

Kandes Carter: 2:33

Hello everybody.

Tony Covington: 2:34

And Kristin Schultz. Kristen say hello. Okay.

Kristen Schulz: 2:37

Hello.

Tony Covington: 2:37

Which one of you is going to hit me with the first question first?

Kandes Carter: 2:41

I am going to take the first question, Mr. Covington, and thank you for having us on the show.

Tony Covington: 2:45

My pleasure. You know that.

Kandes Carter: 2:46

During part one of the drunk driving podcast, which was excellent by the way, very eye-opening, you highlighted the most basic problem about drunk driving and that is we foolishly rely on people that are drinking to determine whether they are fit to drive. So I have two questions based on that. The first being, drunk people can't be expected to make good decisions about driving. Therefore should the courts treat them harshly and like others engaging in criminal conduct? And before I get to the second one, do you want to answer that first?

Tony Covington: 3:16

Sure. Let me answer that one first. Some people think that because I acknowledge and other people acknowledge that people who have been drinking can make poor decisions. Their judgment is flawed so somehow they kind of get a pass that it's not their fault for deciding to drive drunk. Nothing could be further from the truth as far as I'm concerned. Because guess what? People don't walk around in a perpetual state of drunkenness. People are sober and this kind of gets to one of the solutions that folks need to have for themselves is it's called planning. All right? You have the obligation. Everybody has the obligation when they get behind the wheel that they are fit to drive. A lot of people don't know this, but we've charged any number of people over the years for falling asleep at the wheel, getting in an accident, and killing somebody. They get charged with the same thing as a drunk driver. Okay. Why? Because- obviously it depends on the situation and it depends on the facts- but if you have somebody who's worked, you know, 24 hours straight, hasn't gotten any rest, and they start to drive and they're on the beltway and fall asleep and end up killing somebody, they knew they didn't have the right or the requisite sleep under their belt. They knew that they were not fit to drive. Look, people know when they're going to drive. People know when they're going to drink. I don't know too many people in my lifetime who have accidentally got drunk on alcohol. By that I mean tripping and falling in a vad of alcohol and next thing you know, they're drunk. It doesn't happen that way. Adults know that they're going to drink and they should plan accordingly. So we don't start with or start at the point where somebody is getting behind the wheel after they'd been drinking. You have the obligation to have planned your evening, your morning, your afternoon, whatever it happens to be, so that you are not driving drunk, putting people at risk just like the person who didn't get enough sleep or any other thing that you can think about where somebody had the decision-making ability to make sure that they were fit to drive. So do I believe that the court should treat, should treat people less harshly because at the time they decided to drink and drive, they were drunk. Absolutely not. You've got the obligation to be fit and prepared to drive at all times. You owe it to yourself. And you owe it to all those innocent victims out there that we see almost 10,000/11,000 every year when people die.

Kandes Carter: 5:56

Right. Okay. So in addition to planning beforehand, are there any realistic alternatives to relying on drinkers self-assessment of their sobriety?

Tony Covington: 6:07

Yes; there certainly are. I guess the first ones are kind of pie in the sky. We have technology. Right now the government along with some private organizations are working on making even smarter cars, if you will. Cars that will be able to detect, believe it or not, whether or not a driver has alcohol in his system.

Kandes Carter: 6:30

Oh Wow.

