STILL DRUNK, STILL DRIVING

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Nov/Dec 2004 by Segall, Bob

Police fail to enforce judges' orders prohibiting vehicle access for convicted chronic drunken drivers

The tip sounded so ridiculous I knew it had to be true. Nobody would make it up.

A tipster told us about a six-time convicted drunken driver who continued to drive to work every day despite a revoked drivers license. That wasn't the crazy part.

The fact that the repeat drunken driver worked at Miller Brewing Company, the state's largest producer of alcohol - now, that's the crazy part.

Wc first checked out what the tipster had told us and found it to be accurate. A two-minute phone call to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation office verified the state had indeed revoked Daniel Snedigar's driving privileges. Producer Michele Murray then drove by the Miller Brewing employee parking lot and found Snedigar's silver 2000 Dodge Ram pickup truck. It was right where our source said it would be.

Over the next week, our investigative unit followed Sncdigar closely. As he left his apartment at 5 a.m. to drive to work, we were right behind him with a hidden camera. When Sncdigar drove home in the afternoon, it was our undercover van he unknowingly glanced at in his rearview mirror. We had plenty of video - plenty of proof - clearly showing Sncdigar breaking the law.

We soon discovered the law was broken to begin with.

Judges' orders ignored

While researching Wisconsin's drunken driving laws, we learned the stale legislature had taken drastic action u decade earlier. Lawmakers had given judges three powerful weapons in the light against repeat drunken driving:

1. Vehicle seizure. A court can seize the car or truck used by a repeat drunken driver to commit his or her crime, and that vehicle can then be sold at auction.

2. Ignition interlock. A court can order a repeat drunken driver to install a built-in Breathalyzertype device near the steering wheel of his or her vehicle. Once the device is installed, the driver must blow into it before starting the ignition. If the ignition interlock detects even the smallest amount of alcohol on the driver's breath, the vehicle will not start.

3. Immobilization. A court can require police to immobilize the vehicle of a chronic drunken driver using whatever means necessary.

In Snedigar's court files, we found what would become the turning point of the investigation: an immobilization order dated May 2, 2002. It required West Allis police to immobilize the silver pickup truck -the same silver pickup truck we had watched Sncdigar driving to work and the same silver pickup truck he was driving when he was arrested for a seventh drunken driving offense in February 2003.

The document became the cornerstone of a much broader investigation. Wc wondered why the court-ordered immobilization had not been carried out. We also wondered whether immobilization orders had been ignored in other cases. An open records search provided startling results.

In 2001 and 2002, when more than 23,000 motorists were convicted of repeat drunken driving in Wisconsin, state judges ordered ignition interlock devices on 4,770 vehicles owned by chronic drunken drivers. Of those 4,770 interlock orders, only 465 were carried out. Judges' orders were ignored in 90 percent of the cases. We discovered it was left up to each drunken driver to follow the judges' orders. No one was checking to see if the drivers actually complied, and there were no penalties established for failing to obey the court rulings.

As for vehicle seizures and immobilisations, we found judges had ordered fewer than 750 of those statewide during the same two-year period. The Wisconsin DOT had no idea whether any of those orders had been carried out.

When confronted with the department's own statistics, DOT spokesman Dennis Hughes told us: "The legislature came up with some good laws. They just never thought about how to follow through on those laws. We've never had any follow through." State officials admitted they had known about the problem for a decade (soon after the laws took effect) but had done nothing to fix it.

The result: Thousands of chronic drunken drivers in Wisconsin were committing their crime over and over again - each time using the vehicle thai should have been immobilized, interlocked or seized by police.

Police and courts had no directive and no resources to ensure follow through on judges' orders. The state, as well, wasn't keeping track of the orders to ensure they were implemented. In thousands of cases, repeat drunken drivers received no court order limiting their ability to re-offend using the same vehicle.

It doesn't make sense

In Daniel Snedigar's case, the police department that should have immobilized Snedigar's pickup truck said it never received the judge's order.

"Even if we did get it, we wouldn't know what to do with it," said West Allis Deputy Police Chief Austin Dunbar. "How are we supposed to immobilize a truck? We don't have tools to do that."

Many judges told us they never realized their orders were not enforced. Other judges were not surprised, and one angry judge told us the breakdown of the system was equivalent to letting people get away with murder.