Tony Covington: 6:31

Yeah, they can do it a couple ways. One, right this second- they have technology out there that if you have a band around your ankle, they can check your blood for alcohol 24/7 365 and those are actually in use. That is going to be adapted into your car. Maybe they put in your steering wheel, whatever it is, but also secondly, they can also check the alcohol level from the ambient air in the vehicle of the driver. Even if there are other people in the car, it's focused right on the driver. So that technology is going to get here sooner or later. And of course we all have seen already that these car makers have gotten cars to park parallel park themselves, stay in lanes, all that. Self driving cars are going to happen. It's not gonna happen in my lifetime. Probably not going to happen in your lifetime, but that will happen. So that technology will eliminate us having to rely on people who are drinking to self assess their sobriety and get behind the wheel. It's not going to be necessary. Car can drive itself, but again, that's not here anytime soon. So let's talk about the stuff that is around right now. First of all, folks who have all heard of interlock ignition systems. Here in Maryland, those interlock systems have been in the news in the past couple few years because of Noah's law. If you recall, um, it's named after a police officer that was killed by a drunk driver up in Montgomery County. The interlock system requires the driver of the car to blow into a tube. And as long as they don't have x amount of alcohol in their system, the car will start. If they have more than that limit, the car doesn't start. So that's technology that's here, right here, right now. Um, it needs to be expanded, quite frankly. Um, Noah's law is a good start. But to me, there needs to be more of it. That's technology that excludes the driver's decision-making, right? From actually getting behind the wheel and driving the car. So that's the interlock system. It's there. We should expand it to be useful. But we also have what we call either portable breathalyzer test or pre-breathalyzer test, but depending upon who you talk to. And it essentially is something that police officers use on the side of the road. It is something they use to develop evidence, if you will, more information to see if somebody is actually drunk driving. You all heard about the sobriety test that they'll give, you know, you got to do the alphabet test, you do the walk and turn test, you stand on one leg, that type of stuff. Well the PBT is a chemical test. All right. As a little, little thing that actually they have systems that go on people's key rings.

Kristen Schulz: 9:14

Yeah, I've seen them before. They're like$30 on Amazon. Every one should have one.

Tony Covington: 9:18

That's right. Everyone should have one. But those should be expanded because they're fairly accurate. Officer's use them to develop information- say hey, if you have a 0.10 in your system, which is over the legal limit, they're probably gonna arrest you based on the PBT and their other observations. Then you go down to the station and you have the formal intoximeter or breathalyzer test, the one that is actually used in court. But folks should have these. I think a great solution would be our local establishments, government- if you have an alcohol license to sell alcohol at a tavern or bar or whatever it is, you should be required to make PBTs available for people. All right. It's just something that gives people more information, more information. Also education on trying to solve the problem with folks not understanding that they are drunk. See, the problem is nobody gets training in it, right? No one gets training in it and nobody knows really how they feel if they're at a 0.05 which is still under...

Kristen Schulz: 10:23

Everyone's different, someone that drinks all the time is not going to be slurring and, and you know, stumbling around, but they are going to be over the limit, but they feel fine, they sound fine, they look fine, but they're not.

Tony Covington: 10:37

That's absolutely correct and that's the whole problem. It's so subjective. Right. And people don't get any training on it. They would be amazed if they had a PBT and they drank some say,'Oh man, I'm over the legal limit already.' Right?

Kandes Carter: 10:53

Yeah.

Tony Covington: 10:54

Or'I was drinking, I stopped drinking. Man. I'm still over the legal limit because the alcohol hasn't been metabolized through my body yet.' So if people have the information there for them- until we get to the, you know, technology many, many years down the road, which will alleviate these decisions- if people have that information, if they have PBTs available to them. All right. Wherever they- they might not have their own personal PBT, but they can certainly use one at a bar or something else. Right? It's very inexpensive. I think there ought to be a requirement on that, but even if there isn't, again, you have the obligation and responsibility to be fit to drive.

Kandes Carter: 11:31

Right

Tony Covington: 11:31

Folks should spend the$30-$60-$100, whatever it happens to be, whatever style they want to get for themselves, and they can always make sure they're under the limit before they get behind that wheel.

Kandes Carter: 11:42

Makes Sense.

Kristen Schulz: 11:43

Absolutely. Tony, you pointed out in Drunk Driving Podcast One that as a society, we simply don't care enough or take drunk driving seriously enough. We all know how difficult it is to change what society cares about enough to try and fix a problem. How do you propose we fix this non-caring attitude about drunk driving?

Tony Covington: 12:01

It is very, very difficult to get people to care about certain things that don't impact them personally. As we said before, though, the odds are that most people are going to have to deal with drunk driving sometime in their lifetime. But to make them care right now before it impacts them. As with everything, you gotta educate people. Doing what we're doing right now, talking about it, putting the problem in play and then talking about the solutions. The mothers against drunk driving, great organization, they've been for years doing what they call victim impact panels, where, where people- many of course are coming out of the court system- they're obligated by the courts to go to one of these victim impact panels and they are heart wrenching. They talk about- they have victims' families get up there and talk about this is the impact of the type of conduct that you are engaged in. Okay. You killed somebody. This is what happens. Matter of fact, in the first episode of this podcast, we did a little victim impact thing as well. And it's difficult. Those panels, however, make these folks fully understand and think twice before they get behind the wheel of a car. Also we gotta teach our children, you know, we ought to take a page from- although we'll do it in a good way- take a page from the old tobacco folks. Okay. How they targeted children for years in order to get children hooked on cigarettes. Well, we need to do it the opposite way. Let's target children, let's educate them not just for alcohol, but drugs as well. And I'm sure everybody talks about that and say,'Oh, Covington, yeah, everybody knows that.' Well yeah everybody knows it, but do we put the resources towards it? And the answer that is not enough. And we continue educating people through elementary school to high school as young adults, all of that. You know, I've heard, I've seen, I don't know if it was a Superbowl commercial and I think it was before that, but you know, Heineken has a line of commercials out that I think a real good. Matter of fact, I think it was last year and Jackie Stewart, the old race car driver. You young ladies probably don't remember Jackie Stewart, but I do. And they had Jackie at a bar and,'Hey Jack, you want to drink? No, I don't want to drink. Oh, come on Jackie it's just one.' And he said, I'm still driving. Right. Which went to, in fact, he's not, he's retired from race car driving, but he's still driving. And that kind of impresses upon people just one is too much if you're driving. We don't need to drink and drive. I wish our law said that. It doesn't. Our slogan certainly does and I think that people should. And on that line, that's a commercial for Heineken beer. But, what about just PSAs. You know, we have plenty of PSAs out there. We need to have more of them. The non-caring attitude that we have about drunk driving, it needs to change. But the only way it's going to change is if people, one, certainly understand about all the deaths, they understand about the carnage that it causes, and people who have been there, victims' families really let people know what's going on, the damage that it's doing. And I like to think that Americans are good-hearted people, generally speaking. And because of that, they will care, but they have to understand what's going on out there. So that's why education is the key as far as changing the attitudes about drunk driving.

Kandes Carter: 15:11

Okay Mr. Covington, you were mentioning PSAs and we've all seen the PSA where they say drive sober or get pulled over. But in the last podcast you mentioned that only 1% of drunk drivers are actually caught. How can the police decrease the overall number of drunk drivers and increase the number of arrests?

Tony Covington: 15:30

Well, obviously the police have a crucial role in catching drunk drivers. And unfortunately that stat is true. About 1% of those folks on the roadways who are driving drunk actually get caught in any given, any given year. The police need more, more resources. High visibility on the roadways is a key to deterring folks from driving drunk and the more police officers and cruisers out there, especially during those hours when people drive drunk the most, it's critical. It's helpful. That just comes from resources. That just comes from having more police officers and more cars. And of course, a police strategy that's going to put police officers on the road. Doesn't make a difference if you've got all these cars and all these police officers and they're, they're sitting at the barracks. But also sobriety checkpoints, which is part of visibility. The sobriety checkpoint, I don't know if any, if you all have ever been through one.

Kristen Schulz: 16:24

Yeah.

Tony Covington: 16:25

But the police actually set up and they stop every single car that comes through that checkpoint and they check people for their sobriety and invariably they're going to catch a couple people depending on how long they're out there. The more sobriety checkpoints there are, the more they're going to catch and it's going to reduce guys on the roadway and it acts as a deterrent. I know mothers against drunk driving has stats on that definitively showing that sobriety checkpoints work and that's something that every police agency ought to do to try to increase catching those guys. Again, that's just a matter of resources. They could do one of those every night, you know, in a different location in whatever jurisdiction. But of course they have to catch other folks doing their crime too. So this a matter of resources, a matter of where you're going to, to put those resources and also the police. And I think for the most part they try to, but they need to increase it just like we do. They need to help educate. One of the things when we go back to people drinking and not knowing what a 0.05 or 0.08 in their system feels like, you know, during the academy, sometimes during the academy, I'm talking about the, the police academy, I know that some jurisdictions actually have volunteers come in and they will drink alcohol and the officers and that person, you know, they will check taking a PBT every now and then and actually gauge this person, observe the person, okay. These are the effects of alcohol. I'm pretty sure that the police could set those type of trainings up for citizens. Hey, you want to know- You want to know what a 0.05 looks like? Here's what you do. Of course, you could do it yourself. We talked earlier about the PBTs, right? If you buy one yourself and you have one yourself, you can test yourself on that one, right?

Kandes Carter: 18:06

Yeah.

Tony Covington: 18:07

So of course we have the PBT. You don't have to just go based on your, your subjective feeling, but that's part of the education that they can do. Also, and this is important because I haven't said anything about this too much in both these episodes, Drug Recognition Experts, they are police officers who are specially trained to recognize when somebody is under the influence of controlled dangerous substances, whether it's marijuana, whether it's pills, whether it's heroin, cocaine, that type of thing, we do not have enough of them anywhere. All right. And with the advent of the permissiveness about marijuana out here throughout the country, you are having more and more and more people driving under the influence of drugs. And everything that I talk about, um, driving under the influence of alcohol applies to driving under the influence of drugs. All right? So the more DREs we have out there- because here's what happens, somebody may get pulled over, officer doesn't smell any alcohol, doesn't see any alcohol person, doesn't say they'd been drinking, but they're clearly under the influence of something. What do the police do? Well, they've got to get a DRE out there, Drug Recognition Expert, to this person, evaluate him and say, okay, this is what this person is under. That's the only way we can hold them accountable. We cannot force, there are no laws on the books yet, unless there's a death involved, we cannot force anybody to take a blood test. There are no breathalyzer tests for drugs. You have to take blood tests. So the more DREs we have out there, all right, folks can be held accountable for driving under the influence of drugs as well. And right now I'm telling you it is- there's a paucity of officers out there. I think here in this county you can count it on maybe one or two hands the number of officers who are qualified as Drug Recognition Experts. They are certainly sending people to training. They're trying to increase that as we go. They don't have enough yet. And again, that's money. That's manpower. Again, budgeting. What does the community really care about? Are we going to put money towards these things? So that's what I think the police can do and along with continuing to do the great job that they always do.

Kandes Carter: 20:13

Okay.

Kristen Schulz: 20:15

In the first drunk driving podcast, Tony, you used the phrase behavior-changing sentences regarding drunk driving accidents that don't involve death or serious injury. What specifically did you mean by behavior-changing sentences?

Tony Covington: 20:29

30 days. A first time offender for driving under the influence of alcohol should get 30 days in jail. No weekend sentencing, no work release where you're there only 12 hours a day, not you get sentenced on January 1st. Won't have to turn yourself in until March 1st. No. You plead guilty or you're found guilty at your sentencing, you go to jail for 30 days. You get taken out the back of the courtroom where all the other prisoners go. Not walk out the front of the courtroom where everybody who's watching goes. Why? Why do I think that would decrease sentencing? Excuse me, decrease drunk driving. Most people, as I've been told for years and years and years by defense attorneys, most people that are guilty of drunk driving are working every day, taking care of their family, don't have a criminal record. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Those are the people, unlike your career criminals who really don't care about staying within the law and living within the law, most drunk drivers, they are law abiding citizens with this exception of driving drunk. And let's not forget the majority of drunk driving deaths, they're first time offenders, right? The majority of those killing people while drunk driving are first time offenders and I believe that these folks who are good citizens, they can't afford to go to jail for 30 days. I'm not talking about money, I'm talking about their life. I mean, not too many employers are going to just keep you around,'well, I got a drunk driving charge.' Not a whole lot of folks have 30 days of leave saved up, and even if you do, is your boss really going to let you use 30 days? That's a lot of time. Now it sounds fairly harsh and remember, especially in the climate where three, four, five time offenders don't get 30 days. I mean it's ridiculous. Okay? But let us remember how important and how impactful drunk driving is real quickly. In 2017, let me give you a comparison. One hundred, seventy thousand armed robberies in America back in 2017. More than 300,000 drunk driving cases that ended in injury. Most robberies don't involve an injury. Not saying it's an easy thing for a victim, it's awful, something that stays with you the rest of your life. But guess what? Being in a drunk driving accident stays with you for the rest of your life too. There are far more injuries and whatever. Somebody asked me, would you rather put a drunk driver in jail or an armed robber? Well, I hate to say it, but the drunk driver is more dangerous. They're almost 11,000 deaths by drunk driving every year right now. There's no way that armed robberies are responsible for even half that amount. Most robberies don't end in violence. Okay, so we need to keep this in mind when we talk about it. Well, dag on Covington, that sounds awful harsh. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. And we can also put that in with Motor Vehicle Manslaughter. Motor Vehicle Manslaughter- again, I said this in the first podcast- you get 10 years. You get 10- you can get 10 years for a simple assault for just touching somebody. You can get 10 years- you can get 20 years for theft, right? You get 20/25 years for the robbery that we were just talking about. You can get 20 years for dealing drugs, not marijuana, but cocaine, heroin, all that, 20 years. And you're going to tell me that in a motor vehicle manslaughter where the sentence is only 10 years, that somebody's life was worth 10 years. If you want me to be specific, 25 years sounds like a good number to me. You should be subject to 25 years of your life for taking somebody else's life. 25 years. That's what you can get for a first-degree assault. First-degree assault is inflicting serious bodily harm on somebody. Obviously, if you killed somebody, a drunk driving case, you inflicted more than serious bodily harm. So we need to increase that penalty. It really is, as I said last time, an insult, a slap in the face to families out there who have to endure this. And I am a firm believer that sentencing can make a difference, can be a deterrent, and if nothing else, it can be the necessary punishment that people deserve as well. So that's how I feel about sentencing. I believe, and I'm not foolish enough to think that tomorrow somebody is going to pass a law that says, hey judges, you gotta give people 30 days. But guess what? There are other crimes out there. Possession, simple possession of a handgun. The statute, the statute says you got to get 30 days. Now judges are allowed to suspend that, but the law could change on that too. We want to have impact on people and deter people from drunk driving, one of the most dangerous things we have going on in this world. Because remember, there's 17,000 murders, 11,000 drunk driving deaths.

Kristen Schulz: 25:41

Wow.

Tony Covington: 25:42

Only 17,000 murders, which is 17,000 too many, but two-thirds the number drunk driving deaths out there too. Drunk driving is a serious crime. It needs to be taken serious.

Kristen Schulz: 25:55

Yeah.

Tony Covington: 25:55

It's preventable. We don't have to lose these lives. We need to do something to deter it. The total lack of serious sentencing of first timers and on folks who were charged with motor vehicle manslaughter, I think adversely impacts the seriousness factor here. Folks do not take it seriously because the courts don't take it seriously. So that concludes part two of our drunk driving episode. Thank you for listening. I really appreciate it. Please take the time to subscribe to the Tony Talks Charles County Crime podcast. Our next topic will be on the dreaded subject of plea agreements, or what some folks call plea deals. Trust me, plea deals, plea agreements, whatever you call them are a good thing. You don't believe me now, please listen to the next podcast and you'll understand why. Thank you, Tony Covington signing off.